THE FIRST CALL I MADE WHEN I RETIRED
When we moved to Milford, New Hampshire, I had never been to a Rotary meeting in my life. I just knew I needed to meet people in my new community and volunteer to help where I could. So, I called them up and asked if I could attend a meeting. They said “yes.” I showed up and that was that.
Every Wednesday from noon to one-thirty, I have lunch with about fifty people. We eat. We talk. We laugh. We usually have a guest speaker for thirty minutes. But honestly, the speaker is not the point. The point is being with other people. Enjoying one another’s company. The lunch is great too.
We are men and women ranging from their late twenties to well into their eighties. That mix matters. You are not just talking to people who think like you or live like you. You are talking to people at every stage of life. That is good for everyone.
I have spoken a few times to Rotary clubs in the past four years. You get a room full of people who actually want to be there. We listen and we ask good questions. That is rare.
The Milford club has around seventy-five members. We draw from Milford, Amherst, Wilton, Lyndeborough, Mont Vernon and a few other towns in the area. We are not big. But we punch well above our weight when it comes to raising money. Other Rotary clubs visit and ask what our secret sauce is. I am not sure there is one secret. I think it is just that people genuinely like being there. And we keep growing.
We give college scholarships. We support community causes across the towns we serve. Our biggest fundraiser is 100 Holes of Golf. Every June, fifty to sixty golfers from the area descend on Amherst Country Club and play one hundred holes of golf in a single day. It is as grueling as it sounds. Each player must sell a thousand dollars worth of raffle tickets — or buy them themselves. Club members each commit to selling at least ten tickets. Nobody is just along for the ride.
Rotary is much bigger than the Milford club. Rotary International has over 45,000 clubs in more than 200 countries. Since 1988, Rotary has been a founding partner of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, which has reduced polio cases worldwide by 99.9 percent. Rotary has contributed nearly three billion dollars and countless volunteer hours to protect more than three billion children in 122 countries from the disease. That is what “Service Above Self” looks like at scale.
The Rotary motto is “Service Above Self.” Three words. It’s easy to say but harder to live. The people in Milford take it seriously. So does the rest of the world.
I did not know what to expect when I made that call. I just knew I needed to meet people in my new community and wanted to help where I could. Rotary gave me that. It gave me fifty people to have lunch with every week. It gave me friendships I did not expect. It gave me a weekly reason to show up. It gave me a cause worth working for, locally and globally. It gave me a sense of belonging in a town I knew nothing about.
If you are searching for a way to meet people in your own community, there probably is a club like this where you live. Make the call. You might be surprised what you find and who you meet
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