Thursday, February 11, 2010
Metro columnist Dan Casey: Salem Rotarians score big points off-court
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
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Dan Casey
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The Old Dominion Athletic Conference's 2010 basketball tournament kicks off Feb. 25 at the Salem Civic Center, and it promises to be an exciting one.
As of this week, four of the conference's teams are ranked among the top 17 the NCAA's Division III.
That portends some exciting basketball. What really makes the tournament special, however, is the good it does for a variety of organizations in this valley.
Behind all the on-court action is the Rotary Club of Salem, which celebrated its 60th birthday in December and is one of seven Rotary clubs in this valley.
Salem Rotarians have sponsored the tournament for the past 29 years, and the total they've raised over that time will top $500,000 with this year's event.
For that, the club's 136 members deserve our salute.
Last week, the Rotarians donated $20,000 they raised from the 2009 tournament at their weekly Thursday luncheon at the Salem Civic Center.
If you were there with me, it would have been easy to grasp the club's motto, "Service Above Self."
Evidence of it was right there up on the podium, where representatives of the 11 nonprofits that received $1,000 and $2,500 grants explained the good work those donations do in this community.
n There was the Bradley Free Clinic in Roanoke. This year it's celebrating its 35th year. It has pegged the value of free medical and dental services it has delivered to the working poor of this valley over that time at $50 million.
n The Rotary's donation to the Child Health Investment Partnership will, among other things, allow CHIP workers to do safety audits in the homes of underprivileged children.
n A donation to Apple Ridge Farm in Floyd County will send underprivileged city children to camp in the country this summer.
n Money donated to the Salem Food Pantry and the Southwestern Virginia Second Harvest Food Bank will mean meals for people struggling to put food on their tables.
At some food banks, request for assistance has grown 60 percent since this time last year, luncheon attendees heard.
Other organizations that received money include:
The Rescue Mission; The West End Center; Big Brothers Big Sisters; Goodwill; The Presbyterian Community Center; and the Salem branch of NGA (formerly the Needlework Guild of America), which collects and distributes clothing to needy children.
Raising the money that goes to those organizations involves a lot of hard work that begins each fall.
For the tourney, the Rotarians involvement "is planning everything from the ground up," said J.J. Nekloff, the ODAC's assistant commissioner.
The Rotary plans the tournament's media days, stats gathering, halftime game acts and just about every other aspect of the four-day event.
Herm Reavis, a retired radioman who invited me to last week's luncheon, explained how the club raises that money.
Rotarians sell ads for the tournament's slick page program -- each member is expected to bring in at least one ad. Leafing through the 2009 program's 128 pages, and eying the scores of local advertisers, it doesn't look like they're having much trouble.
Club members sell the $3 programs to the families of the men's and women's tournament players. They also sell tickets to the event and produce and sell an annual T-shirt that commemorates it.
And each Rotarian is on the hook for buying 32 tickets.
In other words, this is an everyone-pitching-in exercise for the greater good.
There's a lot of that going on around here, in case you hadn't noticed.
For whatever reason, this area is rich with community service organizations that have large membership bases -- such as the Kiwanis, the Jaycees, the Civitan Club and many others.
It's one of the things that makes the Roanoke Valley a special place.
