Rotary International

Club Helps Leaders, Preserves Excellent Service Opportunity

Evening update: A Rochester Rotary Club member, Rona Markham, who answered a call for volunteer service from the organization years ago was uncertain when she was told recently that she may want to re-investigate the old job opportunity. Rona was surprised to learn her application for a volunteer service position in the club may have actually been accepted all those years ago.

After multiple interviews, Rona said, she did not hear any news from the Rotary Club. And she thought the position had been removed from her region a long time ago.

After applying for the position, she had gone to Sutton, a small, private business school, with a diverse campus, where she had, admittedly, been the class clown. Classmates there described her as, “Not a little boisterous,” in her excitement about learning new things. “Let's just say I have shown some bad judgment in the past,” she sighed, “about comportment in the classroom environment.”

“I apologize to Sutton, and especially to David Aishland, for that,” she emphasized.

Her instructors, when contacted, did remember her, and said they felt she learned a lot there, albeit in a more awkward fashion than other students. They recalled that her meeting the school parrot, a Blue-Fronted Amazon, whose name they could not remember, had a positive effect, reducing her classroom outbursts. How fortunate they must have felt when that parrot came along!

Rona went on to found her own cleaning business. But she never really forgot about that once-in-a-lifetime volunteer opportunity. This year, at her Sutton class reunion, she was surprised when her old classmates, who knew about that application for the Rotary Club job, suggested that she re-investigate her service opportunity. It looked like divine guidance was nudging her to look at the Club job again.

Rona's classmates claimed the position was still in existence after all these years! In Rona's mind, it is still uncertain, though. “It would be amazing,” she ventured, “but I feel it would be presumptuous of me to think the job was mine, at this stage. So let's take 24 hours, and check it out.”

By the reunion organizer's account, her support grew from (50, to 55 and finally 87) classmates who waved their arms in a vote of encouragement, asking her to look into the old job. “I'm going to look into it.” Rona said, “If my friends were kind enough to go to the trouble to confirm for me that the position still exists, I have to look into it.” How many years ago, did she have her final interview, you ask? Around thirty-six, she thinks.