On Friday, October 31, four members of the Boise City Rotary Club, a Rotary Exchange Student and six member of a visiting Group Study Exchange Team from Great Britain traveled to Wichita, Kansas to attend the Rotary District 5690 Conference. The club members, Ron Kincannon, Terri Weaver, Mike and Helen Barnes are all district officers and Barbara Weaver is a Rotary Exchange Student, who recently returned from Australia.
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The district conference is an annual event held in each of the 532 districts of Rotary International worldwide. District 5690 includes 30 clubs in south Kansas and the Oklahoma panhandle. The conference is held in a different city of the district each year.
During the four days of the conference the Rotarians enjoyed presentations by wonderful speakers from across the country and around the world. Presenters included Jerry Traylor, the cerebral palsy victim who climbed Pikes Peak and completed a 3,528 mile run across the United States on crutches, Rotary International Director Nominee Ken Grabeau from Nashua, New Hampshire, who provides home water purification systems in remote rural areas of South America, and New York Fire Department battalion commander Richard Picciotto, the last surviving fireman out of the collapsed World Trade Center Towers, and Leah Klass, a Rotary World Peace Fellow that completed her education as a Rotary Peace Scholar at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia and now provides conflict resolution around the world. They were inspired by presentations by the Group Study Exchange team from England and a returning team from Argentina, and presentations by four Rotary Exchange Students from India, France and Australia, as well as Rotary International President’s Representative George Atwell from Milford, Virginia, and several other interesting and motivating speakers.
The group was also treated to world-class entertainment by country star and comedian Jimmy Travis and western artist album of the year winners, The Diamond W Wranglers. The attendees enjoyed fellowship of old and new friends in Rotary and were hosted by the 391 member club of Downtown Wichita at the historic Broadview Hotel.
The Boise City Rotarians returned home, tired but excited, with renewed inspiration from the event. The Boise City Club will host the District Conference next August in Oklahoma City at the Clarion Convention Center at I-40 and Meridian and are looking forward to another exciting year of Rotary service.
