President Noreen Timoney rang the bell at 12:30 p.m. and opened her farewell meeting as President of the Rotary Club of Miami 2021 – 2022.  There were fifty-five in attendance to honor and thank President Noreen for her year of service to our Club (35 at the in-person meeting at the Miami Yacht Club and twenty via ZOOM).

 

Jay Almeida led us in the invocation and thanked President Noreen for her great leadership and providing our Club with a wonderful and exceptional year.

 

Expression of Allegiance to our Country: Our guest and a client of the Miami Lighthouse for the Blind, Silvio Plata, shared his great vocal talent and sang a beautiful rendition of our National Anthem.

 

Guests and Visitors: Steve Dutton welcomed our guests Rotarian. Ravi &; Monisha Mullick, Board Member and Director of TRF for the RC Mumbai/Bombay SoBo, Gloria Burns from the Coral Gables Rotary Club, TBM Scholarship awardees Bria George and Catarina Vale. Oliver Ruiz’s daughter Carolina Ruiz joined us as well.  President Noreen invited Ravi & Monisha Mullick, and RCM incoming president, Brian Tschirhart to join her at the podium for a banner exchange ceremony.  

 

The Rotary 2021-22 Year in Review: President Noreen opened the program expressing her gratitude to our members for all of their support, well wishes, and service and also thanked our international guests for their participation with our Club over the past two years. The slide show, coupled with verbal reiteration, provided a synopsis of the wonderful year of fellowship, service, and innovation. This past year was filled with success in service efforts and record-setting approaches in environmental protection. We also were presented many challenges and difficult moments, but, as Rotarians, we came through it together to make 2021 - 2022 a great year of service and successes in unprecedented times. President Noreen thanked everyone for taking the journey with us and making a difference in our local community and in the world.

 

Throughout the year, we had a wonderful list of keynote speakers who spoke on a wide variety of topics. Our speakers inspired us to do community projects, learn more about Rotary, physical and mental health, science, history, literature, community groups, media, foster care, animals, innovation and opportunities, transportation, education, parks, ports and tunnels, law enforcement, the economy, investments, urban development, the environment from on land and below the water, and more.

 

The Club cumulatively has planted 900 trees.. We cleaned-up beaches and coastal areas. Foster Children benefited when we collected luggage filled them with hygiene products, beanie babies, and blankets, and tagged them with Luggage of Love tags.

 

Yes, 2021 - 2022 was a year of successes in unprecedented times.

We had more opportunities to support our youth programs and engage with our Interact and Rotaract Clubs. We had fun during the year as well and were able to celebrate in-person and also online. We had:Halloween dressed as hippies.Griffitts award honoring the City of Miami Police Officer of the Year, annual holiday party at Diane Landsberg’s house, a fun BBQ where we welcomed visiting Rotarians from Chicago One and from Coral Gables, the FIU pinning event for our TBM recipients, Valentines event at Diana’s house, St. Patrick’s Day at Titanic, FIU match day, interviewing the TBM applicants, Luncheon of UM head of major donors – a good reconnecting event, Earth Day, Baynanza Day, District 6990 training, Cinco De Mayo virtually, Coral Reef training, Graduation for Interact, Little Haiti soccer club, Assisting Ukraine with support through happy dollars and donations, Houston Rotary International Convention, Health in the hood—first Little Free Library, Alpha Generator Investment Club, which is consistently beating the market.

 

We performed many service projects, collaborated with other clubs and organizations, had training in best Rotary practices and engaged in fellowship and a whole lot of fun!

 

Kathy Fernandez Rundle, Miami-Dade State Attorney spoke to us via Zoom and thanked us for all the work Rotary has done for our community.

She also congratulated President Noreen on her inspirational leadership, for a year well done, and a history of great service for our community. She shared that many organizations have gone through challenging times over the past year, and that even her office had lost 100 attorneys. She emphasized the importance of leadership such as exhibited this year at our Club to move forward.

 

Cameron Sisser, from Miami Lighthouse for the Blind, accepted our Club’s donation for $2,000. The funds will go to support Silvio’s trip to L.A. for the National Brail Challenge. Silvio expressed gratitude for supporting his trip and they both thanked the Club for this donation and the previous one from this year for $3,000 to purchase uniforms for the new educational program started at the Lighthouse.

 

 

Past President Tim Ryan welcomed everyone and had an infectious laugh. Through six long hard years of cancer, he never complained. Tim always thought of others, and never ran out of funny stories to tell or a kind word to offer comfort. RIP dear friend. Tim’s smile and kindness was welcomed at every meeting and social gathering. Tim was a past president of our Club and a Board member before he passed away.

 

Renel Noel passed away in June. He was another true Rotarian in spirit and action. While on his way to another humanitarian trip to Haiti, he passed away while attempting to bring the people in his hometown a boat so that they could get goods and support rather than try to travel over unsafe or broken roads. Service was a big part of Renel’s life. Several of our members attended the almost 500-person Memorial service for Renel, including, Robert Bull, Dave Skinner, Diane Landsberg, Cory Gittner, Robin and Susan Shelley, Jay and Mara Almeida, Don and Maria Van Orsdel, and Noreen Timoney, who offered condolences to his family and made remarks at the service on behalf of our Club.

 

Robert Bull - In honor of Noreen, Randy Lichtman – in honor of Noreen and the new Rotaract President Selene, Robin & Susan Shelley - in honor of Noreen. Robin was sporting the new official Rotary tie, Marcia Brod of retirement. - in honor Noreen and to welcome the incoming president, Brian Tschirhart. Marcia also thanked her Scribe Tribe members and celebrated her 6^th Anniversary, Dave Skinner: Honoring Noreen, Brian Tschirhart: honoring Noreen, Diane Landsberg: honoring Noreen, Oliver Ruiz: honored Noreen and welcome incoming president Brian. He also acknowledged his daughter visiting for lunch today.and Noreen Timoney: for the honor and privilege of serving our Club and for the wonderful teamwork of our members.

 

Robin Shelley led everyone in the Four-Way Test. Following Robin’s recitation of the Four-Way Test, musical renditions of the Four-Way Test from around the world were played as people networked.

 

 

Dear Fellow Rotary Club of Miami Member and friends:

I finish my presidency of the Rotary Club of Miami for the 2021–2022 Rotary year with an expression of thankfulness to each one of you for being on this journey with me. You are our Club’s greatest asset and your ideas and commitment have been an inspiration and catalyst for finding great ways to fulfill the Rotarian mission of “Service Above Self.” We realized many successes this year as we explored new and different ways to achieve our service goals. The Board and I are grateful for your membership and for your role in achieving these remarkable accomplishments. This year has been filled with wonderful projects, events, and programs. We launched new service plans to complement our existing ones. Under the leadership of our immediate past president, we added ESMAG, which provided many of our members with an opportunity to engage in protecting and preserving our environment through different, amazing efforts while carrying out projects involving all community service areas.We were faced with difficult changes and challenges, so we worked harder. We hoped we could put vision together with actions and produce an impact. We chose to believe that “we could succeed” and we did. We learned to adapt to this new reality where we saw and communicated with people in little tiles on a digital screen via technology. We found that Happy Hours can still be fun online. Thanks to our innovative team members, we were able to capture all of these projects and events, in our digital magazines, our website, on power point presentations at meetings, social media posts, and in personal conversations. Many thanks to Robert, Jay, and Dave for all of their efforts.

Looking at those images will provide an opportunity to remember this wonderful year where we worked together, laughed together, and, sadly, mourned together during the loss of two incredibly special and treasured friends. We walk away from this year feeling valued as proud members of the Rotary Club of Miami, as people of action, who accepted the challenge to make a difference in our world. I am so grateful that each of you answered that call to move forward with passion and commitment to bring positive change. I am especially humbled and honored that you provided me with the opportunity to be part of this great team that focused on bringing hope and goodness to our community and continue the exceptional legacy of The Rotary Club of Miami during this past year.Thank you again for your service, support, well wishes, and your membership this year and for making our Club stronger through your dedication!

Sincerely Yours in Rotary Service,

On behalf of the 2021 - 2022 Board of Directors of The Rotary Club of Miami,

105th President

The Rotary Club of Miami