Rotary is Everywhere (including my parents’ closet)

I’m visiting my family during the holiday season, and that usually means pulling boxes out of closets to see if there’s anything in there someone may want or need (or throw away). One of my brothers found this in a box that had been sitting in the top of one of those closets.

That’s a Paul Harris pin and medal, and it belongs to my dad. His memory is really fuzzy on this matter (there are reasons for this that are beyond the scope of this post), but apparently he’s a Paul Harris Fellow.

I had no idea.

Before retirement, my dad held a couple of high-profile public education positions, and that meant he got occasional invitations to speak at local civic and service clubs. It’s possible that, somewhere along his career path, a local Rotary Club decided to bestow this honor on him.

So there’s a little bit of Rotary legacy in my family that I had no clue about. I guess you never know what you might find packed away in a box!

If you’re interested in supporting the Rotary Foundation through a Paul Harris Fellow, here’s the link.

And one more thing. I’m composing this while (sort of) watching the 2012 edition of the Rose Parade. Congrats to Rotary for winning the Princesses’ Trophy for a float depicting the fight against polio!