BY JAMES WILLIAMS
Special to the Monitor
KEYSTONE HEIGHTS—Rotary District 6970 Gov. John Tabor recently visited the Keystone Heights Rotary Club because visiting each club in his or her district is one thing all district governors must do.
But Tabor, of Orange Park, also came with a mission: to honor the Keystone Heights club, which was founded on February 4, 1948, and which has served its community for 75 years.
“Congratulations on that. There’s a great record of long-term service,” he said,
Tabor presented a plaque to Keystone Heights club president Heather Davis, signed by Rotary International’s outgoing president—the first-ever female president of Rotary International—Jennifer Jones.
Davis received the plaque for the Keystone Heights club, which has had several female presidents over the last twenty years.
Next, Tabor recognized Keystone optometrist James Minesinger, a club member for many years. Tabor cited Minesinger’s “wonderful support of the Rotary Foundation.”
“Your contributions to the Rotary Foundation are allaying suffering, improving living conditions, and providing educational opportunities for young people somewhere in the world,” Tabor told Minesinger. “Your gifts are truly selfless actions and demonstrate your commitment to our common goals of world understanding and peace.”
Tabor guided the membership to the “Minutarian,” an online source of Rotary one-minute inspiration and encouragement.
He praised the club for becoming “…a 100 percent Paul Harris Fellow Club in 2018,” meaning that every member has contributed a certain amount to Rotary International programs. He said the good news was that Rotary was coming out of the Covid era, and clubs were beginning to hold traditional fund-raising events again.
“People are getting back, engaged, and excited about doing this…it’s rarer than you would think,” he said. “But if you go to our headquarters in Evanston, Illinois, the name of the Rotary Club of Keystone Heights is on the wall as a hundred-percent Paul Harris Fellow Club. That never goes away.”
Tabor cited Keystone member Scott Kornegay for serving with district leadership as an assistant governor and Davis for her work as club president. His address included what Rotary meant to him.
“I have found this organization to be an amazing group of individuals committed to doing good in the world and making a difference in their communities,” he said. “When you come to this organization, we don’t ask you what church you go to; we don’t ask you what political party you belong to. We don’t ask who you vote for. We don’t ask you if you vote, right?”
“We can have our differences,” he continued. “There’s nothing wrong with that. But when we enter that door and work together as Rotarians, guess what? We set all that aside.”
Tabor added that in an increasingly divisive world, many forces want to pull people apart and focus on community members’ differences when the things that unite people are much more significant than those that divide them.
“So, for me,” he said, “Rotary was a great way and a great expression and a great refuge, frankly, to be able to focus that energy in wanting to make our community a better place.”
