Special Rotary Guest

Etta Leedy is on her way

"Murder at Tulip Time" 

Myron Kukla worked as a Holland area reporter for the GR Press for many years. It was during a Holland City Council Meeting, where the discussion was about appropriate punishments for tulip destruction, that he got the idea for this book. He couldn't get the idea of finding a body in the tulips at the beginning of the festival out of his mind. He wrote the beginning of the book a few days after the meeting. Shortly after, he wrote the book's ending. However, it took 10 years from the original concept to the book's publication earlier this year.

Myron moved from writing for a local newspaper to writing for MLive (the online news provider), to retirement. He feels that the timing of his leaving journalism was fortuitous for him. He continues to write a humor column.

Myron sent his manuscript to many publishers and received rejections from all of them. A friend of Myron offered suggestions to improve the readability. In the end, he decided to self-publish it in time for this year's Tulip Time. The Amazon Self-Publishing division has made it very easy and cost-effective to publish.

“Murder at Tulip Time” is available in paperback at Reader's World, Barnes & Noble, and Brewery 4 Two 4. The e-book version is available online through Barnes & Noble.

A gentleman by the name of Arch Klumpf joined the Cleveland Rotary Club in 1911.  He fell in love with Rotary and went on to become one of Rotary International’s most famous individuals, becoming President of Rotary in 1916.  He established something that has become synonymous with the good work Rotary is able to do by suggesting Rotary create an endowment “for the purpose of doing good in the world.”  
 

This initial proposal led to the official establishment of the Rotary Endowment Fund, which later became The Rotary Foundation in 1928. It all started in 1917 when, during the Rotary Convention in Atlanta, Georgia, he formally proposed the creation of an endowment to support charitable, educational, and community development initiatives.  The Kansas City, Missouri Club made the very first donation of $26.50 – which was money they had left in their budget at the end of the year. 
 

Donations were slow to come in those first few years, but that didn’t stop the idea of what the Foundation could do, and eventually, in 1929, a Board of Trustees was established, with Arch Klumph serving as the first trustee chair. The Foundation made its first gift that year -- $500 to the International Society for Crippled Children.
 

But money was still slow to come in and it wasn’t until 1947, when Paul Harris died, that very substantial contributions to the Foundation were made from all over the world in his memory, significantly boosting the Foundation's resources. This period also saw the launch of the Foundation's first program, Graduate Fellowships, later known as Ambassadorial Scholarships.