On the weekend, the passing away of Little Richard made the news on just about all channels. ("Little Who??" I hear the younger ones among you yell out…) Well, let me tell you: he was one of the greatest! OK, I might be betraying my age now, but just to put you straight: I don’t just listen to 50’s Rock ‘n’ Roll, I was a fan of Pink Floyd long before the Dark Side of the Moon! Groan. Yup, another one from the Boomer period... Oh, well, still betraying my age then, I guess… OK then, so whom do you think is the greatest entertainer of the last 100 years? I would imagine your responses to be highly predictable and relative to your age: Satchmo, Bing Crosby, Sinatra. JOK, Kamal, Barnsie, Farnham, Olivia, Kylie, Acca Dacca. Delta. Justin Bieber. SAINt Jhn …
What the heck has all this got to do with Rotary? Well, let me stretch your brain: excluding our founder Paul Harris and Arch Klump (the founder of The Rotary Foundation), whom would you consider the greatest Rotarian of the last 100 years? ---??--- Having a blank? But surely, in an organisation that covers over 200 countries and exceeds 1.2 million members, there must be somebody who pops up, who stands several heads taller than the rest? Come on, quick! We are an organisation that can organise the immunization of over 1 billion children and is within a whisker of reaching its target of eradicating Polio world wide. Surely we must have some all-time icons that are household names for everyone on the planet?
Yes, of course there would be. Hundreds and thousands of them. It’s just that they are not there for their own glory. There is no big media, no Spin department, no Grammy or Aria Awards. Is it relevant of whether a Rotarian is a fan of Opera, old crooners, Metallica, Muse or Funk? Not at all. But, to paraphrase Past Rotary International President Sir Clem Renouf: if you are a Rotarian, you have an organisation behind you that gives you, an ordinary person, the opportunity to do more with your life than you ever dreamed possible.