Plant City resident and long time Plant City Rotarian David Miller passed away on February 5th. David joined our club in1982 and served as President in the 1989-90 year. David was a Paul Harris Fellow and was very active in our club for many years. David was very dedicated to serving Plant City and was active on many boards. His service helped many organizations increase the quality of life of many. He was a friend to all who knew him and he will be greatly missed. A Celebration of Life will be held on Saturday, February 18 at 3:00 P.M. at First Presbyterian Church of Plant City, 404 W. Reynolds Street, Plant City, where the family will receive friends beginning at 2:00 P.M. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the United Food Bank of Plant City at http://ufbpc.org/donations/. Expressions of condolence at may be posted at www.HopewellFuneral.com . David's obituary may be viewed online by following this link.
Last Meeting- February 6th
Last week’s program was presented by Rotarian Randy Larson. Randy’s guest speaker was Jack Holland, Director of the City of Plant City Parks and Recreation department. Jack Holland was born and raised in Plant City and started with the Parks and Recreation department in 1977. Jack took over the Director position in 2004. The program has grown tremendously over the years due to the great and dedicated staff that makes it all happen. The Recreation and Parks Department is dedicated to: Providing efficient and effective programs to meet the diverse desires of our community, Encouraging active and passive involvement in recreational opportunities, Developing creative and wholesome programming, with imagination, to challenge and encourage physical and mental wellbeing, Monitoring and adjusting programs to ensure safe and balanced activities, being responsive to changing needs, Managing recreational facilities in an ethical and sensitive manner, committed to improve the lives of participants, and having a vision of future leisure service needs, facilitating the development of green space, facilities and programs to allow expanded recreational opportunities The Parks Department offer numerous passive and active recreation opportunities at three recreation buildings,nine athletic facilities and eleven neighborhood parks. The department also maintains over 400 developed acres of park land, municipal building landscaping, and street scape. Additionally, Parks and Recreation handles around 150 interments annually in four cemeteries and oversee landscaping outsourcing for the cemeteries, I-4 interchanges, Park Road medians and Public Works buildings. Parks and Recreation, along with the City of Plant City, are dedicated to enhancing the Economic Development of our area. Bringing events to our community is a great economic advantage to everyone. 40 of 52 weekends are scheduled for tournaments form the outside brining 12,000 to 15,000 people to our area each weekend. This partnership with the City makes Plant City a great destination for new business to move in to the area. A great partnership with the Tampa Bay Sports Commission has evolved to make Plant City a “tournament destination” for a variety of sports events.-submitted by Mike Arndt
Club News
A Special Welcome to Rotary Spouses and Significant others today
It is extremely important that you get the word out about our event this year. Our club has historically had the best Cookout and we want to ensure that we keep that reputation for years to come. There are numerous Wild Game Cookouts during this time of the year. It is our duty to reach out to our Friends, Family, Neighbors, Employees, Customers, Etc. and make sure that they know when the Plant City Rotary Wild Game Cookout is. Other clubs and organizations are going to be selling to the same individuals very soon and you do not want to find out in late March that you were too late. 2017 Wild Game Flyer is available for you to print and pass out, put on Facebook, send in email to your contacts, etc. It is very important that we get a jump start on the event this year!
Saturday Feb. 18th is opening day of Plant City Little League. Our club will be cooking hot dogs once again. Members are needed at 7:30 am to assist with this event.
Calling for your news! This is your newsletter. If there is news you would like to share with your club (new job? a birth? employment opportunity? club projects? anything you think other members or subscribers to our bulletin would find interesting or useful) then please e-mail it to your bulletin editor.
Share the Rotary News! If you know anyone that would like to receive our E-bulletin, let them know they can sign up for it on the home page of our website www.PlantCityRotary.org. They just need to go to the bottom of the left hand column, click on sign up for newsletter and fill in their name and e-mail address. You can also forward them this newsletter and they can use the link at the bottom of the left column.
Calling for website sponsors! It is our goal to have enough sponsorship from members of the club to make our website and these e-bulletins self-supporting. If you enjoy these electronic updates and appreciate our club having a presence on the website it's time to step up. For the low fee of $50, your business ad is not only included in each of these e-bulletins and on the website pages, these ads are active links that take you to your business's website. Don't have a business and still want to help, we can include an ad thanking you for your sponsorship. For more information emailBill Wicker.
The Atlanta Host Organization Committee is offering some good old-fashioned Southern hospitality at the Rotary International Convention from 10 to 14 June. It has planned a wide range of activities featuring everything from good food and music to inspiring tours of local landmarks. If it’s your first convention, these events are chances to meet fellow Rotarians from around the world, and if you’re an experienced convention goer, you can catch up with old friends.
Hall of Fame baseball player Hank Aaron will host Rotarians for a “Strike Out Polio” night at the new SunTrust Park, where you’ll...
When Teguest Yilma helped found the Rotary Club of Addis Ababa Entoto in 2002, she thought polio had already been eradicated from most of the world. But while Ethiopia had been free of the disease, Yilma was shocked to learn that new cases had started cropping up in surrounding countries such as Somalia.
“I was thinking, it’s not possible, we can’t be free if the countries around us are not free,” she says. Yilma, the managing editor of Capital, Ethiopia’s largest English weekly newspaper, has brought a journalist’s skills to the fight against polio. She became vice chair of the Ethiopia...
Battling breast cancer in 2000, Kathryn Smith found comfort pursuing her lifelong interest in Franklin D. Roosevelt. The more she read, the more intrigued she became with the 32nd U.S. president’s private secretary, Marguerite Alice “Missy” LeHand. “I thought, what a fascinating life she had because she was by his side through the polio crisis, establishing the polio rehabilitation center in Warm Springs and then after his return to politics,” she says. Smith, a past president of the Rotary Club of Greater Anderson, S.C., and a longtime newspaper journalist, turned that curiosity into a book...
One of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s earliest memories is of fleeing with his family into the mountains during the Korean War, his village burning behind him. His father and grandfather had to forage for food in the woods; his mother gave birth to his siblings away from anything remotely resembling a health facility. “I have known hunger,” he says. “I have known war, and I have known what it means to be forced to flee conflict.”
The soldiers who came to their rescue were flying the blue flag of the United Nations. The UN provided them with food and their schools with books....
Like a lot of us, I spent much of my childhood riding bikes, but fell out of the habit for a while. Forty years. Then my wife and I moved to New York, where cyclists risk their necks in a daily Thunderdome of cabs, police cars, firetrucks, double-decker buses, messengers on motorbikes, and delivery trucks backing around corners at 20 miles an hour. Not for me! At least not until my 50th birthday, when my metabolic furnace flamed out. Calories started going directly from beer bottle to beer belly. It was time to start exercising. Either that or give up Samuel Adams, and I couldn’t do that to...
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