Rotary Service — A personal perspective from from Ken Groteweil

Giving books to every child in selected elementary schools has been the most rewarding of all the local Rotary service projects with which I have been involved. I admit that personal reward is not what drives Rotarians to put their time into such projects in the first place. However, the looks on kids’ faces when they get to pick out a book and keep it for their very own is, well, priceless.

Giving out these books affects me in an even bigger way as well. The assortment of black, brown, white faces will be the faces of our country in not so many years. These are important kids, in fact, they are the future of our country.

Yet, as personally rewarding as this all is, I have wondered on occasion about the value of these and other local Rotary service projects. As big as Rotary is and with as many resources as it has, the country and world is even bigger. However, there were no such doubts the day we delivered books to the kids at Lowman Hill Elementary.

One of the 2nd grade girls came up to me and told me that her favorite book was the one she got last year due to the Rotary book project. She said she reads it all the time. Some of the 4th grade kids remembered that we had come a few months earlier to give them dictionaries. They talked about how often they used them. These un-solicited testimonials give me reason to believe that these books do indeed make a difference in the lives of these children.

Of course, no project like our elemen-tary school project comes about just because of a few people. Most impor-tantly you need books, and that’s why we appreciate the help of Linda Spra-gue who systematically sorts books for each grade level at each school. Then there are the school liaisons who work with each school: Wayne Probasco, Joe McFarland, Vicki Peterson and myself.
This year, Glenda DuBois is the service coordinator for our club and she came to Lowman Hill to put the Rotary bookplates in the books, organize them by grade, and be there when the kids came in to pick out their books. Thanks Glenda for all you do! Also joining us that day was Joan Lewerenz who helped out as well.

Rotary is about Service Above Self. It’s good to remember that local service projects are an im-portant part of reaching the Rotary’s global goals of increasing understanding between peo-ple and encouraging world peace.

Editors note: Ken Grotewiel recently moved to Lawrence and resigned membership in our club. Ken was a frequent contributor to the Rotopeka and I want to personally thank en for his hard work and dedication to Rotary.