AG Marilyn Kremer introduced DG John along with his wife, Sandy, and gave members a brief bio: became a member of the Detroit AM club in 2004; was club president in 2010 and 2011 and held other officer and committee posts. He was previously a member of the Rotary club in Novi. At the district level he has served on various committees among them an Assistant Governor for Area 1. He has traveled oversees extensively to participate in international programs for RI. John is a major donor to the RI Foundation and a recipient of the COG (Council of Governors) Award. He is a retired financial officer from the court system and the Detroit Public Library. He is a CPA and holds an MBA from the University of Detroit. He serves on a number of boards in the Detroit area. He was a city councilman for the City of Novi. John enjoys golfing, traveling and spending time with grandchildren with his wife Sandy.John spoke about RI President Mark Maloney’s focus this year which were Grow Rotary and Families – they work together. Rotary membership in the US, he said, was going downward and mentioned that Mark was the first RI president in 20 years who admitted he didn’t know why this was happening. His advice to growing membership was to (1) “grow our own club” with younger members in particular (2) starting an e-Club, he said, and that District 6400 already has one – sponsored by Windsor 1918 (3) “add yet another club in our district which we have with Kingsville South Shore with 25 members who meet in the evening” and (4) to add Rotaract Clubs and he commended our club for having two.
“Families”, he said “are very important. You have your own family and the family of Rotary”, John said. “How big is our family? There are 1,218,311 Rotarians worldwide as of June 26, 2019 in exactly 35,963 clubs.” John emphasized the importance of wearing our Rotary pins wherever we go since we don’t know who we’re going to run into and also be sure and put the Rotary app on our phones so we’ll know when various clubs meet in the event we want to make one of their meetings.
John said his theme this year is “Do the Right Thing” which he got from former astronaut, Mike Foreman, who has flown on two missions and lives in Houston and is John’s cousin and a new Rotarian. Mike will be the keynote speaker at John’s District Conference next May in Sandusky at the Kalahari resort. John also announced that at the District Governor’s Golf Outing at the Fox Hill Country Club on September 24th, there will be a surprise from Jack Nicklaus. On November 2nd is scheduled the Annual RI Foundation Dinner also at Fox Hills with clubs from District 6380 and their DG – Sparky Leonard.
John closed by saying how important it is to thank people for what they do. Thanks you John and Sandy for coming to Adrian and share your knowledge and friendship with us. May you have much continued success!