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www.whyiam.org …a
service of
RGHF
Rotary Global History
"We live in the present, we dream of the future,
but we learn from the past."
Discuss this feature at
www.rghfforum.org
 Don
Higgins
Email: Don@higgins.net
Website: www.Don-Higgins.net
In 1984 I was invited to join the Rotary Club of St.
Petersburg West by John Scheidt after being a quest at several
meetings. My first
community service project was sponsoring Interact Clubs at St.
Petersburg Catholic High School and Boca Ciega High School.
John and I attended Interact meetings, volunteered on
some of their service projects and invited them to Rotary
meetings for special events.
Over the next few years, I enjoyed helping with
organizing local one day version of Seminars For Tomorrow's
Leaders (S4TL) to recognize and encourage young leaders in the
community. Today
all the clubs in district 6950 and surrounding districts send
student leaders to a weeklong S4TL seminar each summer:
It wasn't until about 1988 that I really developed a fuller
appreciation of what it means to be a "Rotarian".
That year the St.
Petersburg West club president, Paul Slosberg (now PDG and
active Rotary Foundation leader), got us all involved in an
International project to help expecting mothers with aids in a
very poor hospital in St. Petersburg Russia.
All the mothers wanted were cameras to take pictures of
their babies before the babies died so they would have something
to remember them by.
We worked with a sister Rotary club in St. Petersburg
Russia and arranged for a Rotary member who travelled to Russian
on business to deliver both cameras and also some free aids
medicine donated by a drug manufacturer.
I still get chills just thinking about that project and
the feedback we received about how much it meant to the mothers
we were able to help half way around the world.
In 1996, my wife and I moved, and I transferred to the Rotary
Club of Pinellas Park which sponsors Interact clubs at Pinellas
Park High School and Dixie Hollins High School.
The club also sends two students to S4TL each summer, and
I enjoy attending S4TL rap sessions with students.
In addition, the Pinellas Park club recognizes two
students from each high school each month for their academic,
community service, and leadership achievements.
Over the years I continue to get a lot of satisfaction
from Rotary's service work with youth.
Another service project I continue to support which provides
great personal satisfaction is serving meals at Ronald Mc Donald
House next to All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg.
Every quarter, rotary club members cook breakfast or
dinner for up to 50 families staying there with very sick
children in the hospital.
The families that come from all over the USA and
sometimes foreign countries really seem to appreciate hot meals
and a friendly face.
This continuing service took on special meaning to me
after my first granddaughter was born pre-maturely at 26 weeks
weighing 2 pounds 4 ounces.
She spent over 3 months in All Children's Hospital NICU3
on a respirator.
Now she is a healthy, happy six years old.
Another facet of Rotary which keeps me interested in being an
active Rotarian is the worldwide fellowship among Rotary members
made possible with the advent of the Internet.
I have enjoyed serving as webmaster for the Rotary clubs
of St. Petersburg West and Pinellas Park.
In addition I served as the first webmaster for district
6950 for 5 years.
I'm a long time member of several Rotary Fellowships including
International Computer Users Fellowship of Rotarians (ICUFR) and
Rotarians on the Internet (ROIT), In 1999, I attended the ICUFR
conference in Evanston, IL and had the opportunity to tour RI
Headquarters and meet many of the fellowship members face to
face for the first time from around the US and the world.
 After
joining ROTI, I served as webmaster, bulletin editor, and board
member. Over the
years I've enjoyed developing Internet based tools for use by
fellowship members and all Rotarians some of which can be found
on www.rotilink.org.
When Frank Devlyn served as RI President, ROTI members
were invited to help support websites for projects Frank wanted
to promote. I had
the pleasure of supporting the Avoidable Blindness website for
Frank. Frank
attended the ROTI dinner held at the RI Convention in San
Antonio and I got to meet him:
With the more recent advent of social networks on the Internet,
I've joined a proposed new fellowship called Rotarians on Social
Networks Fellowship (ROSNF www.rosnf.org) and I currently serve
as webmaster and board member.
I am passionate about the goals of ROSNF and the
opportunity that social networks offer Rotarians to promote both
service and fellowship.
There are now over 350 million users of Facebook making
it the third largest country in the world, and there are over
38,000 Rotarian fans of the Rotary International page on
Facebook. Since
first joining Facebook in January of 2009 at the request of my
two daughters, I have become Facebook friends with dozens of
family, work, and school friends plus over 600 Rotarian and
Rotaractor friends on Facebook.
Through Facebook we can share multimedia information
including text, pictures, videos, and voice.
We can choose what we wish to share, with whom we wish to
share it, and how frequently.
Facebook brings the world much closer together and
provides Rotarians a unique opportunity to get to know other
Rotarians, Rotaractors, and future Rotarians around the world
better through sharing their activities and their comments on
other friends activities on a one on one basis in addition to
group discussions.
In a nutshell, I continue to find Rotary service and fellowship
opportunities such as the above to be an important part of my
life. I would like
to be remembered as a Rotarian, and hope that my children will
become Rotarians some day.
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