Rotary International Theme 2025-2026	THE ROWEL Rotary Club of Durham		Rotary International President: Francesco Arezzo Rotary District 5160 Governor: Joy Alaidarous Durham Rotary President: Tom Knowles _____________ Editor: Phil Price Publisher:  Jen Liu
	September 2, 2025	Harvest Festival  2025 will be held on September 21, 2025

The Meeting Opening President Tom Knowles called the meeting to order at the Durham Park. Tom led the pledge himself. Larry Bradley then led us in singing “God Bless America”.

The Program

Larry Bradley talked about shipowners asked various members about their contacting various sponsors and potential sponsors.

The discussion about the Harvest Festival was conducted primarily by the chairperson of the Harvest Festival, Diana Selland.

She passed out a map showing the entrance at the western entrance, not the main entrance,which will be closed.  It showed the location of parking, of play areas, vendors.

There was a discussion of getting a band and chairs for the band.

There was also a discussion of the food that has been ordered and weather more should be acquired.

There was a discussion of getting helper from Paradise Rotary and Chico Rotary.

There was also a discussion of getting Interact helpers.  We expect to have many.

Next Meeting

Our next meeting, on September 21^st, will be the Harvest Festival, at the Durham Park, at 6:00 am. 

Two days after that will be a meeting at the BCCC on September 23^rd.  This will be a Harvest Festival debrief.  There will also be a Board Meeting at 5:00pm before the meeting.  

Membership

Bring guests who you think you can interest in becoming a member. We Need More Members! Your dinner and your guest’s dinner will be paid for by the Club.  Also, bring a guest to one of our occasional social gatherings.

President Tom is asking the members to bring in new members this year.

Go to the following Rotary International web site for information on membership development:  https://my.rotary.org/en/learning-reference/learn-topic/membership .  From this website there is access to membership development and other related information.

The Rotary Foundation Donations

You can make a difference in this world by helping people in need. Your gift can do some great things, from supplying filters that clean people’s drinking water to empowering local entrepreneurs to grow through business development training.

The Rotary Foundation will use your gift to fund the life-changing work of Rotary members who provide sustainable solutions to their  communities’ most pressing needs. But we need help from people like you who will take action and give the gift of Rotary to make these projects possible.

When every Rotarian gives every year, no challenge is too great for us to make a difference. The minimumgift to The Rotary Foundation is $25.00.   An annual $100.00 gift is a sustaining member.  Once your donations accumulate to $1,000 you becomea Paul Harris Fellow.

If you have any questions, ask Steve Heithecker.

It is possible to learn more about The Rotary Foundation on the Rotary web site. 

Your gift can be made online or by sending Jessica Thorpe a check made out to The Rotary Foundation to Durham Rotary, P.O. Box 383, Durham, California 95958.

From Rotary International’s News and Features Website

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{Note that the following is not be the complete article.  See the complete article onRotary International’s web page.}

A Rotary Scholar’s book encourages children to live their dreams

By Geoffrey Johnson

For her eighth birthday, Janet Chvatal had a date with the devil. “My mother took me to my first opera when I was 8 years old,” a grown-up Chvatal explains. “It was Goethe’s Faust, the French version by Charles Gounod. It was so intense, with Marguerite taken down to hell and the devils dancing around — and then she sings to the heavens and is released because she’s a pure soul. It was a visual and aural extravaganza, the likes of which I had never seen. All I wanted to do from then on was be involved somehow in the arts.”

Her Ambassadorial Scholarship helped prepare Janet Chvatal, an honorary member ofthe Rotary Club of Beaverton, for her musical career.

Image credit: Jürgen Schall

Born in Florida, Chvatal grew up in Beaverton, Oregon, and though she fulfilled her hope of a life in the arts, things didn’t go exactly as planned. “I dreamed of being a concert pianist,” she says. “And then I got into high school and discovered that classical pianists have to practice 10 to 12 hours a day. Singers, however, can only practice four to five hours. So I decided, I think I’ll be a singer instead.”

A straight-A student and a self-described “Streber” — a German word that Chvatal defines as someone who strives to excel — she strode resolutely toward her goal. After winning several competitions in high school, she was invited to attend an exclusive vocalization workshop in California along with other topt eenagers from around the country. “I was sure that I was going to be a little fish in a big pond,” confesses Chvatal. Instead she turned out to be one of the workshop’s most promising students.

With her sights set on attending a college with a top program for vocal study,Chvatal knew one thing for sure. “I wanted to get out of town as soon as possible,” she says. “I hadn’t yet fully appreciated what Beaverton had given to me.” That realization would come with time.

In 1986, Chvatal concluded four years of studies at one of those top schools —Boston University College of Fine Arts — which she attended on scholarship and graduated summa cum laude. (“My Streber instinct was still there.”) While at Boston, she took workshops with the Belgian bass baritone José van Dam and the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein. Chvatal says they both imparted the same message: “Girl, you must get to Europe!”

Janet Chvatal

• Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship, University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, 1987
• The Phantom of the Opera, Vienna debut, 1990
• The Wish Prince Project, 2019-present. Learn more

What they didn’t say was how she might accomplish that financially. “Between my junior and senior year in college, I began applying for scholarships,” says Chvatal. “I thought about the Fulbright — and then I discovered the Rotary Clubof Beaverton.” With help from club member and future district governor Larry Huot (who died in 1998), Chvatal secured a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship.With that, she was able to continue her studies at her school of choice: Die Hochschule fuer Musik und Darstellende Kunst (University of Music and Performing Arts) in Vienna.

“It was a quantum leap into a new world,” Chvatal says. “I was able to continue my dream of honing my talent there. It provided the final stage of learning that I needed to master my craft. I don’t know how I would have done it without Rotary. I’ve been a fan and deep appreciator ever since.”

Janet Chvatal stars as Christine Daaé in The Phantom of the Opera

Courtesy of Janet Chvatal

As a professional singer, Chvatal continued to excel. In 1990, she made her debut in Vienna as Christine Daaé in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera, and she followed that with more leading roles in operas and musical theater, as well as a masterful string of recordings. She also raised two children, Cypress Joseph and Naia Leone, who are both Rotary Youth Leadership Awards grads. (“It changed their lives,” says their mother.)

Today Chvatal lives in Füssen, a German city in the Bavarian Alps watched over by  Neuschwanstein Castle, the fairy-tale structure that inspired Sleeping Beauty’s castle in Disneyland. “It’s an extraordinary place to live,” she says, “and Iam so blessed to now make my permanent home there.”

But Chvatal hadn’t forgotten Beaverton. “From the moment I learned the term Service Above Self,” she says, “it has remained one of the beautiful, haunting voices inside my mind.” Now she began to wonder how she could “put tools into the hands of children so they could live their dreams and reach their goals.”

In Germany, Chvatal wrote and produced Der Schwanenprinz; from that musical sprang a book called, in its English edition, The Wish Prince. The enchanting fairy tale encourages children to live their dreams; a 15-pageaddendum, which highlights “5 Crown Steps,” demonstrates how, with the help of a parent or a trusted friend, children can make those dreams come true. To date, Chvatal has given away about 20,000 copies of her book, including 5,000 that she is presenting to children under the auspices of the Wish Prince Project, an endeavor she launched in 2019 with her old friends, the Rotary Club of Beaverton.

Today, on her return visits to Beaverton, Chvatal visits grade-school classrooms with Rotary members. Clad in a traditional Bavarian dirndl, she goes through the book with the young students; she even sings them her song about the Wish Prince. Finally, she turns to the last pages of her book and relates a lesson from her life. “I tell the students that I wanted to tell a story, but that you never do anything alone,” says Chvatal. “You always need help, and these are the people who helped me reach my dream of writing this book for you.”

First names on the book’s list: three Beaverton Rotarians — Ralph Shoffner, Doug Taylor, and Maureen Wheeler — as well as a shoutout to the whole club, which, by sponsoring Chvatal’s Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship, launched the Streber-striving soprano’s career and helped make her dreams come true.

This story originally appeared in the September 2025 issue of Rotary magazine.

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