West Point-Highland Falls Rotary keeps up weekly meetings
For decades members of the West Point-Highland Falls Rotary Club have arisen early every Thursday morning and gathered at the Hotel Thayer for their weekly meeting. It’s a time of socialization, business, and, often, rallying to help their community, nation or world.
The past month’s worth of Thursdays have been no different, except for the fact that the meetings are held via Zoom, the online meeting program that’s being used by so many groups now that meeting in person isn’t possible.
A recent meeting started promptly at 7:30 a.m. when Rotary President Kim Lee rang a bell from her dining room table in Cornwall. Across Newburgh, West Point, Highland Falls, Fort Montgomery and even Florida, her fellow Rotarians perked up, unmuted their computer microphones and paid attention.
The meeting lasted under an hour, and gave the 20 or so people who participated something so many Americans have been craving lately — adult conversation.
First up, they shared their morning ‘brags’, a period of each meeting where they pay $1 into the club treasury to share some of their joys in life. They ranged this week from being happy that there is such a thing as modern technology (so that they could ‘see’ their grandchildren during this social distancing period from several members), to the good things going on in the Highlands community when it comes to people helping one another — for instance, the school district for feeding all of its children breakfast and lunch while they are not in school due to the pandemic. Another joy shared by one member was the fact that they were indeed seeing the familiar faces of their friends, and another was for the leadership of the community, state and nation as they deal with the response to COVID-19. Several people offered — and paid that $1 for — praise for America’s health care workers and first responders.
Some shared simple, personal joys, like promotions, house guests, time to get yard work and closet cleaning done while stuck at home. One member said he’d been renovating a bathroom, learning all about plumbing from YouTube.
Others noted they are grateful for the current good health of their fellow Rotarians, friends and family.
There was a lot of smiling and joking during this period. When it came time to conduct business, there was more smiling as they decided to donate not only the money from those brags, plus the money they would normally be paying to the hotel for a meeting room and breakfast, plus some grant monies they have on had to the local food pantries, to help those in need.
From the state of Florida, former Rotary Treasurer David Weyant participated in the meeting, noting he, like those in New York, “is homebound, but our weather is a little bit better”. He noted it was good to “see” all of the members who he knew from his time in the WP-HF Rotary, and to “meet” the others.
As she prepared to close the meeting, Lee wished all continued good health.
“Keep checking in on each other,” she said and noted she is sure there will be community residents who will soon need the support of groups like Rotary. She encouraged each member to keep doing what they could for the community.
“Let’s keep our community in our thoughts and prayers,” she said.
The Rotary is set to continue to meet this way until the country opens back up again.
