For nine years Ron
Stratton was, to OUR Elizabethtown Rotary Club, a lightning rod for improved quality programs,
productive fund-raising, challenging activities, intelligent debate,
hilarious promotions, intrepid public relations, eloquent communication
and history, and above all, zealous membership recruitment. He
was a Music Man and a Rainmaker, a Wizard of Oz and Obi-Wan-Kenobi, a
Gandalf and a Gandhi, a Shoeless Joe Hardy and a Peerless Price, a
Svengali and a Sevareid, a Peter Pan and a Peter Parker(Spiderman!), a Stormin'
Norman Schwartzkopf and a Norman Vincent Peale, all wrapped into one dedicated
and accomplished Rotarian!
Ron first visited
us on March 18th 1993, retired from 44 years of broadcasting in
September of that year, and joined our club on May 1st, 1994,
sponsored by Ann Reinhold. He immediately
jumped into the work of the club by guest editing the SPOKE twice in July, in
the absence of Dan Eshleman, giving us a hint at his word-smithing
talents.
He was inducted on
August 19th, 1994 with Mike Murphy, Beth Richardson and David Wyche,
and gave a memorable classification talk on October 21, 1994. I say memorable, because it was one of the
first times he got near the microphone, and his broadcasting personality
switched on for 30-minutes of pure entertainment—it was only a harbinger of
things to come!
His first make-up
was at a Club in Florida in January of 1995 and he managed to eke out 8 full years
of Perfect Attendance while among us!
It was the
Christmas Tree sale of 1994 that grabbed his attention. After working a shift alone, and seeing the
end result of $1700 profit for the season, Ron went to the Board and offered to
take over the sale for 1995. Using his marketing
and broadcasting background, he first had to sell US on the idea that the Tree
Sale could bring in BIG profits, and then he turned his salesmanship on the
public. What we now do with the tree
sales seems “old hat” but all we ever did before Ron was rack the trees and
take in money. These were all his innovations:
1. Moved
from a vacant lot (now Rita’s) to the Giant parking lot
2. Purchased
the tree baler, to wrap them in plastic netting
3. Acquired
the first changeable lettering sign
4. Began
the world-famous Tree Sale Countdown
5. Advertised
through VAL-PAK coupons and in the Chronicle and Merchandiser
6. Improved
overhead lighting, and convinced Giant to let an electric box be installed
7. Achieved
100% Rotarian participation in one or more phases of the sales
8. Instituted
aggressive, competitive pricing strategies
9. Wrote
volumes of instructions on how to sell, how to price and label trees, and how to use the equipment.
10. Demonstrated, at a club meeting, the
proper use of the leaf and needle blower!
The 1995 Tree Sale
Profit came in at $5000….
1996…$10,000…
1997…$15,000 and
1998…$18,000!
Among Ron’s accomplishments,
he edited the SPOKE for 6 years, chaired the Christmas Tree sale for 5 years,
founded and moderated “Rump Rotary” (a Wednesday morning coffee break at
K-Mart), created the weekly auction, collected 18 volumes of Club Archives,
authored the informative and entertaining history of the club, contributed
to become a Paul Harris Fellow, served with distinction on the Board, wrote
several new songs and revised some old sexist lyrics, and
carried the mantle of Club Rotarian of the Year.
Ron was integral to
the membership growth spurt that
occurred from 1994 to 2003 by both
directly by sponsoring 10 new members (Awad, Fetter, Garrett,
Olives, Pelletier, Rhen, Zogorski, Herr, Kegerize, & Tucker) and perhaps
more importantly, indirectly, through the overall improvement of attitude and
commitment that he inspired in our club members in that time
period.
I know that Ron
made ME a better Rotarian by his example and his relentless practice of
the 4-Way Test in everything he did. It was certainly a proud moment for
me to be made a Paul Harris Fellows on the same day as Ron in September of
1999. It was through Ron’s decision to
drop from the officer line that I was recruited to fill in, and that brought me
to the Presidency in 2002-2003-- Ron’s last year with the club. The experiences of that year forced me to
examine what Rotary really meant to me, and what being
a GOOD Rotarian really meant. Although circumstances took him
away when he moved to Red Lion, I was fortunate to benefit from Ron’s continued
advice and support during that term.
I was able to coax him to come back as a visiting Rotarian from the Red Lion Club, on May 2, 2003. I
took the liberty of proclaiming that day to be “Ron Stratton Day at
Elizabethtown Rotary” and as I look back on all that he did for the club, it
hardly seems special enough.
And so, I write
this blog post for those who knew Ron, and also for those who never had that
privilege, in the hope that his memory will be enough to stir some of us to be
a little more passionate, a little more creative, a little more evangelical, a
little more forceful, a little more innovative and a little more daring for
this wonderful idea called Rotary—an idea which Ron Stratton might have
created, had Paul Harris not beat him to it!
Tom Labagh
Past President, 2002-2003
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