March 31, 2025 (Mar. 28, 2025)

March 31, 2025

Join Rotarian Matt Buzza as he welcomes

Mary Heysek with the United Food Bank, who will be sharing about all that is new with the food bank and the on-going needs of the community.

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Please hang on after the presentation for break out meetings with your individual teams for Friday's Wild Game Cookout.

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Join us next week for a presentation with Gary Wishnatzki from Wish Farms

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Wild Game Cookout is here! Make sure all money is turned in by this meeting with any unsold tickets so that those on the waiting list can have an opportunity to buy their ticket!

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Check back for upcoming speakers and events!

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***Famous Rotarians***

**Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr.** (born **Leslie Lynch King Jr.**; July 14, 1913 – December 26, 2006) was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 38th president of the United States from 1974 to 1977. A member of the Republican Party, Ford assumed the presidency after the resignation of President Richard Nixon, under whom he had served as the 40th vice president from 1973 to 1974 following Spiro Agnew's resignation. Prior to that, he served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1949 to 1973.

Ford was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He attended the University of Michigan, where he played for the university football team, before eventually attending Yale Law School. Afterward, he served in the U.S. Naval Reserve from 1942 to 1946. Ford began his political career in 1949 as the U.S. representative from Michigan's 5th congressional district, serving in this capacity for nearly 25 years, the final nine of them as the House minority leader. In December 1973, two months after Spiro Agnew's resignation, Ford became the first person appointed to the vice presidency under the terms of the 25th Amendment. After the subsequent resignation of Nixon in August 1974, Ford immediately assumed the presidency.

Domestically, Ford presided over the worst economy in the four decades since the Great Depression, with growing inflation and a recession.^[1] In one of his most controversial acts, he granted a presidential pardon to Nixon for his role in the Watergate scandal. Foreign policy was characterized in procedural terms by the increased role Congress began to play, and by the corresponding curb on the powers of the president.^[2] Ford signed the Helsinki Accords, which marked a move toward *détente* in the Cold War. With the collapse of South Vietnam nine months into his presidency, U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War essentially ended. In the 1976 Republican presidential primary, he defeated Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination, but narrowly lost the presidential election to the Democratic candidate, Jimmy Carter. Ford remains the only person to serve as president without winning an election for president or vice president.

Following his years as president, Ford remained active in the Republican Party, but his moderate views on various social issues increasingly put him at odds with conservative members of the party in the 1990s and early 2000s. He also set aside the enmity he had felt towards Carter following the 1976 election and the two former presidents developed a close friendship. After experiencing a series of health problems, he died in Rancho Mirage, California in 2006. Surveys of historians and political scientists have ranked Ford as a below-average president,^[3]^[4]^[5] though retrospective public polls on his time in office were more positive.^[6]^[7]

President Ford was an active member of the Rotary Club of Grand Rapids, MI.

Member Birthdays

Mary Mathis

March 1

Jake Austin

March 6

Michael Cameron

March 9

Ryan Danielik

March 20

Charles Deusner

March 26

Shawn Jemison

April 4

Clay Joyner

April 8

Felix Haynes

April 9

Charles White

April 11

Steven Wyman

April 11

Coley Riley

April 21

Kayla Drawdy

April 24

Jodi Stevens

April 25

Steve Lambert

April 27

Join Date

TaiIshia Robinson

March 5, 2018

7 years

Bob Roderick

March 10, 1980

45 years

Brett Mueller

March 10, 2008

17 years

Adam Snyder

March 11, 2019

6 years

Nate Kilton

March 13, 2006

19 years

Tim Shuff

March 14, 2011

14 years

Alan Kicklighter

March 18, 2013

12 years

Doug Watson

March 23, 2015

10 years

Terry Jones

March 23, 2015

10 years

Steve Lambert

March 24, 1996

29 years

Steven Riddle

April 4, 2022

3 years

James Boyd

April 9, 2012

13 years

Nick Thurston

April 16, 2018

7 years

Shane Karlson

April 18, 2016

9 years

Bill Hughes

April 21, 2014

11 years

Matt Roberts

April 22, 2019

6 years

Charles Deusner

April 23, 1984

41 years

David Delph

April 28, 2008

17 years

Providing public toilets: Early Rotary service
Providing public toilets: Early Rotary

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Turkish Rotary member honored for advancing womens leadership
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Rotary honors a teacher and mentor with the 2025 Sylvia Whitlock Leadership Award
Rotary honors a teacher and mentor with the 2025 Sylvia Whitlock Leadership AwardThis Turkish Rotarian has promoted women’s financial literacy, funded scholarships for girls, and

A way off ‘the track’
One street in Seattle, a Rotary club, and a reckoning with the global scourge of sex trafficking.