President Jon welcomed everyone gathered at the Motif Hotel for his final meeting as club president (his “last time ringing the bell”).
Jon remembered our longtime member Anne Farrell who passed away over the weekend. He reminded us that in addition to serving as the CEO of the Seattle Foundation, Anne was our club’s first female president.
The Rotary Rogues (Linda Rough, Michael Harris, Vicky Oxley, Don Murphy, Trish Bostrom, Jevon Powell, Eric Laschever, Sten Crissey, Jimmy Collins) put together a clever musical tribute for this last meeting with their versions of “Bridge Over Troubled Waters,” “Get Me to the Church on Time,” and “Somewhere (There’s a Place for Us)” with lyrics changed to reference Jon and our club, provided by Rogues’ member Linda Rough.
Jon mentioned how great it is to be adding new club members over the last year which include two at today’s meeting: Mariola Lisewska (introduced by Faith Ireland) and Rebecca Sayre (introduced by Jenn Gladish).
Jon introduced today’s special guest speaker, his brother, Rabbi Dan Bridge, who became a rabbi in Cincinnati and then moved back to Seattle where he was the rabbi at the University of Washington. “Service is the rent we pay for living,” Dan mentioned as he began that this saying was in the Bridge home and that Jon’s mission has always been to “fix the world.”
The theme of his remarks were: we need to learn to work together again and “what is your gift to bring to fix the world. Each person in the world is unique; there is no one else like you.” Rabbi Bridge had us read excerpts from “The Way of Man” by Martin Buber and a poem from “The Way It Is” by William Stafford and then discuss with the person next to us about “what is your gift and what is the one thing that motivates you to move the world; what is the thread you will follow;” and had some people share their thoughts.
He concluded with, “as my brother leaves Rotary as president, I encourage you to pick up his enthusiasm for leaving the world better. You have the talent and desire to bring our community back together.”
Today’s meeting closed with our club’s “time-honored tradition” of having the club’s past presidents “pass the gavel” from the current president to the next president. There were 18 former presidents taking part in this presentation with President Jon passing the gavel to Jan Levy as he handed her the new club banner, Unite For Good; “the gavel is yours… I am thrilled to do this.” Jan told us that “legacy” is our word as she leads the club starting next month, remembering her grandfather, Saul, who was longtime club member and that she is the 12th woman to serve this role.
