Rotary

Biography

Jim, a multi-generation Floridian, was born in Lake County in 1935. After an honorable discharge from the US Army in 1956, he entered the University of Florida and married Ora Jean Wiggins, a second-generation Floridian. They both graduated in 1960, he from the College of Engineering, and Jean with a Master's in Education. Jim went to work for the Trane Company in Washington, DC and LaCrosse, Wisconsin, where they started their family. The Wisconsin winters drove the family to Winter Park, Florida in 1966, where he started his own company and was first introduced to Rotary. He sold the company in 1970 and moved to Sarasota where he continued his experiences in engineering and Rotary.

Jim has served on the boards of many community organizations, most notably as a founding member of the Sarasota Education Foundation and the Florida Board of Building Codes and Standards. He also held an elected position on the Sarasota County Public Hospital Board, and is known in professional circles for his expertise in the heating, ventilating, air conditioning, and fire protection of medical and commercial facilities.

Over the years, he participated in many athletic activities, including tournament handball and racquet ball, and still swings a golf club once in a while. He held a private pilot's certificate and was a SCUBA diver and accomplished underwater photographer.

Jim and Jean have two children, Frank and Lynne, a daughter-in-law Anette, and two grandchildren. Throughout their marriage, Jim and Jean, often with the children in tow, traveled extensively. Jim says their entire family can ask for Pepto Bismol and Kaopectate in several languages.

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Personal Philosophy

SERVICE ABOVE SELF.

Consider the following concept:

If you are not a contributor to humanity, isn't it only logical that humanity would be better off without you?

Admittedly, some people take volunteer service to the extreme and neglect their business or family obligations. From a priority standpoint, taking care of yourself and your family is the most important service one can render to humanity. Businesses, by furnishing steady, good paying jobs perform a valuable service. Government institutions perform valuable services for its citizenry. But all prosperous communities have active volunteer groups that originate, furnish, finance, and/or support major social services.

LIVE TODAY WITH AN EYE TOWARD TOMORROW.

When an opportunity arises, seize it today!! Jim and Jean, by seizing opportunities, have taken their retirement a little at the time. Opportunities come in all forms, and the intriguing element is that one never knows what total effect on life the opportunity will have. The following story exemplifies the point.

The Opportunity

In 1977-78, when both children were teenagers, Jim and Jean volunteered to host a seventeen-year-old Rotary exchange student from Germany-Mike Kohn. Living with teenagers is a challenge within itself, and Jim and Jean both worked full time. The thought of taking on another teen for almost a year could, and probably should, have brought their sanity into question. But they did it. And it was a good year.

The Effects

Mike, after a very interesting year, took the long way home-via friends of Jim and Jean's in Los Angeles, Hawaii, and Milwaukee, from where he called Jim and said that he had found where he was going to spend the rest of his life-Hawaii. Mike's parents later told Jim and Jean that their son, after returning home, did a one-hundred-eighty degree turn from his post Rotary exchange habits and became a model student. He graduated high in his class, passed the test for the University of Hawaii, and now owns a successful exporting business in Honolulu.

But Mike also had a major effect on Jim and Jean's life. About ten years after Mike returned home, Jim and Jean received a letter from a young German lady explaining that she was a friend of a friend of a friend of Mike's and that she and a girlfriend would be touring the United States. Having been told that Jim and Jean had a friendly home, she asked if the two of them could make Sarasota their last stop. Jim and Jean, of course, said yes. In the meantime, Frank, their son, had won a scholarship to study in Germany and was home prior to leaving for his year in Europe. The girls' visit occurred during the week he was home.

One of those young ladies is now Jim and Jean's daughter in law and mother of their two grandchildren.

Who knows how the next opportunity will play out?

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Rotary Philosophy

1. The Object of Rotary is to encourage and foster the ideal of service as a basis of worthy enterprise, and Rotary is what it is because the local clubs and members are the most important links in Rotary's chain of service.

2. Rotary provides for one of the basic human needs: FELLOWSHIP. FELLOWSHIP with your peers, and mankind in general, is one of the higher forms of personal service-it shows others that you care. FELLOWSHIP with other Rotarians leads to additional opportunities to serve.

3. Rotary is a service club. Rotarians provide services to its members and community-local and international. Members of Rotary have the chance to do something with and for somebody else; to sense the self-fulfillment that comes with performing services to mankind; to feel the comfort of fellowship with friends.

Through these simple rules, marvelous things happen.

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