LAPLACE — Maybe your son or daughter has come home from school talking about the history of the flag and the handful of community members who taught them at school that day.

Maybe your elderly loved one has made you aware of the weekly bingo night or you have seen the runners winding their way through Belle Terre last year, but chances are, even if you do not know directly of the Rotary Club of LaPlace, its members have touched your life, as well as the life of your family members, over their 40 years of existence.

Beverly Harris, one of the longest serving members of the club with 15 years of service, gets right to the point of the organization.

“Our motto is simple: Service Above Self,” Harris said.

Harris, a former educator, is no stranger to public service of which the Rotary Cub is an embodiment.

The local chapter was started in 1976 by a handful of LaPlace residents and is celebrating its 40th year in existence this year. While that may seem like a long time, its parent organization, Rotary International, has been around since 1908.

Pups in the Park

The Rotary Club of LaPlace engages in an ever-growing list of local efforts aimed at improving the lives of LaPlace and St. John the Baptist Parish residents.

Perhaps the most well known of the Rotary Club of LaPlace’s outreach efforts is the annual Pups in the Park.

“It is a charity dog walk,” Rotary Club of LaPlace President Melanie Basile said. “We invite anybody who has a dog to come. They pay $10 and participate in a one-mile walk around the track. That money is usually donated, either for vaccinations for the shelter or pet adoption.”

The Rotary Club of LaPlace also holds several fundraiser drives throughout the year to provide for their main outreach programs, including the Flag Project, in which they tour every fourth grade classroom in the parish each year to teach students about the U.S. flag.

“Some of the information we go over and teach them is also on the LEAP test,” Basile said. “So it kind of helps them out and ties in.”

The flag project is one of several education related outreach efforts the Rotary Club takes on. Members also sponsor the Interact Club at East St. John High School, which aims to instill the values of community service to the parish’s youth.

“That is supposed to be students that are in high school that will eventually go to college and after college come back to the Rotary Club,” Harris said.

The biggest education outreach effort is the granting of scholarships named in memory of Eileen Gregoire, who was one of the Rotary Club of LaPlace’s most active members. The club has given out approximately 20 Eileen Gregoire scholarships in the past five years, ranging at $2,500 to $3,000 a year.

“We usually get three or four students, high school seniors from East St. John, and we give them scholarships for their fees for college,” Basile said.

The club also gives out sweatshirts to students every year, as well as engages in book giveaways.

Another Rotary Club of LaPlace initiative is engaging with the elderly. The group hosts a bingo night at least once a month a Place Du Bourg and also funds one of the retirement home’s monthly group birthday parties.

Members also participate in twice yearly parish Clean Sweep trash pickups and community beautification projects.

“We want to make sure we are responsible for a certain area of town and everybody knows on a certain day the people in the blue shirts — that is the Rotary Club and they are coming,” Basile said.

While the Rotary Club of LaPlace members may be more well known for their local efforts, they have been a large supporter on the international level in attempting to rid the world of polio.

“The eradication of polio is actually what our main purpose is,” Basile said. “We do support the Rotary Foundation monetarily. Each member donates money every year to the Polio Plus Fund.”

The local club has at times peculiar ways of raising funds at their weekly meetings held at Sicily’s Pizza.

“We collect fines every week at our meeting,” Basile said. “We call it a fund fine where you might pull something out of a hat and if you are wearing glasses, you owe a dollar. If you have on shoes, you owe a dollar. So we do try to raise money all year for that and we do donate to the Polio Plus Fund for that.”

While it may seem like a small thing, giving a dollar here or a dollar there, it adds up. The more than 34,000 local Rotary Club chapters across the country — which are much like the Rotary Club of LaPlace — have raised a combined total of approximately $1 billion to fight polio.

While the impact of the Rotary Club of LaPlace is exponential over the past 40 years, the club cannot function without new members.

Despite launching new fundraising efforts like last year’s first annual ‘Boogie in Belle Terre’ — a 5K run through the Belle Terre neighborhood to help spread the word — the Rotary Club has seen participation drop off in recent years.

If participation is low then it makes it more difficult for the club to pursue community-building efforts.

“Every fundraiser we have, the money is eventually earmarked for something,” Basile said.

“The more money we raise, the more money we give away. That is our theory.”

This year club members are planning a membership drive to help expand their efforts and reach in the community and beyond.

“We are going to have a membership gala in the next two months,” Basile said. “We are hoping that is going to take place within the next two months.”

In looking over the past 40 years and measuring the impact of the Rotary Club of LaPlace’s outreach, with more community participation who knows what they can accomplish in the next 40 years.

“We need folks to join up,” Harris said. “We want to keep our community alive where we can help as an organization. We just want to be of service.”

By Kyle Barnett