Please join us this Friday June 25, 2021 @12:30pm at the Hall of Fame.
In person meeting is for Individuals who are fully vaccinated for COVID-19 and have waited 2 weeks after they have received the second dosein a 2-dose series (Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna), or 2 weeks after they have received a single-dose vaccine (Johnson and Johnson (J&J)/Janssen).
If you have not been fully vaccinated we will still be running the meeting virtually. Please use the below link to participate.
If you have gifts that you have or would like to donate to the raffle please use the below link to enter the gift information. If you need assistance doing so please reach out to Samalid or Keri.
This year, we are holding a Virtual Pandemic raffle to raise funds for our Annual Service Grants. We would like to collect restaurants’ gift certificates, and bottles of wine and liquor to be raffled during the month of May. This is an excellent opportunity for you to support your favorite small business restaurants and liquor shop owners both locally, as well as your Rotary Club.
It would be wonderful if every member could donate both a bottle of their favorite wine or liquor and at least one $25 restaurant gift card. In addition, sponsorships for our website will be available for sale.
Raffle tickets will be $10 each. One hundred percent of all proceedswill go to our local Grants Fund. Last year’s grant gifts total was $10,000. Would it be wonderful to not only meet but exceed this amount during a pandemic year, where there are many deserving organizations serving our most needed citizens? You could make this possible.
All grants will be awarded on June 11, 2021, during our regular meeting. I hope you will feel as excited as I am with this Raffle. I am grateful to our Board of Directors, and especially to Marie Angelides for organizing this fundraiser.
Every November, we celebrate The Rotary Foundation. Your support and generous gifts to the Foundation make it possible for us to be people of action and engage in life-changing projects worldwide. Here are three ways you can help maximize the effectiveness of our year-end giving campaigns and increase the amount of good we can do:
Encourage your members to make a gift to the Foundation on Giving Tuesday, which is 1 December. Share our video message
Learn more about our new peer-to-peer fundraising tool, Raise for Rotary, where you can create fundraising pages that are easy to share with family and friends through social media and email.
Stanley J. Strzempek, 92, formerly of Brainard Road in Wilbraham, passed away June 14, 2021 at home in Laurel, MD surrounded by his loving family.
Born in Chicopee, MA on May 7, 1929 to the late Stanislaw and Susanna (Mijal) Strzempek, he raised his family in Wilbraham where he resided until moving to Laurel, MD in September 2018. Stanley served honorably in the U.S Army during the Korean War, obtaining the rank of corporal. He received a Master’s degree from Western New England College and spent over 20 years at Milton Bradley Company as a finance officer. A faithful and devoted parishioner of Immaculate Conception Church, he had served as a past member of their finance counsel. He was a longtime member of the Rotary Club and was also an avid Red Sox and Patriots fan.
He leaves his son, Gregory J. Strzempek and his wife Linda of Laurel, MD, his daughter, Maryanne T. Roth and her husband Bernie of Roy, WA, and also a sister, Stacia Lesniak of Enfield, CT. Besides his parents, he was predeceased by his wife Florence (Konicki) Strzempek in 2019; a brother Boleslaw, and two sisters, Adelle Urban and Jennie Stefanik.
Stan was the originator of the Rotary Quiz that the club used to do at the meetings.
Did you know you can easily reach the Rotarian Magazine, Rotary International, the District website and our own club website right from this bulletin?
Well, you can! Just check out the links under "ROTARY ONLINE" on your left.
Club Information
Rotary Club of Springfield - Meeting Fridays-12:30 PM
Service Above Self
Fridays at 12:30 PM
Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame
1150 West Columbus Ave.,
MassMutual Room
Springfield, MA 01105 United States of America
We are meeting back in person at the Hall of Fame. Our club is also using Zoom. Our meeting ID and Password are viewable to Rotarians within our Rotary District. For other access, please contact President John Perez: john.perez@consiliumopis.com
During difficult times, you could adopt one of two significant measures to cope; you could despair or embrace discomfort. Unconsciously, I had always chosen to embrace discomfort and hold it so close that we call each other on a first-name basis. Discomfort, more than the obvious definition, it's the ability to stand and resist unfavorable conditions or situations. To embrace discomfort is to accept conditions that may not be ideal, and perhaps that we would not have or do what might be custom, but we will develop a sharp problem-solving mind and an iron will to achieve our goals.
This year we learn the real meaning of Service Above Self. Some of our members risked their health to deliver desperate-needed disposable masks to our city's non-profit organizations. We learned to seize opportunities to serve when they presented themselves, although not all plans had been drawn or the conditions are not perfect. We also learned to be persistent, not taking "no" as a viable answer, and always looking for another way to achieve our goals. We learned to pivot and rethink what we could and couldn't do during this pandemic year. This year we learned how to be better Rotarians.
This message will be my last as president of the Club. I am deeply honored to be the Club's president and guide you through such a challenging year. Someone told me that I was a "war" president due to how we handled ourselves and kept our members engaged with service projects and activities. Somehow, we kept going, with the help of the Board, avoiding that our Club gets into debt and still delivering services to our fellow citizens. I am grateful for your trust, and I am thankful for the lessons I learned during this year.
