From the January 2016 issue of The Rotarian. In this issue, we kick off 2016 with first-person accounts of Rotary members' most harrowing and heartfelt personal experiences. Pick up the issue to explore more stories. Dushan “Dude” Angius Rotary Club of Los Altos, Calif. On Christmas Eve 1988, I picked up my son Steve at the airport. He always kept himself in good shape, but he was so skinny it was really beyond the pale. I didn’t say anything, but Christmas morning I asked him, “Are you right?” He said, “No, actually, I’m not well at all.” At first, he said he had Kaposi sarcoma, which is a...

From the January 2016 issue of The Rotarian. In this issue, we kick off 2016 with first-person accounts of Rotary members' most harrowing and heartfelt personal experiences. Pick up the issue to explore more stories. Naing Ko Ko Rotary Peace Fellow University of Queensland, Australia, 2012-13 In 1988, when I was 16, I began to protest with other students for democracy, human rights, and social justice in my home country of Burma, now called Myanmar. Four years later, I was arrested and tortured for two months in an interrogation camp. I was shackled and beaten. I was not allowed to sleep....

From the January 2016 issue of The Rotarian. In this issue, we kick off 2016 with first-person accounts of Rotary members' most harrowing and heartfelt personal experiences. Pick up the issue to explore more stories. Linda Le Vine Rotary Club of Westlake Village, Calif. When I was a child, my mother and I lived in an apartment near the center of London. This was during World War II, and our neighborhood was constantly under assault by the Luftwaffe. Most nights and many days, monstrous bombs, sometimes from hundreds of bombers at a time, attempted to destroy our city and demoralize or murder...

From the January 2016 issue of The Rotarian Anyone who spends a weekend morning or weekday evening as a casual observer of a youth sporting event is likely to come away thinking that too many adults take kids’ sports far too seriously. Whether it’s parents who harbor illusions that their children are destined to make the pros or coaches who entertain delusions of Vince Lombardi grandeur, there always seems to be someone on the sidelines or in the bleachers with no apparent misgivings about barking dubious advice at a player or beefing at a referee. In my experience as a baseball coach in a...

From the January 2016 issue of The Rotarian Peter Sarratori couldn’t sleep. He had treehouses on his mind. After watching a television documentary about Paul Newman that featured the late actor-entrepreneur’s Hole in the Wall Gang Camp for children with cancer and other serious illnesses, he spent an entire night in August 2012 thinking about the camp’s 30-foot-high hideaway amid the branches. Sarratori pondered the thought of 2,500 children with special needs served by his Rotary club experiencing the feeling of being “up in the trees.” For two decades, Sarratori has been deeply involved in...