District 5240 has no shortage of outstanding Rotarians whose service to humanity can serve as an inspiration to all of us.
This Rotary year, we plan on recognizing and sharing their inspirational journey.
Each of the 12 Groups in the District has been assigned one month in the Rotary 2019-20 year for the Assistant Governor and Presidents to select one Rotarian of Action in their Group.
For the month of January the Rotary Clubs selected as their Rotarian of Action to be Mary Meyer Lundstrom.
In recognition of “doing good in the world”, Mary will be presented with a Paul Harris Fellow Recognition.
Mary Meyer Lundstrom, Rotary Club of China Lake
Mary is the member we feel best deserves to be nominated for the Rotarian of Action Award.
First, a little background on Mary. Mary is a 30+ year member who has served as Club President and has held several positions on the club board of directors. She is currently serving as the Program Chair, and really works hard to find great, informative speakers for the lunch meetings, and she is committed to making Rotary a welcoming, friendly meeting place. Mary is a multiple Paul Harris Fellow and a significant contributor to the Rotary Club of China Lake Charitable Foundation. Mary is always ready to host club social events at her home and has hosted an official reception for a District Governor. She has been responsible for a successful international project that involved an R.I. International grant. Those are just a few highlights from her past Rotary involvement. What makes her a Rotarian of Action is that she is still extremely active in the club and community.
Mary is active in identifying and leading efforts for community service projects; including food drives for a local Food Bank, Coat Drives for winter for those in need, supplies and funds for the local animal shelter, and a book drive for a local long-term care facility. Mary’s most recent effort is to help organize the club’s Earthquake relief efforts. In all of these projects Mary:
1) Coordinates volunteers
2) Places donation boxes in strategic locations around town and then picks them up as they are filled
3) Coordinates with the local churches and Salvation Army for dates and locations to hand out the donations
4) Sorts the donations and gets them ready for distribution
5) Delivers the donations to the charity, or in the case of the coat drive, Is on hand on the appointed day to distribute the coats to those in need
6) If District Grants are involved, and there have been on at least half of her projects, Mary wrote the grant application and prepared and submitted the final report
Here is a more detailed description of some of Mary’s projects.
Food Bank Chair- Mary organized and lead the club in collecting food for a local food bank. It was a real effort to collect the food each week from the Rotary meetings and make sure it was delivered on time to get on shelves for the food handout days.
Coat Drive Chair- Mary has served as the Chair for the last three years. Each year with her encouragement and hard work, we have brought in over a hundred coats to hand out. She works with the local churches and Salvation Army to hand out the donations to those in need each fall.
Animal Shelter Chair- Mary worked with the head of the local no-kill animal shelter to identify critical cleaning supply needs. She coordinated the collection of funds for the purchase of cleaning materials for the shelter, arranged for a District Grant to support the effort, and arranged for local press coverage of the donation of the cleaning supplies to the shelter.
Book Drive- Mary advertised the effort among her business clients and coordinated the collection of the books from them, and from club members. As a result of the effort, the library of a local long-term care facility grew from 40 books to over 400.
Earthquake Relief Effort- Mary, working alongside Jim Hoover, Patty Wharton, and David Saint Amand, is identifying families in need, contacting contractors to get estimates, and arranging for good reliable help to make the necessary repairs. She is also taking pictures of this work effort to show how Rotary is helping our neighbors.
Throughout her time as a Rotarian, Mary has been active in the club and community. She has been and still is a Rotarian of Action.
Mary has been a member of the Rotary Club of China Lake for 25 years. She has held every position in the club with the exception of treasurer…that is not a position she would excel in! Mary is currently the Speaker Chairperson. She secures about 45 speakers a year and is in her third year of doing this. She sees this as a fulfilling challenge! She was president in 2001-2002, Rotarian of the Year in 2000 and is a major donor. Some of the projects she had been involved with include: conducted bone marrow registration drives in conjunction with the Ridgecrest Regional Hospital’s Health Fair, leading a team of Rotarians in installing smoke detectors in homes of low income families, helped establish a program in Ridgecrest with a non-profit organization, A Helping Hand, to assist low income Medicare patients obtain free prescription drugs, obtained a grant to fund an avoidable blindness project for children in Sri Lanka through an International grant – teamed with a club in Sri Lanka to provide screening, glasses and medications, organized the SOS Project: Support Our Students – multi-year district grants for supplies, organized a bus trip to the Getty Museum as a fundraiser, organized a coat drive for the needy for the past 3 years, obtained district grants to help local food banks and last but not least supported the club’s earthquake relief efforts in Ridgecrest. Her favorite endeavor was rounding the troops together to enter the Desert Empire Fair parade as the Rotary Precision Briefcase Drill Team…which included training by a dance instructor!
Mary is also past president of the American Association of University Women and recipient of the Fellowship Name Grant Award. She is a member of the Ridgecrest chamber of Commerce.
In her professional life, Mary is a Realtor with Coldwell Banker. She obtained her real estate license in 1974 after graduating from college with a BA in Art. She later earned an MBA. Mary has a daughter, Tara, who graduated from UC Berkeley School of Law and is an attorney in the Bay Area.
Rotary is an important part of Mary’s life and has been a great place to make a difference and meet great people!