Final Thoughts as President Bill Gentle Ends His Year of Service

This will be my last opportunity to communicate with the membership as President, so the most important thing I want to say is what an honor it has been to serve the members of this club for the past year.    I must admit that I was somewhat apprehensive about accepting the position because I was unsure that I was up to the task, but in hind-sight it has been one of the most pleasurable experiences of my life.   

It truly has been an honor to serve as President, and I say that for two reasons.  First, our club truly does a number of wonderful things both in our community and internationally, and secondly, the hard work that so many of our members contribute each year makes the work of the President an easy job. 

I am not going to try and list all of the things our Club has done over the past year, because I know I will forget a number of things, but the Boys and Girls Club project certainly stands out in my mind as our largest effort.  However, the Third Grade Dictionaries, Read To Me, Polio Plus, Water in Central America,  Club Fellowship, Highway Cleanup, RYLA, The V.A. Santa Visit, Teacher and Student of the Month and inbound and outbound Youth Exchange are just a few of the community and International projects that our club members accomplished this past year.  Rotary’s motto is “Service Above Self”, and the members of our club certainly exemplify that motto every day.   

The Board that I have been honored to serve with is perhaps the best Board I have ever worked with.  Every member took their assigned projects to heart, worked with their committee chairpersons and accomplished every goal that they had set for themselves.  I have heard over and over that a good manager finds good people and lets them do their job, and my goal was always to stay out of their way and let them accomplish their tasks.     

I am also quite proud of the progress we have made in bringing in new members.  I think we have around 12 to 15 more members than we had a year ago, and that is very important to the future viability of our club.    Rotary around the World continues to gain members, but in the United States Rotary is losing membership, and that trend is true for other service clubs such as Lions and Kiwanis as well.   If Rotary continues to lose members in the United States I am very concerned about Rotary’s  long term potential to accomplish so many good things around the world. 

We do need to continue our fund raising efforts both for both local and international projects.    I know there is confusion about the Rotary International Foundation and our local Cheyenne Rotary Foundation.     Our Cheyenne Rotary Foundation is pretty simple, the by-laws specify that all funds disbursed by the Cheyenne Foundation must be used for projects that directly benefit Laramie County.   At this time the Cheyenne Rotary Foundation Board is conducting a long term fund raising effort with a goal of having one million dollars in the permanent endowment by 2018, which is the one hundredth anniversary of our Club.

I will admit that trying to figure out all the ins and outs of the Rotary International Foundation can be intimidating, but in very simple terms when you contribute a dollar to the International Foundation that dollar is invested by the Foundation for 3 years.   After 3 years 50% of the dollar is returned to our District for District grants, and 50% is available for Large International grants.   Every dollar you contribute to the International Foundation counts toward a Paul Harris Fellowship, and when you have contributed $1,000 you receive recognition as a Paul Harris Fellow.   The Rotary International Foundation encourages every member to contribute annually to the International Foundation, and there are a number of ways to do that.

Again, it has been an honor to serve as President for the past twelve months.  I would like to thank the Past Presidents for nominating me and all the members for electing me and allowing me to serve.   I would especially like to thank Billie Addleman for providing so much assistance and advice to me, without his help I would have been lost many times.

The Club is in good hands with Ron Hammel taking over as President and so many good strong individuals on the Board.  I have all the faith in the world that with this leadership the Cheyenne Rotary Club will continue to be one of the best clubs in the Nation.