My path into Rotary

By Rotary International

Kay Fisher, bottom row far right, with her Interact Club in Clemson, South Carolina, USA.

By Kay Fisher, a member of the Rotary Club of North Mecklenburg, North Carolina, USA

Growing up in the suburbs of Atlanta, I never learned how to swim, how to play the piano, or how it would feel to go to church on Sunday mornings. The opportunities were there. The new YMCA offered swim lessons, my grandparents bought me a new piano and offered to pay for lessons, and churches were close to my house. But these were all things my dad felt only “plastic people” did.

That was his word for those whose education afforded them a seemingly easy white collar life. My father had dyslexia, a condition not well understood in the 1950’s, and because of it he struggled in school. His insecurities growing up in a college town led him to drinking at an early age. As a plumber, he felt someone who didn’t get their hands dirty working was too self-absorbed on appearances and achievement to care about anything or anyone else.

When I was 13, my mother and I left him in the middle of the night. Stress from the recession of the early …read more

Source:: Rotary International Blog