Rotateller Rotary Club of Owego, NY
Tuesday, September 5, 2006 Gary Williams, Editor

Annual Family Picnic

There isn’t much to report from tonight’s meeting. The committee did an excellent job. It was good to get to speak with some people who I almost never have the chance to speak with unless we have one of these get-togethers.

I will take just a couple of minutes to share an experience which we had this past weekend in Birmingham, AL. We visited the Civil Rights Museum. Many of us are old enough to remember those events – at least as seen on TV. What is harder to do is to remember the feelings of things in the past. In this case, strong feelings are stimulated again. It is hard to believe that in our country which prides itself on greater freedom and a better democracy than any other nation in the world, we didn’t rule against segregation in schools until 1954. And the voting rights bill did not pass until 1965.

Many people in this country are working to make it the best that it can be. We need that effort. Progress doesn’t happen without it. As soldiers and Marines are dying in Iraq, people died in AL and other parts of the South. While it was a wonderful accomplishment, when would it have happened without those sacrifices?

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