Rotarian Proud

July 2, 2019

I am proud to be the first member new President, Danita Grant, tapped to provide my “Rotary Proud Moment”.    She asked that this shared message be kept to a minute and I will do my best to comply, though, like most of us, I could speak extensively about my Rotary impressions.

Nearly thirty years ago, when I was a young professional working at Loras College, local Pastor Ken Bickel invited me to be his guest at a Key City Rotary Club meeting.  I felt welcomed (especially by several female members), was impressed with the program, and elected to join this club. I noted that the women were very active and I know now that they were “pioneers”.  I suspended my membership for several years during which I lived in Iowa City to dedicate time earning my Ph.D. and subsequently welcomed our adopted daughter into our family. During those years the Key City Club was not generating new members and when it eventually dissolved all members were invited to affiliate with this club.  Again, the presence of active/involved women, fun-loving and welcoming members, and quality programs impressed me. Under former president Joey Taylor we made a commitment to continued growth, especially increasing the number of females in our club. I want to be part of a club that welcomes diversity and provides opportunities for all to contribute their time and talents to impact our community and world.  I am proud to be part of an organization that is focused on improvement, attends to the need of others (reference eradication of polio worldwide, helping to bring clean water where it is not yet available, and supporting student exchanges). I have especially enjoyed my involvement with our Rotary Youth Exchange, and providing support as a counselor for Ivana this past year.

I am proud to be a Rotarian.  

I came to Dubuque in 2001, and I was initially impressed by several things I discovered about this town.  One was the number of adults who volunteer their time to kid-focused activities. There are very well-developed baseball and soccer programs, Scout troops in many different parts of the community, church youth groups, a Boys and Girls club, and dozens of nonprofits dedicated to supporting young people.  And all of them are staffed by adults giving back to their community. I hadn’t experienced this in the neighborhood where we came from in Seattle.

I was also impressed by the number of people I talked with who had been born and raised in Dubuque, went away for college, got married, and when they had kids, moved back to Dubuque to raise them.  I even met two couples who moved back into the house where they grew up! This is another impressive fact that speaks to the city’s high quality of life.

A third thing I noticed was the number of “All American City” awards won by the city.  No city in the country has been honored this way as often as Dubuque. I also appreciated learning that there are almost 600 nonprofits operating here, all staffed mainly by volunteers doing good work.  There’s a lot to love and be proud of in Dubuque.

At the same time, I learned about another side of the city.  I came here to serve as Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of Dubuque, and part of my job was to diversify the faculty.  I recruited and attracted a senior Psychology professor who had over 25 years’ experience as a therapist, professor, and researcher, most recently at a campus of the U. of Maryland.  Two weeks after he moved here, he came into my office and asked me, “What kind of town did you bring me to??” In response to my baffled look, he continued, “I hadn’t been here ten days when I was called the n-word on the street.  That doesn’t happen in a normal 21st-century city!”  I was shocked.

Soon after, I heard about the meeting between IBM executives and the mayor and other city leaders where IBM told the city that many members of their very diverse workforce had reported incidents of discrimination in businesses, financial institutions, and real estate.  IBM had just brought 1200 jobs to the city. Their message to city leadership was simple: “If you don’t get your act together, we’re out of here!”

Over the next 18 months, I also experienced 3 meetings attended by diverse professionals, one in Dubuque, one in Cedar Rapids, and one in Iowa City, at which an African American professional—a different person each time--commented during the decision-making, “People who look like me have been told in no uncertain terms that we aren’t welcome in Dubuque.  That’s why my family and I stay away from there.”

And the capstone for me was when one of my African American friends, a young professional who had lived about 15 years in Dubuque, reflectively asked me after a pause in one of our conversations, “John, why do white people hate us so much?”  “Why do white people hate us so much?”

It’s clear that the world is gaining the benefit of Rotary’s international focus quite a bit better than is our own hometown.  We’ve done a pretty good job with gender diversity in our club—although I have heard one or two older male members pine for “the good old days.”  But we haven’t done so well with other kinds of diversity, especially with people of color, disabled, and LGBTQ people. I wonder what we need to do to get better?

One-piece we can think about as we mobilize a New Member committee is the effect of our club requirement that you can’t be a member until someone already in Rotary recommends you.  Under most circumstances, this is a recipe for homophily—building a club full of members that look and sound just like today’s members. As I said, the all-male version of our club has overcome this recipe in the past by increasing our gender diversity.  It may be time for us to think about how to expand our success into these other areas of difference.

Rotary International’s global perspective helpfully requires each of us to develop cultural humility, the recognition that our own cultural beliefs and expectations are not the only legitimate ones, that what we think is “normal” is not everybody’s cup of tea.  It also encourages us to approach people who look different from us with genuine curiosity, an effort to expand our horizons, to create a group that does more than just “what we’ve always done.” I’m proud of this perspective, and I hope we can live into it not only in our support of the school project in Guatemala and our global scholars in Brazil, Spain, and England.  I hope we can apply this distinctive feature to our own community, so the city we love can fully enter the 21st century and be as diverse, equitable, and inclusive as the best modern cities.

Hello, I am Elizabeth McKinstry. Fun Fact: I grew up in a small town with a Nuclear Power Plant built on a fault line. There have been a few times, over the years, Exelon would notify the community in the paper that there had been a leak, but all was well. My father used to tell me that my head got bigger every time there was a leak.

I went to public school, then a private school, and then I was homeschooled 5th grade to finish. I graduated with the Hallstrom Home School Co-op. During my homeschooling, I developed a love of languages and history and communities. I took 4 years of Latin, 3 years of Chinese, 2 years of German, and a year of Swedish. It was through the community of the co-op that I was able to learn about these languages and cultures. There were retired teachers, stay at home fathers or mothers with doctorates in many subjects and they were able to share that wealth of knowledge with us. 

I learned to appreciate the concept of community, even more, when there were volunteer opportunities. I was blessed to serve special needs children at an equine therapy location, to be a tutor for the younger children in our community, and worked with multiple churches and organizations to help with food drives, supply runs, and making sure that those around me had the basic needs in life. Once I transferred to Clarke University, I was contacted by AMERICORPS: Partners in Learning to be a reading tutor during the school year and a library volunteer for the summer reading program. I have been with them for two years now and I have one more term left that I can serve. 

It is through Clarke that I have also been able to share my passion for helping others and strengthening communities with other students. I have been able to inform other students of the opportunities around them to help others and to be aware of the suffering around them. Together we have been able to connect with those suffering of all ages and backgrounds, this is how I want students to remember community: Encouraging each other to work and suffer together to make their communities stronger and flourishing. Not just for the present, but also for the future. One cannot simply lift someone out of suffering. One must provide the ladder of care and possibility so they may work to climb the ladder themselves. I feel that through the Dubuque Rotary Club I will be able to continue in the pursuit of this passion with others who share these ideals and better the Dubuque Community. 

Glenn Lichti