At our July 14, 2025 Rotary Meeting, the inspiration was provided by Doug Moore:
July 2025 is Maternal and Child Health Month
Rotary works in challenging areas of need in our communities and
around the world.
In doing this work, Rotary brings light to areas of darkness.
There’s a Chinese Proverb…
“It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness.”
This is from Rotary International Past-President Gary Huang
The Rotary way is to light a candle.
I light one, you light one,
1.2 million Rotarians light one.
Together, we light up the world.
(now 1.4 million Rotarians)
This is from Robyn T. Braley
How do you make a difference?
It starts by just starting.
Help one person at a time.
Improve a child’s life and you improve a family.
Improve families and you improve a village.
Improve a village and you improve a region.
Improve enough regions and you improve a country.
Improve countries, and you improve the world.
That is why Rotarians do the work of Rotary.
Danya introduced our guests:
Lee Harmon from the Arlington Rotary Club and our speaker for this evening
David Rapella, longtime member of our club and now an honorary member of our club who is turned 94!
Jarrett Hatch, scholarship winner and his parents, Ping and Chris
Penelope Gwin, scholarship winner and her mother, Mary Beth
Simon Bouwen, scholarship winner and his parent,s Monica and Scott
Connie introduced each of the scholarship winners in attendance, and each of them told us about themselves and where they plan to use their scholarships. They each received a $2,000 Scholarship for our Rotary club.
Jarret is going to UW Bothell for a business administration degree and hopes to own a car dealership.
Penelope will be attending Skagit Valley college to get her nursing degree and then plans to transfer to ASU to get a master’s degree in social work. Penelope’s mother, Mary Beth, received a scholarship from us when she graduated from La Conner High School!
Simon will also attend SVC to do pre-nursing work and will then go on to become a dental hygienist.
A Partial Report of Lee Harmon’s talk on Polio:
Marty introduced our guest speaker for the evening: Lee Harmon, a 40-year Rotarian who is a retired ophthalmologist and surgeon. He was a Navy flight surgeon and is still a sports aviator. Lee and his wife are Arch Klumph Society members, meaning they have donated over $250,000 to The Rotary Foundation and he credits the 4-Way Test for making that kind of donation possible. He says there is no place better to give money than The Rotary Foundation. He has used his car, Miss Vicky, to raise money for Polio Plus and told us about his Peking to Paris and Alaska to California fundraising trips. Now, he uses the car in his Polio Plus fundraising, but doesn’t put miles on it to do so. Lee recognized David Rapella for his $10,000 donation to the Miss Vicky campaign, the largest donation in the 2025 project. That campaign raised $109,000 for Polio Plus.
Lee gave us quite a history of polio and Rotary’s fight to eradicate the disease. Polio is the oldest recorded disease as noted in hieroglyphics on a tomb in Egypt. It is a viral disease that causes acute flaccid paralysis, primarily in children. For every 200 people who get the disease, one is paralyzed. The other 199 have the disease and are excreting the virus in the septic system.
When Rotary approached the CDC in 1984 to find a project that could put Rotary on the map, the CDC responded that if they had 3 years and 100 million dollars, they could get rid of polio. What a challenge! No service club before or after has ever raised that kind of money. In 1984, the disease was endemic in 125 nations; there were 350,000 paralytic cases of polio in the world, and 50,000 of those people died because they couldn't breathe.
By 2007, Rotary had been working against polio for 23 years and was down to 4 endemic nations and 784 cases. It looked like the end was in sight, but in 2008, polio was in 16 nations and almost 2,000 cases. Where was the money to keep going? In came Bill Gates, whose father, a Seattle Rotarian, suggested to Bill that he do something good with his money: Give it to Rotary. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation challenged Rotary to raise 50 million dollars for polio eradication and promised to match it 2 to 1, ensuring 150 million.
Rotary met the challenge, and both the Gates Foundation and Rotary are continuing that arrangement to this day. Since 1984, Rotary has raised 2.6 billion dollars, Bill and Melinda Gates are in the 5 billion range, ant the World Coalition that Rotary put together of 125 nations, the CDC, UNICEF, World Heath, Gates Foundation, and other NGOs have added another 10 billion. So, over 40 years, the world has seen an infusion off 17 billion dollars to get rid of polio.
Lee showed us slides of his volunteering in a National Immunization Day in India and the conditions that allow polio to get from one host human to another through sewage, etc. There was a goal to vaccinate 160 million children in a 5-day period. 650,000 vaccination booths were set up over the whole nation of India, 3 million healthcare workers, and 100,000 Rotarians from around the world participated. Although it looked hopeless because of the population of India, after more NIDs, India has been polio free for 15 years!
1n 2023, we were down to 12 cases in the world, 6 in Pakistan and 6 in Afghanistan. Then the Taliban said no more vaccinations and the number jumped to 99. Vaccinations are back in Afghanistan and as of June 24, 2025, there are 2 cases in Afghanistan and 14 in Pakistan. Wildfires have created some issues in Pakistan.
We hope the last wild polio case was June 12, 2025
Rotary and its partners are working to eliminate the cases of vaccine-derived polio, using injections in conjunction with drops, and have pledged to continue the fight until ALL polio is eradicated.
