✨ Celebrating Community! Welcome to our redesigned monthly bulletin—built to better celebrate our stories, our members, and our impact across Longmont and beyond.
📝 August Bulletin Deadline: Please submit articles, photos, and announcements to the Editor by August 20.
🎙️ FROM THE PODIUM
Fellow Rotarians,
Welcome to a new Rotary year and new voices at the podium. It was great to see so many of you at the Changing of the Guards party! We love to get together outside of our normal meetings, where we can cut loose and get to know each other better. Fellowship is what makes this club feel like family.
The Times-Call recently featured Longmont Rotary as our new leadership team took over. The article highlighted how we are committed to continuing our long history of service, providing tangible benefits to the community. We are focused on programs to support youth development and education, public health and well-being, the arts, and the promotion of peace. Our momentum is only building. Many new and exciting projects are in the works!
Our annual Peach Sale is under way right now. Order your peaches as soon as possible to guarantee you get them before they sell out! This year we even have a way to pre-pay, to make the pickup process faster. Peaches will be ready for pickup at 5pm on Tuesday, August 4th, at High Plains Bank on 6th and Kimbark.
Returning this year, after a six year hiatus, we have revived the Rotary Youth Exchange program. Prepare to welcome Vitória, who will be arriving from Brazil the first week of August. This will be an extraordinary opportunity to open our hearts and show our commitment to international goodwill.
We want to give a huge shout out to our recent collaboration with the TLC Learning Center, which celebrated the grand opening of its new larger facility this past Saturday, with a community lunch. In a special effort to share our Rotary values with young people, we installed a custom 4-Way Test pole, complete with a child-friendly version. Our friends at Twin Peaks Rotary also pitched in by building a fantastic gazebo for the children to enjoy. It is projects like these that remind us how powerful we are when Rotarians work together.
Whether we are hosting international students, making our parks and schools better places to play, or rolling up our sleeves for hands-on service, this club proves week after week that fellowship and purpose go hand-in-hand.
Thank you for the heart, hustle, and leadership you bring to every single project. Let's keep the energy high and keep making a difference!
👋 New Member Welcome
Please extend a warm Longmont Rotary welcome to our newest member:
Emily Chambers — We are thrilled to have you join our Rotary family and look forward to serving alongside you!
Anne and Clay
📅THE HORIZON | SAVE THE DATE
📅 July 30: Growing Gardens Volunteer Activity
🍑 Now – August 4:Palisade Peach Sale(Pre-pay online; pickup Tuesday, Aug 4 at 5:00 PM at High Plains Bank, 6th & Kimbark)
🧺 August 15:Rotary Social(Hosted by Ryan Mason at Vivant Financial Services)
Our noon meetings are in-person and a buffet meal is provided. Lunch is served at 12pm. The actual meeting starts at 12:30 and ends at 1:30 pm.
We also have a Satellite group that meets in the evenings. See website for details.
My friends, Sue Bolton and Leona Stocker, whom I met through Longmont Sister Cities, first told me about Rotary. I had heard about the organization, but didn't know exactly what it was. Through them, I learned more—first as a guest, and then as a speaker when I gave a talk on my job teaching overseas on military bases through the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA).
After I retired in 2015, I came to a few more meetings, but didn't look into joining Rotary until I ran into Leona at a Sister Cities celebration and she invited me to submit an application. I did, and was pleasantly surprised to be accepted as a member.
As a new member, I looked for ways to pitch in. When a coat drive was announced, I signed up to help at the distribution event at the OUR Center. I started by following experienced Rotarians around, and soon met my first Spanish-speaking family. Since I speak Spanish fluently, it felt completely natural to assist them—and then many others. Finding my niche and helping others made me feel happy and proud to be a Rotarian.
Since joining, I've learned much more about the 4-Way Test. I realized how it applies to everyday life while planning a trip for friends when I lived in Sicily. At first, I thought, "Let's just do what I like to do." But then I paused to consider what my friends might prefer. After talking together, we adapted our plans to suit everyone. By involving everyone and agreeing on our schedule, we naturally put the 4-Way Test into practice, and the visit went wonderfully.
Recently, after speaking with fellow members and our co-president, Anne, it occurred to me that helping international students obtain scholarships to study in the U.S. would be a dream project. Having worked with students globally, I know what a transformative experience it is to live in another culture. With Rotary’s support, students can learn here and return home to share their experiences, fostering true international goodwill and peace.
If I could invite John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, and Loret Miller Ruppe over for dinner, I’d love to discuss how their work changed the world and ask how to keep progress moving forward today. Through the continuing impact of the Peace Corps (Kennedy and Ruppe) and Habitat for Humanity (Carter), countless lives continue to improve worldwide.
When visitors come to Longmont, I always take them to the Longmont Museum. Its exhibits share our history proudly and accurately—including the challenging chapters. By the end, the story of life on the Front Range is explained with clarity and respect for all cultures. If time allows, I also take visitors to Kanemoto Park and the Tower of Compassion to share the spirit of acceptance and equality that defines our multicultural city.
🕊️ROTARY FAMILY: Remembering Larry Jensen
Lawrence "Larry" Mead Jensen of Longmont, Colorado, passed away peacefully at home on July 7, 2026, at the age of 87.
Born in Longmont on August 10, 1938, Larry was raised in the Highlandlake community near Mead—a place that remained close to his heart throughout his life. He was the Great-Grandson of Highlandlake founder Lorin Mead. Larry graduated from Mead High School in 1956 and served in the United States Army from 1958 to 1961, including two years stationed in Japan.
Larry strongly believed in giving back to his community and dedicated much of his life to local leadership and service:
Key Leadership & Service:
President, Rotary Club of Longmont
President, Longmont Rotary Charity Fund
President, Longmont Area Chamber of Commerce
President, Northern Colorado Chapter of CPAs
Founding Member, Longmont Area Economic Council
Board Member, Historic Highlandlake Church
We keep Larry’s family in our thoughts and honor his enduring legacy of Rotary service, leadership, and deep community roots.
Co-Presidents Clay Douglas and Anne Reynolds-Smith hope to engage more with the community
📸 New Longmont Rotary co-president Anne Reynolds-Smith speaks to members during a meeting to induct new leadership and officers at First Evangelical Lutheran Church in Longmont. (Photos: Matthew Jonas — Staff Photographer)
By Dana Cadey | Prairie Mountain Media / Longmont Times-Call
As Longmont Rotary enters another era of leadership, the club’s new co-presidents are looking forward to finding more ways to engage with the community.
Clay Douglas and Anne Reynolds-Smith stepped into their positions last week, carrying on the co-presidential structure that the club established in 2023. Former co-presidents Roger Lange and Virginia Choung, who just wrapped up their terms, kept that tradition going. Rotary presidents typically serve a one-year term.
Douglas has been a member of Longmont Rotary for roughly 25 years, and Reynolds-Smith joined Longmont Rotary a decade ago. In her retirement, Reynolds-Smith said she’s found herself with a “whole lot more time” to volunteer, which ultimately prompted her to consider co-leading the club.
"I did a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff, and now I’m standing at the front," Reynolds-Smith said.
Reynolds-Smith shared that she would love for the club to work more closely with teens and young adults. Earlier this year, she revamped the club’s youth exchange program by having Longmont Rotary serve as the host club for a high school student from Brazil. The student, who will attend Silver Creek High School this fall, will come to Rotary meetings to update club members on her classes and extracurricular activities.
Reynolds-Smith said the club’s youth exchange program has been paused since 2020. The exchange student that Longmont Rotary hosted during the 2019–2020 school year was sent home early due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
"It’s been long enough since COVID," she said. "I think we’re just trying to jazz it back up."
Reynolds-Smith plans to talk to younger community members about Rotary, adding that she’s open to changing how she and Douglas run the meetings based on that feedback. She wants the club to be present at festivals and events to show potential members that the club is active in Longmont. The presidents might also try to establish a Rotaract club for young leaders at Front Range Community College.
"We’re always wanting to bring in younger people," Reynolds-Smith said. "I really want to sit down with them and find ways to make Rotary interesting, so that they’re like, 'Yes, this is the place for me.'"
The co-presidents also intend to work closely with Longmont’s sister cities, particularly the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. Reynolds-Smith said the club plans to donate food to distributors that serve the Northern Arapaho on the reservation.
"I’d like to see us out doing more projects," she said. "I think when young people come in, it’s because they want to do things, not because they want to sit in a room once a week."
⚙️THE ENGINE ROOM: TLC Learning Center Grand Opening
We celebrated a major milestone in community collaboration this past week at the grand opening of the expanded TLC Learning Center facility!
4-Way Test Installation: Longmont Rotary proudly installed a custom 4-Way Test pole on site, featuring a dedicated, child-friendly version designed to introduce Rotary values to young learners.
Inter-Club Collaboration: Our partners at Twin Peaks Rotary built a beautiful new gazebo on the grounds for children and families to enjoy.
Community Lunch: Rotarians gathered with TLC staff and local families for a celebratory lunch to mark this inspiring new chapter for local early childhood education and pediatric therapy.
In 1928, the Boulder community came together to plan a Road of Remembrance to honor the 1500+ men and women from Boulder County who served in World War I. The planned memorial road followed Arapahoe Road from the East County to the City of Boulder. The community envisioned a tree-lined parkway with lakes and parks along the length of the Road.
In recent years, several local community organizations began an effort to revive the Road of Remembrance and honor the Boulder County residents who served in the “War to End All Wars.” In March 2026, the Colorado Legislature finally designated the portion of Arapahoe Road from U.S. 287 to 28th Street in Boulder as the “Road of Remembrance.”
Join us from 10:00 – 11:00 am on September 15 at the field at the Lafayette YMCA for a short program formally dedicating the Road of Remembrance. Please contact Bill erbmeyer.boulder@outlook.comwith any support you might be able to offer. Link to full story
