Nearly 3 Decades of Service Above Self
Persistence pays off. So does a committed wife who knows her husband. Twenty-eight years ago, David de la Cuesta’s customer, Gary Newquist (yes, Danny’s father) saw something special in David and knew that Rotary needed him. Despite going to a Rotary Club of Morgan Hill lunch with Gary (at the Golden Oak), David felt it just wasn’t for him. So over the next two years, he did his best to avoid Gary and the topic of Rotary. Except when he spoke with his wife, Sandy. You see, Sandy saw the same special quality in David that Gary had seen. Over the next two years, David tried his best to avoid the subject of Rotary with Gary and going to another Rotary lunch. One day, however, Gary came by David’s printing shop but when David tried to escape out the back door, Sandy blocked the door closed with her car and the rest is history! David returned to another Rotary lunch and saw that the dynamics had changed. Maybe it was because women were now joining Rotary? Whatever the reason, it was a good change and sparked a great interest in David.
A few months after David joined Rotary, Ron Mackley started a scholarship committee in our Club and got David involved. Originally, our Club gave scholarship money to the Morgan Hill Unified School District which selected the recipients and disbursed the money; so basically all that the Club did was write checks.
When David left his first scholarship interviews, he felt like he was “two feet off the ground” with surprise and positive feelings because these students he interviewed were unlike what he had heard about students. He had heard there were a lot of problems with students so imagine his surprise when the students were enthusiastic, opened up, and were positive.
“Not having my own children (but being close to my nephews), I’d never been around high school students. I couldn’t get over how professional, how poised, honest and open,” he expressed with awe and admiration as if it were yesterday, not almost 30 years ago. This had an impact on David as year-after-year, he came away from interviews thinking, “How can they be better than this year” and he was astonished by the students. “There’s none better than our kids,” he told me. “There’s just something about Morgan Hill kids.”
In 2012, David received the “Allan McLeod Award” which is “Awarded to the Individual who has made the greatest personal commitment and contribution to the Interact Clubs or other Youth Service Programs”.
He feels that the best thing about working with the youth is that you can do something with all aspects, not just one group. Since retiring full-time from the printing business, Rotary and the youth of Morgan Hill have become his job. But he doesn’t think of it as a job, “if you’re doing what you love, you never work a day in your life.”
When asked how he feels about his role working with youth through Rotary, he replied, “this is what I’ve always wanted to do. I guess I relate to the students because I listen to them. I love working with the ‘kids’” which is what he does, even outside of Rotary. When I spoke with him, he had just helped with the annual Lions Club bike ride. He is Scholarship coordinator and volunteers of the AVID College Readiness System at Sobrato High School which he wouldn’t be doing if it weren’t for Rotary’s introduction to high school students.
David estimated he spends 30 hours per week (during the school year) with the youth and loves every minute – you can see it in his eyes when he talks about the kids and what they are accomplishing in high school and in the future. He wishes more members of our club would participate – it is so fulfilling. He told me, “I know we’re all busy but they’re (members) missing out by not getting involved with the youth…. I feel that they’re [the youth] are keeping me young.”
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Today, our Club has five Interact clubs with two in the works. We have sent dozens of high school students to RYLA where they are trained in greater leadership skills as they become the leaders of tomorrow. “I’m not somebody who plays golf or sports. I like helping these kids’ lives.” And so he has. David has worked with, and hopefully helped approximately 1,200 youth over the last 28 years, and they have given him much joy in return. And he couldn’t have done it without a friend who saw something in him and persisted, and a loving, devoted wife who saw a man with more to give than he could possibly have known without a little pushing …. and holding that back door closed.