Julien's Journal November 2015 (Volume 40, Number 11) | Page 29

Dubuque Rotary Club
Celebrates 100 Years of
“Service Above Self”
by Dan McCarthy

H

ave you heard the news? Community spirit is dying. People
just don’t care about each other anymore. Life has too many
distractions to get caught up
in the fortunes of others. Our children have
lost touch with the older generation, and
vice versa. All we need to get by is 4G and
Facebook.
One could easily get caught up in the complexity of our 100-mile-per-hour society.
Our nation of plenty often can be the land
of way too much. And people, well-meaning
by nature, set priorities based on personal
needs and wants rather than those of their
community, often claiming a lack of time
for their pullback from events, committees,
volunteerism, and philanthropy.

Well, if that, indeed, is the national trend,
we know that Dubuque and the tri-states
are swimming decidedly upstream, choosing instead to live by the old-fashioned
values of hard work, honesty, faith, family
and – yes – community. One local group,
in particular, the Dubuque Rotary Club,
declares its outright defiance to national
malaise through its activities, partnerships,
and pure joy of fellowship.

organizations, traveling to Africa to help
build wells that provide healthy drinking
water in remote villages, col