The Rotary Club of McIntosh County was a small club, about two dozen members. They came from all walks of life: a banker, a Presbyterian pastor, a school administrator, etc., all very warm and welcoming folks.
Membership in Rotary is by invitation only, so you have to be recommended by a member as being a person of ethics and morals in order to join. Ethics is one of the core principles of Rotary International, as expressed through their “Four Way Test.”
“Service Above Self ” is the Rotary motto, and all clubs are known for their service to the communities they live in, and the larger communities we are part of, across the globe.
Rotary was started in Chicago in 1905 by four businessmen who wanted to come together for friendship and fellowship. It has since expanded to include some million-plus members in 160 countries across the globe, both large and small. It is non-partisan and non-sectarian, and dedicated to making a positive difference in the lives of others, through our combined efforts.
Their signature project, over the past 30+ years, has been working to eradicate polio around the world. Just like our recent Covid-19 epidemic, polio burst forth across the world in the 1940’s and ‘50’s, crippling and killing people in huge numbers, until the two main vaccines were developed in the late 1950’s.
We are now down to just a handful of new cases each year, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where reaching the rural populations with vaccines is often difficult, and made worse by local political squabbles. But we have just about reached the goal of total eradication, at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, and millions of hours of volunteer labor -- all well spent.
Back to Darien. Local clubs have various fundraisers to accomplish their goals. The McIntosh club for many years sponsored a “Duck Race” as part of the annual Blessing of the Fleet Festival. This was held on the Darien River. They bought ~2,000 numbered little rubber yellow ducks, and sold tickets with matching numbers for $1 each. Members sold tickets to whoever would buy them.
The way it worked was, on the day of the race, when the whistle blew, the ducks were dumped into the river on an incoming tide, and the first three to cross under the bridge on U.S. 17 were the winners, and split up the prize money, usually about $500 in total. The rest of the funds went to support club projects: books and jerseys for school kids, scholarships and so forth. One year my wife happened to sell two of the three winning tickets for that year’s duck race!
I don’t believe that had ever happened before.
She also happened to sell the winning ticket to a District-wide raffle, for a Thunderbird convertible! Tickets to the latter were much harder to sell, at $50 each, but she did sell some. The winning ticket happened to be bought by Bill Haskins at that Ford dealership, who had sold her a car the year before. He was so surprised he won, as were we! He told us later he sold it and put the proceeds in a college fund for his grandson. What a wonderful boost for that grandson.
Each year our Rotary District also engages in projects, and usually has a district-wide fundraiser to support them. One year our district governor, a school board member from Fitzgerald, near Macon, wanted to raise funds to support meningitis research and treatment, as a friend of theirs had lost a son to viral meningitis, quite unexpectedly, the year before.
That year’s goal was $50,000, and 20 winning tickets were to be drawn at the annual district conference, with each winning $500. Tickets only cost $20 each, so they were easier to sell than the $50 ones that went towards that Thunderbird, and I bought a number of them myself.
To my surprise, I had not one, but two winning tickets in that year’s district raffle! I donated one back to the district fund supporting scholarships for our international students; more on that later. The other I split three ways, adding another $25, and presented gift envelopes with $175 each to the three international students attending Armstrong State University in Savannah that year, on scholarships provided by our Savannah area clubs, for spending money for their travels in the U.S. before going home when the school year ended.
They were as surprised as I was when my winning ticket was drawn.
It was a wonderful way to end that year!
Rafe Semmes is a local writer.