There is no money in modesty - #rotary #inspiringwomen
This begins at the 2017 Rotary International Regional Leaders Training Institute back in February and ends today.
Look at these beautiful Rotarians. Even after hours of training, they're still adorable. And also well dressed?
To say that I feel guilty being at the regional leaders training in Evanston, Illinois right before my daughter Emily leaves for basic training is a wicked understatement. She isn’t handling it well either. Every once in a while, she’ll say, “I can’t believe you're leaving.”
And at the moment? I sort of agree.
No matter all the good Rotary International does in the world, right now all my thoughts are with my soon-to-be-gone person. And anything that doesn’t involve being with her before this life-altering event? Well, it just seems . . . impossible.
This is unfair. I know that.
Almost from the year it began, Rotary International has been trying to unite leaders in the business world to come together, make friends, and change the world for good. It began in downtown Chicago in 1905 when four guys with German-sounding last names hung out in room 711 of the Unity Building. Those guys were Gustavus Loehr, Silvester Schiele, Hiram Shorey and Paul Harris. They changed the world.
Since that 1905 meeting, the grassroots international has grown into a global powerhouse of volunteers and philanthropists. With 1.2 million members around the world, Rotary became the go-to organization for fighting polio. Rotarians dream big and act big. The fight against polio began in 1979. In 1985 Rotary got super serious about it. There were 125 countries with Polio in 1988. Today, there are three - Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. This year, 2017, there have only been twelve cases.
That’s a big deal.
They let me in Rotary despite my tendency to pose with gnomes.
I like to imagine those businessmen sitting in that office back in 1905, thinking up the worst name for a service organization ever. I like to wonder if they had any idea that they were about to create something that would do so much good, something that would create so many friendships and so much change.
I would also kind of like to be like that.
It’s hard to see that at the Regional Leaders training that I’m going to. It’s honestly kind of hard to believe that I’m even a regional leader. This isn’t me being self degrading. It’s honest. At the time of the training, I’ve only been in Rotary about three years. Halfway into my first year, I became my club’s public image chair. About six months after that, I became the district’s public image chair. About six months after that I became the zone’s assistant public image chair and after a year of that I’m boom - the public image chair for Zone 24 East, which is basically the eastern part of Canada and parts of the northern United States.
I am not a public image person. I’m a writer and former newspaper editor, columnist and photographer. I’m also someone who has a hard time saying no and as I look at the group of people hanging out in the conference room of the Hilton Garden Inn - Evanston, I wonder if all of them have the same problem. Do they all have a hard time saying no? They all look as extroverted as hell, which is the opposite of me. Shaun, my personal bodyguard of awesome, has to actually accompany me on the elevator ride down to the social gathering before dinner.
“It will be fine, ” he says.
I stare at my scuffed-up writer shoes. “Nobody will talk to me.”
“It will be fine.” He grabs my hand.
People with Rotary badges and suit coats look at us on the elevator. They are speaking Hindi. I hope their English isn’t awesome so that they don’t realize what an anxious woman I’m being. They have nice shiny shoes. They wear immaculate suits in deep charcoal gray colors and Rotary pins on their lapels. I am wearing an LL bean black sweater, skirt that is not a pencil skirt, and green superhero boots that almost reach my knees. I have no idea where any of my Rotary pins are.
“I need to buy a Senator Suit,” I say, referencing those clothes all women senators seem to wear all the time - sort of these two-piece version of men’s suits, sort of heralding back to the Nancy Reagan era of when she was the first lady in the 1980s. My boobs do not work in that kind of suit.
“Why do you want that?” Shaun asks.
“So, I can fit in.”
He kisses the top of my head. “Baby, you will never fit in.”
I gasp.
“I mean that in only the best kind of way,” he says.
How I normally dress. :)
Six months later, I’m in Hartford, Connecticut, sitting next to Assistant Rotary Public Image Chair Michelle O’Brien. Michelle is from Alaska and she’s a dynamo. She, like most regional leaders, is a past district governor and has been in Rotary for more than four years. She is also smart enough to book a room at an Air BNB instead of the convention center hotel. She’s from Alaska. Alaska! Her confidence makes me want to weep in a corner while simultaneously admiring her. Right before she’s going to present to a group of incoming governors, I’m squatting on the floor next to her, admiring how confident she is while I try to get my camera set to take pictures.
“I need a senator suit,” I tell her as I survey the room, the same exact words I told to Shaun in that elevator. “I have the wrong clothes.”
“Hell no. You need animal prints. I’m wearing animal prints.” She nods at Laura Spear, another assistant Rotary International Public Image Coordinator, and just like that - I am hooked, and pretty much in love with Rotary all over again.
The amazing Michelle O'Brien holding the biggest gavel in the world. I stole this picture.
Despite the fact that I’ve never been a district governor, despite the fact that I’ve only been in Rotary for about four years now, the women of Rotary? They’ve made me feel comfortable and accepted and loved no matter what clothes I wear It isn’t just Michelle. It's also Tanya Wolff who let me be her assistant and who runs and bikes and dances and smiles with every movement she makes. It's Karen Oakes who quietly and methodically changes the world with every email she writes.
It’s also Julia Phelps. Julia is from my home state of New Hampshire and she’s high up in the hierarchy of Rotary - if there is such a thing. Julia is a Rotary Foundation trustee after having served on the Board of Directors from 2014 to 2016. She’s been a past vice chair of the Audit Committee and a member of the Operations Review Committee.
At the training, she puts her arm around my shoulders and doesn’t let go, insisting on telling the people around us about a newspaper story that I wrote in a half hour about her, 18 months ago.
“She is a rock star,” she insists as I blush. “She is.”
I haven’t felt so loved by someone in that sort of unrelenting proud way since my mom died. It means a lot.
That same day, a nice man in a training session comes up to me and says, “Modesty doesn’t make money.”
He’s talking about this because I compare my unease at saying that I’m an internationally and New York Times bestseller to the same unease that many Rotary clubs have about telling the world about the good they do.
“This explains a lot about why I’m not a millionaire,” I say as I thank him for his wisdom.
He laughs. “You should be. Remember, I mean it. Modesty doesn’t make money.”
Julia is in the middle.
About 18 months ago, in a hotel room, crowded with Rotarians from Quebec and Maine, I hopped up on a table at a district conference to take pictures of the Rotarians unwinding after a long day of training. My bodyguard was out in the hall because it was so crowded in the room. Immediately, the Rotarians called for me to dance and made funny faces at my camera. They sang songs. They clapped.
“If they do torment you, you make them give you money for the Foundation,” Julia said as I almost fell off the table and a Rotarian steadied me. Then she yelled at all the Rotarians in the commanding way that only a former teacher could do. Even the Rotarians who only spoke French listened as she said, “If you tease her, you have to give a dollar to polio! Give up your dollars.”
She stuck her palm out. Money instantly went into it.
We made a lot of money to fight polio that day, and the teasing was worth it.
That’s the thing about Rotary; it’s volunteer and it’s friendship and it’s always worth it. The hours I spend training people about public image, the hours I spend building playgrounds in my community or filling backpacks for kids who don’t have food during the weekends, the times I raise money to fight polio or just to help volunteer runners? There’s no monetary compensation there.
But the thing is?
There doesn’t need to be.
Rotary changes lives. It changes the lives of the people who are now protected from polio. It changes the lives of the Rotarians who learn how not to be modest (cough - still learning), how to wear animal prints, how to use a teacher voice, how to make friends with people like Michelle and Julia, with men and women who are all there because they care.
In that article that I wrote 18 months ago about Julia, I quoted her saying to the future club presidents, “We took off work. We travelled long distances to be here. So why…. Why are we here? I think there is this tiny, little voice inside of us and that voice is saying that you can make your community, your region, or your world a better place. And you really want to make it better. You want to serve humanity through Rotary.”
Julia being awesome and administering a polio vaccine.
In the early 2000s, Julia sat in the room preparing to be a president of a club in her district.
“When I entered that ballroom, I knew no one. So, I went to the front. That was the teacher in me. I realized that I would get into less trouble in the front,” she said.
When she left, she had a little voice inside of her head, nagging at her all the way home. That little voice had a lot to say.
It told her, “I wanted to be a better Rotarian. I was already a good Rotarian, but I wanted to be a better Rotarian. But more than that, I wanted to be a really good club president. No. I wanted to be an awesome club president.”
She went back to her club motivated and inspired, ready to make positive changes. She detailed three projects that her club undertook. Those projects helped the world. One, the Reader for Readers program, was inspired by a new member, and members would go into a local first grade and spend 30 minutes a week simply reading to kids who needed a little extra attention. Another project raised $600 to help a young man in another country who had a cleft lip and cleft palate. His entire family was stigmatized by their community because of his lip.
“For $600 we were not only able to change this little boy’s life, but we changed his family’s life. He was able to go to school, eat, and drink, and live a normal childhood. He’s now in his early 20s and guess what? We changed his life,” Julia said.
This is what I did when I received an alum of distinction award from Vermont College of Fine Arts. I PUT IT ON MY HEAD! Rotary still let me in.
The third project was also brand new. Two special education teachers asked her club members to fund a 10-week therapeutic riding project at a nearby farm. At the end of the program, one of the students’ mothers stood up at a Rotary club meeting and said that the program had changed her daughter’s life. Her daughter had never spoken, not a single word, and then after being in the program, she said one word. That word was “mommy.” There was not a dry eye at the meeting.
“We had changed that little girl’s life. We had changed that family’s life. I had been changed. Our Rotary club members’ lives have been changed,” she said.
And why? It was because her club took a chance on a project, said ‘yes,’ to helping their community. It was because her club put compassionate service into action. It’s because they were motivated to making a difference and listening to the little voices in their heads telling them to take a chance.
“That tiny little voice is saying you really can change the world. Even if that world is your own community,” she said.
And that was why, back in February, even as my daughter Emily was about to be away at basic training and officer candidate school for months, I went to the Rotary training in Evanston, Illinois. I did it, because it mattered. I did it, because for Em to grow up, I had to grow up, too, and find a way to make a difference in the world - a good difference.
Making an impact in a community doesn’t have to come by way of being a Rotary club president, or by being on the board for the international organization. Individual members make a difference constantly. To find out more about your local Rotary club, its projects, Rotary International or how you can help, check out www.rotary.org You’ll probably be amazed at what all these people are doing for free - just because they like making friends and helping the world.
Look at these beautiful Rotarians. Even after hours of training, they're still adorable. And also well dressed?
To say that I feel guilty being at the regional leaders training in Evanston, Illinois right before my daughter Emily leaves for basic training is a wicked understatement. She isn’t handling it well either. Every once in a while, she’ll say, “I can’t believe you're leaving.”
And at the moment? I sort of agree.
No matter all the good Rotary International does in the world, right now all my thoughts are with my soon-to-be-gone person. And anything that doesn’t involve being with her before this life-altering event? Well, it just seems . . . impossible.
This is unfair. I know that.
Almost from the year it began, Rotary International has been trying to unite leaders in the business world to come together, make friends, and change the world for good. It began in downtown Chicago in 1905 when four guys with German-sounding last names hung out in room 711 of the Unity Building. Those guys were Gustavus Loehr, Silvester Schiele, Hiram Shorey and Paul Harris. They changed the world.
Since that 1905 meeting, the grassroots international has grown into a global powerhouse of volunteers and philanthropists. With 1.2 million members around the world, Rotary became the go-to organization for fighting polio. Rotarians dream big and act big. The fight against polio began in 1979. In 1985 Rotary got super serious about it. There were 125 countries with Polio in 1988. Today, there are three - Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. This year, 2017, there have only been twelve cases.
That’s a big deal.
They let me in Rotary despite my tendency to pose with gnomes.
I like to imagine those businessmen sitting in that office back in 1905, thinking up the worst name for a service organization ever. I like to wonder if they had any idea that they were about to create something that would do so much good, something that would create so many friendships and so much change.
I would also kind of like to be like that.
It’s hard to see that at the Regional Leaders training that I’m going to. It’s honestly kind of hard to believe that I’m even a regional leader. This isn’t me being self degrading. It’s honest. At the time of the training, I’ve only been in Rotary about three years. Halfway into my first year, I became my club’s public image chair. About six months after that, I became the district’s public image chair. About six months after that I became the zone’s assistant public image chair and after a year of that I’m boom - the public image chair for Zone 24 East, which is basically the eastern part of Canada and parts of the northern United States.
I am not a public image person. I’m a writer and former newspaper editor, columnist and photographer. I’m also someone who has a hard time saying no and as I look at the group of people hanging out in the conference room of the Hilton Garden Inn - Evanston, I wonder if all of them have the same problem. Do they all have a hard time saying no? They all look as extroverted as hell, which is the opposite of me. Shaun, my personal bodyguard of awesome, has to actually accompany me on the elevator ride down to the social gathering before dinner.
“It will be fine, ” he says.
I stare at my scuffed-up writer shoes. “Nobody will talk to me.”
“It will be fine.” He grabs my hand.
People with Rotary badges and suit coats look at us on the elevator. They are speaking Hindi. I hope their English isn’t awesome so that they don’t realize what an anxious woman I’m being. They have nice shiny shoes. They wear immaculate suits in deep charcoal gray colors and Rotary pins on their lapels. I am wearing an LL bean black sweater, skirt that is not a pencil skirt, and green superhero boots that almost reach my knees. I have no idea where any of my Rotary pins are.
“I need to buy a Senator Suit,” I say, referencing those clothes all women senators seem to wear all the time - sort of these two-piece version of men’s suits, sort of heralding back to the Nancy Reagan era of when she was the first lady in the 1980s. My boobs do not work in that kind of suit.
“Why do you want that?” Shaun asks.
“So, I can fit in.”
He kisses the top of my head. “Baby, you will never fit in.”
I gasp.
“I mean that in only the best kind of way,” he says.
How I normally dress. :)
Six months later, I’m in Hartford, Connecticut, sitting next to Assistant Rotary Public Image Chair Michelle O’Brien. Michelle is from Alaska and she’s a dynamo. She, like most regional leaders, is a past district governor and has been in Rotary for more than four years. She is also smart enough to book a room at an Air BNB instead of the convention center hotel. She’s from Alaska. Alaska! Her confidence makes me want to weep in a corner while simultaneously admiring her. Right before she’s going to present to a group of incoming governors, I’m squatting on the floor next to her, admiring how confident she is while I try to get my camera set to take pictures.
“I need a senator suit,” I tell her as I survey the room, the same exact words I told to Shaun in that elevator. “I have the wrong clothes.”
“Hell no. You need animal prints. I’m wearing animal prints.” She nods at Laura Spear, another assistant Rotary International Public Image Coordinator, and just like that - I am hooked, and pretty much in love with Rotary all over again.
The amazing Michelle O'Brien holding the biggest gavel in the world. I stole this picture.
Despite the fact that I’ve never been a district governor, despite the fact that I’ve only been in Rotary for about four years now, the women of Rotary? They’ve made me feel comfortable and accepted and loved no matter what clothes I wear It isn’t just Michelle. It's also Tanya Wolff who let me be her assistant and who runs and bikes and dances and smiles with every movement she makes. It's Karen Oakes who quietly and methodically changes the world with every email she writes.
It’s also Julia Phelps. Julia is from my home state of New Hampshire and she’s high up in the hierarchy of Rotary - if there is such a thing. Julia is a Rotary Foundation trustee after having served on the Board of Directors from 2014 to 2016. She’s been a past vice chair of the Audit Committee and a member of the Operations Review Committee.
At the training, she puts her arm around my shoulders and doesn’t let go, insisting on telling the people around us about a newspaper story that I wrote in a half hour about her, 18 months ago.
“She is a rock star,” she insists as I blush. “She is.”
I haven’t felt so loved by someone in that sort of unrelenting proud way since my mom died. It means a lot.
That same day, a nice man in a training session comes up to me and says, “Modesty doesn’t make money.”
He’s talking about this because I compare my unease at saying that I’m an internationally and New York Times bestseller to the same unease that many Rotary clubs have about telling the world about the good they do.
“This explains a lot about why I’m not a millionaire,” I say as I thank him for his wisdom.
He laughs. “You should be. Remember, I mean it. Modesty doesn’t make money.”
Julia is in the middle.
About 18 months ago, in a hotel room, crowded with Rotarians from Quebec and Maine, I hopped up on a table at a district conference to take pictures of the Rotarians unwinding after a long day of training. My bodyguard was out in the hall because it was so crowded in the room. Immediately, the Rotarians called for me to dance and made funny faces at my camera. They sang songs. They clapped.
“If they do torment you, you make them give you money for the Foundation,” Julia said as I almost fell off the table and a Rotarian steadied me. Then she yelled at all the Rotarians in the commanding way that only a former teacher could do. Even the Rotarians who only spoke French listened as she said, “If you tease her, you have to give a dollar to polio! Give up your dollars.”
She stuck her palm out. Money instantly went into it.
We made a lot of money to fight polio that day, and the teasing was worth it.
That’s the thing about Rotary; it’s volunteer and it’s friendship and it’s always worth it. The hours I spend training people about public image, the hours I spend building playgrounds in my community or filling backpacks for kids who don’t have food during the weekends, the times I raise money to fight polio or just to help volunteer runners? There’s no monetary compensation there.
But the thing is?
There doesn’t need to be.
Rotary changes lives. It changes the lives of the people who are now protected from polio. It changes the lives of the Rotarians who learn how not to be modest (cough - still learning), how to wear animal prints, how to use a teacher voice, how to make friends with people like Michelle and Julia, with men and women who are all there because they care.
In that article that I wrote 18 months ago about Julia, I quoted her saying to the future club presidents, “We took off work. We travelled long distances to be here. So why…. Why are we here? I think there is this tiny, little voice inside of us and that voice is saying that you can make your community, your region, or your world a better place. And you really want to make it better. You want to serve humanity through Rotary.”
Julia being awesome and administering a polio vaccine.
In the early 2000s, Julia sat in the room preparing to be a president of a club in her district.
“When I entered that ballroom, I knew no one. So, I went to the front. That was the teacher in me. I realized that I would get into less trouble in the front,” she said.
When she left, she had a little voice inside of her head, nagging at her all the way home. That little voice had a lot to say.
It told her, “I wanted to be a better Rotarian. I was already a good Rotarian, but I wanted to be a better Rotarian. But more than that, I wanted to be a really good club president. No. I wanted to be an awesome club president.”
She went back to her club motivated and inspired, ready to make positive changes. She detailed three projects that her club undertook. Those projects helped the world. One, the Reader for Readers program, was inspired by a new member, and members would go into a local first grade and spend 30 minutes a week simply reading to kids who needed a little extra attention. Another project raised $600 to help a young man in another country who had a cleft lip and cleft palate. His entire family was stigmatized by their community because of his lip.
“For $600 we were not only able to change this little boy’s life, but we changed his family’s life. He was able to go to school, eat, and drink, and live a normal childhood. He’s now in his early 20s and guess what? We changed his life,” Julia said.
This is what I did when I received an alum of distinction award from Vermont College of Fine Arts. I PUT IT ON MY HEAD! Rotary still let me in.
The third project was also brand new. Two special education teachers asked her club members to fund a 10-week therapeutic riding project at a nearby farm. At the end of the program, one of the students’ mothers stood up at a Rotary club meeting and said that the program had changed her daughter’s life. Her daughter had never spoken, not a single word, and then after being in the program, she said one word. That word was “mommy.” There was not a dry eye at the meeting.
“We had changed that little girl’s life. We had changed that family’s life. I had been changed. Our Rotary club members’ lives have been changed,” she said.
And why? It was because her club took a chance on a project, said ‘yes,’ to helping their community. It was because her club put compassionate service into action. It’s because they were motivated to making a difference and listening to the little voices in their heads telling them to take a chance.
“That tiny little voice is saying you really can change the world. Even if that world is your own community,” she said.
And that was why, back in February, even as my daughter Emily was about to be away at basic training and officer candidate school for months, I went to the Rotary training in Evanston, Illinois. I did it, because it mattered. I did it, because for Em to grow up, I had to grow up, too, and find a way to make a difference in the world - a good difference.
Making an impact in a community doesn’t have to come by way of being a Rotary club president, or by being on the board for the international organization. Individual members make a difference constantly. To find out more about your local Rotary club, its projects, Rotary International or how you can help, check out www.rotary.org You’ll probably be amazed at what all these people are doing for free - just because they like making friends and helping the world.