May is Celebrate Rotary month and we could not have done a better job of celebrating Rotary than with our District Conference. Some of the highlights
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More than 200 people attended the Awards Luncheon at the Embassy Suites. Guest speaker was Ventriloquist JJ Puryear and Sam the Red Neck Squirrel. The Rotary Club of Greenville Evening was the Harriet Skinner Club of the Year. Starting the year with 21 members, they added a net five new members, raised $35,000 for charity and contributed 1987 hours of community service. They also initiated the Earlyact First Knight program in the District. The first runnerup was the Rotary Club of Emerald City, who posted an incredible 390 points on the Governor’s Awards. Other award winners are included in this newsletter.
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Richard Maurer and Tobin Wolverton from the Rotary Club of Greenville won the first annual Governor’s Cup Golf Tournament. First prize was $400/player, which is the entry fee to the Rotary Club of St. Andrews Annual Tournament.
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Friday night’s Arts Walk included Chamber Music, interaction with working artists, a bagpiper, a DJ, dinner and the incredible Rock and Roll Heaven. There was a cast of thousands observing the Rotary celebration.
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Saturday morning kicked off with John McNamara’s National Anthem on harmonica, the Mayor of Greenville and Bo Porter, the inspiring representative of RI president John Kenny.
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The first plenary, Humanity in Motion, was hosted by Rich Waugh and included 6 minute presentations on a number of Rotary Foundation efforts, the Early Act Knights in Costume and a superb presentation by the Australian GSE team.
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The second plenary included Future DG Gary Goforth discussed his work in Afghanistan. Gillaine Warne received a standing ovation for her talk on Haiti. And Dacre Stoker talked about his book, Dracula the Undead. A percentage of sales from the book will go to polio. Mr Stoker signed over 100 books and polio plus received $400.
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The morning session closed with two videos. One was an exchange of videos between the 7750 GSE team and the 9950 GSE team. Both District Conferences were held at the same time and we believe it was the first time such videos were exchanged in the Rotary world. Thanks to Terry Weaver and Don Koonce for making it work.
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The session closed with a superb video planned by the Youth Exchange students and assembled by Charlie Slate.
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Saturday afternoon was the Kenducky Derby, a fundraiser for Greenville Evening and now an institution in Greenville.
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The Governor’s reception, sponsored by the Rotary Club of Greenville, began with a slide show that outlined each club’s dollars raised for charity and time spent on charitable activities. The total was over 16,000 hours of service and $1.28 million of funds raised. Phil Watson presented House of Friendship Awards. Presidential Rep Bo Porter gave the keynote speech. Dinner was at four international food stands spread throughout the hotel. At the party afterwards, entertainment included magician Mark Shapiro, ventriloquist JJ Puryear and his Do Do Bird, and jazz group Betsy Schroeder and Brad Majors. Silent and live auctions raised $6480 for the Rotary Foundation, a District Conference record. Darron Mears donated his time to the live auction. Thanks to all of the club’s and individuals for contributing items and to Larry and Carol Rinne for organizing the event.
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Sunday began with a sponsored brunch, a memorial service for deceased Rotarians, a sermonette on slides by Claire Kuhl and a superb concert of Bach selections, Ave Maria and Jesu Joy of Man’s desiring by world class violinist Eun-Sun Lee and Greenville Rotarian Stan Starnes.
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Plenary session 3 (Great Stories of Rotary) began with Bill Shilito, Executive Director of CART, talking about the progress in Alzheimer’s and the wonderful work of CART. Bill also had an excellent display in the House of Friendship.
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Following was Billy Campbell, former Ambassadorial Scholar, former President of the Discovery Channel. Billy told about his experiences in China as an Ambassadorial Scholar and then held the audience suspended as he discussed the seven minutes aboard the US Air Flight that landed in the Hudson. He called it “Brace for Impact” and talked about some of the 12 miracles that allowed he and the other passengers to survive. I believe that his talk was on a handful of the best speeches that I have ever heard. A standing ovation did not do it justice.
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In the final Plenary session, Becky Faulkner talked about her plans for next year. Betsy Schroeder will be District Conference Chair and the event will be at the Kingston Plantation in Myrtle Beach on May 13 – 15, 2011. Sara Mansbach talked about her plans for Literacy. Bo Parker thanked everyone for coming, and suggested that each attendee go back to their clubs and talk about what they missed.
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The final event was business meeting where Becky Faulkner’s 2010-2011 budget was approved and Sue Poss was elected as District Representative to the Zone nominating committee for a Director to represent Zones 33 and 34 on the Rotary Board.
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My goal was to “Make it Memorable” and the conference was everything that I hoped for with one exception. We had 200 attendees instead of the 300 that we planned for. Maybe it was the economy. Maybe it was a negative or ignorant attitude toward District Conferences. Our Sister District in the lower part of the state sees it as a huge networking event and routinely turns out more than 600 people. Those that did not come missed huge networking opportunities and a great event.
May 2010
