Rotary Clubs in District 6420 will be clubs of action welcoming anyone that wants to serve the community as envisioned by this year’s District Governor Laura Kann.  Kann, a native of Princeton, Illinois, has degrees from Indiana University and the University of Illinois.  She spent 30 years as a senior scientist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and then moved back to Princeton to care for elderly parents.  She has a long history of Rotary associations including her father being in the Princeton Club and she was actively involved with her local club while in Georgia.

 

Kann said club membership is growing in District 6420, but her main goal is not numbers but rather for comfort and caring club cultures that are welcoming for all.  She intends to continue the district strategic plan developed last year which focuses on human protection, availability of a $50,000 regional disaster relief fund, and foundation giving.  Kann related her personal experience with the Polio Plus campaign when she visited India in 2010 and had a life-changing moment as she held young children for their polio vaccination.  She noted how contributions to end polio are multiplied by a two for one matching grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  She also promoted annual foundation giving.  For every $100 donated, $48 comes back to the local district three years later to be used for district grants.  A total of 37 of the 43 clubs in the district applied for grants this past year resulting in $140,000 flowing back into local communities for special service projects.  She said the district was also able to fund a global project in partnership with the Rotary Club of San Juan, Puerto Rico where anti-mosquito initiatives on the island of Culebra were undertaken.

 

Kann challenged Sycamore Rotarians to address two specific goals in the new Rotary year.  One is to promote literacy with each member donating one new book to a library (as a group).  The local club can choose the specifics of a donation, such as a partnership with a public library, a school library, or some non-profit organization’s library. This would translate into 1,400 library book donations in the district.  The other is demonstrating a “comfort and care” club culture and promoting this commitment to the community.  Quoting Paul Harris, Kann said, “Nothing in Rotary is so sacred it cannot be set aside for something better.”  She urged the club to follow this year’s Rotary theme “Imagine” by dreaming big. 

These results will influence the club's plans for fundraising and service projects over the next 12-18 months.

July 18, 1918 – Nelson Mandela, South African lawyer, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and politician who led the country out of apartheid as first President of South Africa is born in Mvezo.

 

July 19, 1865 – Charles Horace Mayo, who with his brother and others co-founded the famed Mayo Clinic, is born in Rochester, Minnesota.

 

July 20, 1919 – Explorer Edmund Hillary (the first person to climb Mt. Everest) is born in Auckland, New Zealand.

 

July 21, 1899 – Nobel Prize winning author Ernest Hemingway is born in Oak Park, Illinois.

July 17, 1955 – Disneyland is dedicated and opened by Walt Disney in Anaheim, California.

 

July 18, 1947 – President Harry Truman signs an Executive Order formally determining the line of succession for the Presidency beyond that of Vice-President (i.e., Speaker of the House, Senate President, etc.) and includes how to handle cases of disability.  This later becomes the basis of the 25^th Amendment to the Constitution which is ratified in 1967.  

 

July 20, 1969 – Watched by a worldwide audience, the U. S. Apollo 11 crew successfully makes the first manned landing on the Moon in “The Sea of Tranquility.”  Astronaut Neil Armstrong took his first step onto the moon six and a half hours later.

 

July 23, 1934 – Bank robber John Dillinger (Public Enemy #1) is shot and killed by FBI agents while leaving the Biograph Movie Theater in Chicago.