Our new president, Jen Page, opened our new Rotary year, which begins each July 1, to a large and boisterous crowd.  We welcomed Rockland Rotarian and soon-to-be Boothbay Harbor Rotarian, Jason Guest, a funeral home director for Hall Funeral Homes, and Jason lives in Jefferson and works here in Boothbay Harbor and in Waldoboro.  

We also appreciated our new District Governor, Carolyn Johnson and her husband, Peter Johnson, a Past District Governor, who remains very active in our district that extends to eastern New Hampshire and up to Fryeburg and down to Damariscotta-Newcastle. Awards and thanks were exchanged for Marty Helman’s tremendous year as district governor and for Carolyn Johnson’s promising year ahead.  

We were grateful for Cathy Fisher of the Tidewater, Maryland Club, who summers on Lobster Cove Road and will be pitching in for our upcoming Rotary Auction. We also welcomed visiting summer Rotarians, Steve Carbone and Paul Whitehead, who are old friends and regular contributors.

President Jen read thank-you notes for thousands of dollars donated by Rotary to the Boothbay Region Student Aid Fund; Camp Sunshine, where we will be working this September; Rotaplast (cleft lips and cleft palates in other parts of the world); and Alex Clarke, our senior scholarship recipient who will be attending Suffolk University.

Jen also read a wonderful thank-you message from this year’s Rotary Lifetime Service Award recipient, George McEvoy, who was the very last person to leave our clubhouse that memorable night.

Auction chair, Henry Wyatt, sang the praises of our upcoming Auction record for an incredible amount of treasures that are overflowing our storage trailer, our Scout hall, and many Rotarians’ barns and garages. One example is a golf cart worth over $1,000. We will also have a record number of books at the auction, in the thousands.

Silent Auction chairman, Vic Taylor, announced an upscale silent auction with more surprises in store on August 3 and welcomed more ideas and donations.  

Jim Donovan, CEO for Lincoln County Health Care was our speaker, and he held our attention with an excellent summary of healthcare since Medicare went into effect in 1966 and his own immersion in healthcare since 1979.

The Affordable Care Act, which goes into effect soon, is the most comprehensive change since Medicare, amongst an ever accelerating pace of change in healthcare.

Jim discussed our well-known demographic challenges and lesser known affordability issues in rural areas that do not have attractive economies of scale. We must find a better way for primary care providers (doctors, nurses, physician assistants) focused on preventative care, primary care, community health, and keeping people well.

Jim’s dream is that every person have a primary care physician in the face of medical work too often chasing reimbursements instead of keeping communities healthy. Positive discussion regarding other models and current challenges followed.