The meeting was held at The Gallery at 14th & Main with select Rotarians participating via Facebook Live and Zoom. The stage at the front of the room was enlarged, perhaps for reasons unrelated to the club meeting.
President Tony brought the group to order at 12:07 with words of greeting. In observance of Veteran’s Day, the club performed the official songs of all five service branches with Bob Lager at the lectern and Carl Bolte on the keyboard. President Tony then led us in the Pledge of Allegiance and invited Linn Mills to provide a thematic invocation. She made reverent remarks on the strains that military service can cause veterans, and their need for our kind thoughts.
Mandy Sheldon noted that apart from our featured speaker, there were no guests in attendance. She did extend a welcome to those Rotarians watching the meeting via the internet.
President Tony acknowledged the members with November birthdays as door greeters at today’s meeting. He shared that no club anniversaries are listed for this particular week—nor was there any news from members entering sick bay, thankfully.
A general round of appreciation was announced for making the preceding week’s Rotary Foundation Dinner successful. The silent auction at the dinner created a meaningful contribution to district funding levels. President Tony, with images on a PowerPoint slide, introduced the candidates for the club’s board of directors. They are Kelvin Beatty, Eric Burger, Glenn Crawford, Scott Holsman, Bill Madsen, and Lainie Wilbur. Election ballots will be available by the November 18th meeting.
Announcements continued with a reminder to RSVP for the December 9th cocktail party at Drexel Hall ($25, 5:30pm). The Westside Community Action Network is conducting a toy drive for the season. Tim Tholen encouraged club members to sign up for holiday bell ringing—they are still attempting to fill November time slots.
President Tony introduced our guest speaker, David Von Drehle, journalist, author, and opinion columnist for the Washington Post. He and Mr. Von Drehle have known each other for some years owing to overlapping activity with the YMCA. A resident of greater Kansas City, Mr. Von Drehle served as editor-at-large for over a decade with TIME Magazine, and also led the Post’s New York City bureau. He is the author of Triangle: The Fire That Changed America and several other titles. A father of four, he maintains a volunteer leadership role with the Truman Library Institute. His comments focused on the ethic of service commemorated on the date of November 11th each year, and what American civic associations have learned from it.
In order to fund the Liberty Memorial, Kansas Citians raised the equivalent of $100MM in today’s money in about one week to enable design and construction of the building. That large achievement is but a single example of voluntary behavior in America that dates back into the country’s earliest days. Alexis de Tocqueville noted this as he traveled the young nation in the 1830s: Americans have a propensity to take up causes, organize their acquaintances to promote them, and raise private dollars to pursue those causes. The nonprofit sector in the United States is highly developed because of this, and service clubs are no exception. The Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Alliance Club, the Kiwanis, the Jaycees, the scouting movement, and we Rotarians all link to this impulse to adopt causes. And, Mr. Von Drehle acknowledged, Rotary (1905) is among the earliest of these clubs to flourish in the 20th Century; the Kiwanis (1915), the Lions (1917), and the Optimists (1919) all learned from those who came before them.
As a journalist, Mr. Von Drehle shared that he often gets asked questions to the effect of how can we come together again as a nation? His response is short: learn from the service organizations. Those club ties are real connections, the kind that can fight the digital divisions we face in this internet age. What Rotary International has achieved in attracting resources and willpower to combat polio exemplifies the strength of service clubs. And as we know, Rotary began with just four people in a room.
Mr. Von Drehle responded to a range of questions posed, including on the lifespan of the Celebrate Community service club event, the word choices of JFK’s inaugural address, and his recent article on Zuckerberg meeting Gutenberg (and their parallels). He observed that Twitter ‘flames’ are far preferable to the kind of flames 16th Century writers faced, and he conceded that Steve Burger’s aunt probably could have solved a good number of supreme court cases in her day by applying straightforward common sense.
President Tony thanked Mr. Von Drehle for his comments and presented the customary Club 13 pen to him in appreciation.
Next week, our guest speaker will be Ryan Maybee, leader of J. Rieger & Company.
President Tony concluded the club meeting by citing the thoughts of Ronald Reagan: “We remember those who were called upon to give all a person can give, and we remember those who were prepared to make that sacrifice if it were demanded of them in the line of duty, though it never was. Most of all, we remember the devotion and the gallantry with which all of them ennobled their nation as they became champions of a noble cause.”
The Rotary 4-Way Test closed the session at 12:58.