Jim Young's dream of many years has finally borne fruit. I recollect that soon after I was president of the Rotary Club (1994), Jim had expressed the idea for a Rotary Room at the Library. It wasn't long after when the proposal to endow a room at the library for $25,000 was made to our club's board of directors. We looked at one another, and said - "Where can we possibly get $25,000." We didn't want to detract from our current Community Investment Program. After a few mutterings the proposal did not go very far at that time. Jim persisted. There were at least 2 additional proposals made in following years; finally this year a fertile ground was found. A resonant chord was picked up by Warren Wimer, and after a surprisingly short time, through the generosity of our club members and our community, Warren was able to raise over $31,000 - and still not impact either our Rotary Foundation or our Community Investment Program (witness the success of our charity concert, where we were able to give $25,000 to 5 different Fullerton needy concerns last week.)

For the dedication of the room, JimYoung was able to persuade Rotary International President, Rick King to attend and give his stamp of approval. Mr King's entourage included his aide, David Mooers, and Floyd Olson, a Rotary International Director. District Governor Rod Eide also joined us for the occasion. There were about 50 people present, including a significant portion of our membership, with wives, and 2 young ladies from the Fullerton High School Interact Club.

Rick King chose the occasion to express his feelings about the need for Rotary to help make this century one of peace and understanding. Rotary has a place to assist reaching out to help those in need. He spoke of a new Rotary Club in Dubai - a break through for that part of the world. This room is to be a place that CSUF students can find out more about how Rotary will help in improving the peace and understanding in the coming century. Librarian Richard Pollard then told us how the endowment of the room will be used to broaden the community outreach program of the library and the university.

After the exchange of a few gifts, the dedication broke up, and Mr King departed. As he was leaving, Wally Bartelt expressed his feelings that having a RI president visit our club 2 years in a row was a good thing that needed to be continued. Mr. King said that this would be great - all we need to do is continue doing GREAT things at our Rotary Club - i.e., double our membership, or donate $1,000,000 to RI for their work! I guess our work is cut out for us.