Park Ridge Club Inducts Two New Members

On Friday, March 7, Park Ridge Rotarians welcomed PDG Bonnie Sirower back to The Courtyard for the induction of Park Ridge resident June Bertini and Woodcliff Lake resident Mary Ellen Offer.

June is an antiques dealer working out of her home in Park Ridge and was recently elected to the town council. Worthy of note is the fact that June was once the college lab partner of PDG Bonnie. Mary Ellen is an attorney with Beattie Padovano LLC on Chestnut Ridge Road in Montvale and is a neighbor to current club members Irma Chazotte and Vlad Zherenovsky.

Bonnie began the ceremony by asking each of the women 4 questions: their job classification; their passion in life; their reason for joining Rotary; how they hope to fulfill their passion through Rotary.

Among June’s greatest passions is her desire to serve her community. As a newly elected councilwoman, she has a great opportunity to do that locally, but she hopes that Rotary will offer additional avenues to serve beyond as well.

Mary Ellen’s great passions are her children, grand-children and church. Club member and business associate Ralph Padovano was instrumental in introducing Mary Ellen to Rotary and she hopes to become as good a Rotarian as he, as she becomes more familiar with the club and with Rotary International.

Bonnie briefly described the 5 Avenues of Service that RI provides and assured the inductees that they would find countless opportunities to make the world a better place.

As the ceremony concluded Bonnie spoke of the great responsibility they were taking on as new Rotarians and urged them to adopt the Four Way Test as a guiding principle to follow in all of their professional and personal activities.

With that, membership packets and new-member pins were presented as other club members enthusiastically welcomed Mary Ellen and June into the club. Pictured below are Club President Bob Bustard, Mary Ellen, June and PDG Bonnie.