New San Diego Rotary president Michael Brunker is sworn in with help from his 8-year-old grandson Kolu Kalaniopio from Kawaihae, Hawaii on Thursday, July 13.
Union Tribune - July 26, 2023
Opinion: As the new San Diego Rotary president, my responsibility is bigger than Rotary Club 33 - sandiegouniontribune.com.
It was 1970 when I graduated from St. James High School in Ferndale, Michigan, near the Eight Mile Road northern border of my hometown of Detroit. Melvin lived two houses down from our home on Northlawn. I’m sure my mother had something to do with the full-page ad in the yearbook from one of the founders of The Temptin’ Temptations.
The larger message he shared was powerful — “We, the Temptations, encourage education, for only through knowledge can ‘MANKIND’ grow to true Glory.” He could have stopped there, but he added the postscript prediction. To have a mentor like Melvin Franklin believe I could be president of the United States of America was certainly profound to an 18-year-old rolling into the 1970s and three years removed from the riot in 1967 that forever altered the trajectory of the Motor City.
History will forever note the prediction went unfulfilled.
But this week, I was installed as the 113th president of San Diego Rotary. I truly believe Melvin would be proud.
In 1911, a small handful of people changed San Diego’s history by starting a Rotary Club here. Inspired by the “Service Above Self” activities of Chicago Attorney Paul Harris in 1905, builder Ernie Shields met with 10 other community leaders to start Rotary of San Diego, the 33rd Rotary club ever created.
Today this little club has grown to 405 members and directly or indirectly launched over 69 clubs with over 2,800 members in District 5340, including most Rotary Clubs south of Los Angeles plus several in Mexico.
In 1917, Rotary welcomed the Boy Scouts to San Diego. The Scouts were followed by Kiwanis in 1920 and the Lions in 1921. Rotary was there to help them all get settled into the neighborhood.
Today, San Diego Rotary is the 10th-largest Rotary Club in the world with 405 members. To say being elected president of Club 33 is one of the greatest honors of my life would be an understatement. But it almost did not happen.
One of the duties of the immediate past president is to develop a slate of candidates to nominate for the annual November election of officers and board members. Many times, I received the call, but I said “No.”
It was easy to decline while in the middle of the capital campaign, demolition and eventual construction of the new Jackie Robinson Family YMCA in southeast San Diego. Then past president David Oates called in July 2020, almost three years after we had cut the ribbon at the new Y. I was driving on Interstate 805 when I said “no” again.
After the call ended, I could not help hearing the disappointment in his voice. I had heard the same from previous callers over the years. I thought, “Why do they keep asking?” and quickly calculated that if I did accept the nomination and be lucky enough to be elected, I would be 71 when my term would begin.
I would also be the first person of color to be president of Club 33.
Sometimes you’ve got to answer the call. Sometimes you’ve got to make the call. I called David back and said yes.
Rotary consists of 1.4 million passionate individuals in more than 46,000 clubs worldwide. We are both an international organization and a local community leader. Together, we lead change in our own backyards and across the world.
In May, over 12,000 Rotarians were in Melbourne, Australia, for the annual Rotary International Convention. Every annual convention hosted since 1910 affirm Rotary is a global movement aligned with these seven areas of focus: promoting peace, fighting disease, providing clean water, saving mothers and children, supporting education, growing local economies and protecting the environment.
Last year, Rotary International President Jennifer Jones, the first woman to lead Rotary International, imagined a Rotary where members act to make their dreams become reality and make the most of their club experiences. She urged members to engage more with each other and use these connections to build partnerships that change the world.
This year Rotary International President R. Gordon R. McInally is calling for Rotary to create hope in the world by working for peace and mental well-being. He is urging members to engage in tough conversations and earn the trust that’s necessary to realize these values.
It doesn’t take long to see this responsibility is bigger than Club 33.
My theme for my 2023-24 term began taking form in the summer of 2020 when David Oates asked if I would accept a nomination to run for president. It was then that I knew “Re-Imagine Rotary” would be in my heart if I were ever to be elected.
Most of my life has been spent re-imagining things from building successful teams to building a new Jackie Robinson Family YMCA.
In May 1980, while driving from Detroit to San Diego in a Ryder truck with a 2-year-old sitting between my wife Maria and I, we were two kids from the Motor City California Dreamin’. I was about to join David “Smokey” Gaines’ staff as an assistant basketball coach at San Diego State University, and re-imagining how to turn around an Aztecs program that had gone 6-21 during Smokey’s first year. I had just left a six-year run assisting Dick Vitale at the University of Detroit and the Detroit Pistons where we were “re-VITALE-izing” basketball there.
Later, in 1994, my San Diego “Melvin Franklin,” Cecil Steppe, invited me to a lunch at Miguel’s near Shelter Island in Point Loma, where Brigantine and Miguel’s owner Mike Morton was hosting a meeting with a long table of elders from the San Diego Rotary. Morton was incoming club president for 1995-1996. I knew Barbara and Mike Morton from their longtime support of Aztecs basketball. The talk that day had nothing to do with hoops and hustle. It was all about San Diego Rotary. I was asked if I would accept an honorary membership in one of the oldest Rotary Clubs in the world. I said “yes,” and my joyful Rotary journey began.
Honorary members are not required to attend meetings, but I did. Every meeting led to developing genuine relationships with inspired leaders who truly wanted to make San Diego a better place to live, work and play.
I can add countless stories of how Rotarians have provided unsolicited support for anything I have done in San Diego since my season of service at SDSU ended in 1987.
Now, “Re-Imagine San Diego Rotary” is all about asking what we can do individually and collectively to be more impactful in those avenues of service that we currently champion and to explore what a club of over 400 members can do to do more in areas we are not yet touching near and far.
I heard stories of how this is happening from clubs around the globe while attending this year’s convention in Australia in the same way I had heard powerful testimonials at our district conference, at our presidents-elect training seminar and at the Rotary Large Club Conference.
And I am hearing it from many inspired members in San Diego Rotary who want to do more in alignment with Rotary’s Action Plan to increase our impact, expand our reach, enhance participant engagement, and increase our ability to adapt.
Rotary International President McInally also served as president of Rotary in Great Britain and Ireland. This is what he said when asked, “What did you learn from that experience that you bring to this role?”
“I learned that Rotary Clubs are all different, and that everybody has a different interest. Not everybody is as passionate as I am. But everybody has something. And the secret is to tap into people’s interests and to make sure that they’re allowed to do things that they want to do. That speaks to bringing members in as well. We don’t bring members in and then tell them what they need to do. We bring members in and ask them what Rotary can do for them.”
Brilliant response, and certainly applicable to everything we will say, think and do with our heads, our hearts, our hands and our habits as we “Re-Imagine San Diego Rotary” in 2023-2024.
I literally stand on the shoulders of 112 past presidents from Carl Heilbron in 1911 to Judy Thompson in 2022-2023, who swore me in on Thursday.
If appreciation makes most people feel better than almost anything you can give them, I feel valued, appreciated and ready to serve!