I never win the weekly 50/50 raffle.  Never, never, never.  And I always support the raffle – frugally.  Partly I support it frugally because history shows I am never the winner; partly I do so frugally because I visit a lot of clubs and I’d have to sign up with Gambler’s Anonymous if I supported each one as liberally as some people I know at the club – people with long arms who go for an arm’s length of raffle tickets, while I’m sidelined with the three-tickets-for- $2 deal. 

All this is preparatory to say that I won! I won! I won the big $15 prize at last week’s meeting.  I suspect President Laurie expected me to give back my winnings during the “Happy Dollars” that followed, but I didn’t – instead, this morning I went online (www.rotary.org) and donated my little treasure chest to Rotary’s PolioPlus fund. All of which gives me an opportunity to write about Rotary’s biggest humanitarian effort. 

Polio was a terrible scourge in the United States in the first half of the 20th century, and then the breakthrough came in the ‘50s when Dr. Jonas Salk came out with a vaccine. That was followed a few years later by a second vaccine, this one developed by Albert Sabin. In the decade that followed, all American children were vaccinated in the largest public health program up to that time in history. I remember going down to the public library to receive “three drops on a sugar cube,” what I now know was part of nationwide “Sabin Oral Sundays” – or the SOS campaign.  

Sure enough, the hard work paid off, and within a generation, polio was wiped out in North America.  At that point the March of Dimes, which had been founded in the ‘30s to combat polio, declared victory and turned its attention to birth defects.  But the battle was far from won, because polio still raged in the rest of the world. 

By the mid-80s, polio was endemic in over 125 countries around the world, maiming or killing approximately 350,000 children per year.  That’s when Rotary, with a more global outlook than exhibited by the March of Dimes, stepped in.  In the years following, Rotary and its partners, most especially the Gates Foundation, have raised and invested billions of dollars in the fight – and along the way have vaccinated over 3 billion children. In fact, WHO estimates that 5 million people are walking today because they were successfully vaccinated against polio as part of the Rotary-initiated campaign. 

Today, the wild polio virus is contained to small areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan.  But it is only an airplane ride away from all of us – and global travel being what it is, this means that anyone who is unvaccinated remains at risk. And that is why Rotary and its partners are working hard to eliminate polio everywhere. 

When we do, it will be only the second time in history that a communicable disease will have been completely wiped out (the other disease that no longer exists is smallpox). And wait, there’s more: Because the infrastructure built by the PolioPlus partnership has already proved useful in combatting Ebola and, more recently, Covid in Africa and India and other countries where the polio fight is centered. 

So my $15 winnings wouldn’t go far at Starbucks or equivalent – but by donating the money to the Rotary Foundation, that is enough to immunize five children against polio.  

So I’d say I was definitely a winner at the meeting. 

What else happened last Thursday?  Oh, yes. 

I already mentioned Happy Dollars. Especially appreciated were wreathes delivered to the club’s widows and widowers by Robin and Chip, holiday family gatherings, and the fact that Barn pickups are over for the season. More on that later. 

Then we got down to the business at hand, which had been publicized as “Know Your Rotary Neighbors.” Tables were teams, and Laurie asked each team to answer a series of questions. Questions like: Who is the person in the room with the longest tenure in the club (ans:  Doug Harley); How many Rotarians in the room are nurses? How many own trucks? How many work Saturdays at the Barn on a weekly basis? How many have lived in the region less than five years? and so on. These being Rotarians, it was amazing how the questions could be sliced and diced, but Laurie kept the room under control – and laughing. Because these were not the kind of trivia questions you can research on Google, Mike Thompson shouldn’t have had an advantage, but when the evening was done, sure enough, his table had won. 

Upcoming events: At our meeting next week, Dec. 11, this correspondent will be speaking. My topic will be fun facts about the Rotary Foundation, and ways in which through the Foundation we mortals are making dreams come true.  That meeting will also be Chef Ivan’s last – we will surely miss his comfort food delights. 

The following Saturday, Dec. 13, will be the last day the Barn is open this season. We’ll have the usual hours, 8:30 to 11 a.m., and probably better-than-usual deals, because the more we sell, the less we have to deal with over the winter before the Barn opens again in April. Think of it as hibernation. 

The next Thursday, Dec. 18, we will have our annual potluck Holiday Party. Bring friends, neighbors, kids, your significant other - the more the merrier. Also bring an appetizer or dessert to share, wear Holiday bling or a Christmas sweater (ugly or otherwise) or wear both bling and sweater. We will also have a Yankee swap with a maximum price of $20 (or a lot less); make sure your gift is wrapped and anonymous as to the giver.   

The Rotary building will be “dark” the following two weeks while visions of sugar plums dance in our heads; we’ll be back in business on Jan. 8.  See you then!