My Fellow Rotarians:

First of all, let me say how truly honored I am to serve as this year’s President of the Rotary Club of Albuquerque. It is a privilege to join the long list of fine men and women who have serve as leaders for our Club. Rotary’s theme for this year is “Make Dreams Real” and my intention is to guide our club join others round the world as we make both large and small dreams become reality. The last several years our Club has been especially active both internationally and locally in providing funds and services to those in need. We are still in the early stages of the matching grant for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for $100,000,000 to fund eradication of polio worldwide and with the help of fellow Rotarians as well as other organizations such as the World Health Organization, we will live to see polio become a thing of the past in our lifetimes. This is something that we as individuals could never accomplish but because of our participation in Rotary, we have become part of the larger picture. Our Club will also continue to participate in grants which take our donations and together with others makes significant changes in the lives of those less fortunate both locally and regionally. My goal for our Club is to continue to work on our membership. We have had the privilege of many new and younger faces join us in the last several years which add vitality and energy to the Club. I ask each of you to find one person that you would like to see join you and our Club in service to the community. In addition, we will continue to work on raising the level of awareness in our community to the service Rotarians provide our neighbors. And while we work as a group in providing community service, we want to explore new ways to share those experiences in the spirit of camaraderie. I invite each of you to help support those “dreams” and make them reality. So let’s all turn around and look behind us. Let’s thank those who have put Service above Self as they guided the Club all these many years to what we are today. Then, as we move forward to new goals and objectives, let’s think about what we as individuals can do to share our Rotary experience and join others worldwide as we “Make Dreams Real”.