On Saturday the 22nd Aptil the club celebrated the 75th anniversary of the grant of its Charter. The black tie dinner was attended by 72 members and guests.
President Laurence Sharp presided over the event and 'entertainment' consisted of a humourous review, in the form of a 'Two Ronnies' sketch, of the club's activities over 75 years presented by John Harding and Mervyn Edwards. This review was in two parts between courses of an excellent three course dinner. Mervyn also gave a very informative and enjoyable after dinner talk about his time in the firearms division of the police force.
A good time was had by all.
Below the photos is the presidents speech which set out some of the clubs achievments in the last year:
Good evening everyone. It is my great pleasure to welcome you all to tonight’s 75th Charter dinner. Considering what we have been through over the last couple of years it would have been terribly difficult to have done this over Zoom. Being here tonight—sharing this celebratory evening with all of you—is truly a privilege.
Robin Ketteringham will say a few words shortly concerning Inner Wheel and the guests of Inner Wheel, however, I would like to extend a special welcome to all of Rotary’s guests including our District Governor Andy Calvert and his partner Alan as well as Ray and Liz Payne.
Firstly, a thank you to those Rotarians that made this event happen. It is going to be a great evening with some great entertainment from Mervyn and John.
Chesham Rotary has been around now for 75 years. It is a testament to Rotary as a whole that we are still going strong after 75 years. I am not going to go through our history with you. Mervyn and John will be dealing with some of that later and you will see our fantastic booklet in front of you which has more information on our history and is yours to take with you at the end of the evening. Many thanks to Helen and Tony for putting this together and to Andy for financing it.
Although tonight is about 75 years of Chesham Rotary I would like to just mention very quickly what we have been doing over the past year. You will see just how much has been done. You only need to multiply that by 75 to see how much Chesham Rotary has contributed to the local community and worldwide through Rotary Foundation over the years.
When I started to prepare this speech and started to investigate what we have done as a club this Rotary year I was amazed at the number of schemes we have been involved with, the number of donations made, the number of organisations that have benefited from our work, the number of events we have been involved with in the town and the number of Rotary projects that we have endorsed such as the Young Musician and Young Chef competitions and the Technology Tournament.
I am just going to list out some of the events we have been involved with this year, although this is not a complete list:
· Hats off to Chesham 9th July
· Rotary Dementia Walk on 4th September
· Peace in the Park on 17th September
· Dictionaries distributed to all year 5 pupils in local schools
· Young Chef Competition 19th November
· Frog Night 19th November
· Christmas in Chesham 25th November
· Christmas Sleigh Collections
· Chesham Music Festival in February.
· Technology Tournament on the 24th February
· Youth Awards ceremony on Sunday 16th April
It isn’t the end of this year yet. We still have coming up:
· Coronation Celebrations on the 7th May.
· Stroke awareness day on the 13th May
· Italian Car Show on the 28th May
· Chesham Carnival on 10th June
· Kids Out visit to Whipsnade on the 14th June
I asked David our treasurer for a list of our donations for just this year. It is a long list so I won’t read it out, however, over 35 organisations and individuals have received the benefit of our help financially.
As I said earlier in my speech, we only need to multiply this by 75 to see just how much Chesham Rotary contributes as an organisation.
I would like to thank all Rotarians for their hard work this year and over the past 75 years.
I am proud of the work we have done and privileged to be Chesham Rotary’s President in this its 75th year.
Thank you very much everyone and I hope you enjoy this evening.
'What We Do' Main Pages:
Please use this link if you wish to donate to Chesham Rotary
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See the letters of thanks from the children on this page
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