--First, no one can be a Rotarian who is not a member of a profession or classification which the club has decided that it wants to be represented among its membership.

--Secondly, anywhere in the world a man invited to join a Rotary Club must be  a leading  member of the desired profession. Normally, he must be in an executive position within his organization and his executive role must be readily apparent to people outside his organization -- most specifically to the Rotarians who invited him  to join their club in large part because they want not just him but also his profession in their ranks.

--Thirdly, his organization, firm or company must be succeeding.  A man may be  a wonderful individual, saintly, beloved by wife and children. But if he is not a successful executive, sole proprietor, partner or lone-wolf enrepreneur, he is not supposed to be invited to be a Rotarian. Should he lose his position within the company by being fired, by resigning or by retiring, he at once loses his eligibility to occupy his classification in his club. He therefore loses his right to remain a member of his club. Furthermore, if his company goes bankrupt or dissolves itself, the Rotarian also loses his right to his classification and therefore to his membership in a Rotary Club. Rotary is not for the unemployed.

This posture reveals more than a little toughness in Rotary. Is this some sort of revival of the Darwinian philosophy of the survival of the fittest? What is the point which Rotary International is making? R.I. sees itself as a federation of clubs made up of professional leaders who have the confidence, freedom and even the degree of leisure and large-mindedness that flows from success.

As successes, men have earned the personal and the community prestige needed to influence other men's thinking and action, throughout wider and wider communities. Leaders can do more than most people of those things which must be done to make a better world. When the world knows that it is a Rotarian doing the talking, it also knows that that man can be trusted and has the ability and connections to get things done.

Rotary International believes that you must first achieve professional leadership before you are eligible to become a Rotarian. Rotary will do much to convert any self-absorbed, calculating professional into a caring community leader. But Rotary cannot do much for people who are not already professional leaders.

A pharmacist will not have much success in persuading an acquaintance to spend time or money organizing a computer camp for teens or support another Rotary project if that acquaintance thinks the persuader is a failure in pharmacy, a profession for which has trained for years.

A very perceptive German Lion once told me this: "In Germany business leaders often become Lions or Rotarians for the wrong reason. They see Lions service as a price they must pay for Lions prestige. But if a club deals intelligently with such a new member, he will inevitably grow into a more mature, unselfish attitude."

In any conflict between success in profession and success in Rotary, profession must come first. For failure in a profession guarantees failure in Rotary. But the opposite is not necessarily true.

So each one of us is our classification's ambassador and spokesman to our club. Thus, in a sense, I, Patrick Killough, "speak for" and should exemplify to Rotary Club Paramaribo II all diplomats in Paramaribo -- Russians, Americans, even Libyans! From Rotarians who are judges, notaries, public servants or soap manufacturers in Paramaribo we expect to see exemplary solutions to challenges facing judges, notaries, public servants and soap manufacturers worldwide. Professions, vocations are much the same everywhere. And each Rotarian embodies his profession.

Professional excellence is as much part of the definition as is his service-mindedness. No organization bests Rotary in demanding that, thourgh and on the basis of professional achievement and leadership, its members grow beyond self-centeredness and absorption in boosting family members. But to Rotarians professional excellence itself is not enough. Professional excellence, professional eminence, must become a stepping stone to wider influence for good -- locally and internationally.

President Cees Engels asked me not to conclude without saying a few words about where my Rotary classification DIPLOMATIC SERVICE USA will bring me after July 1986. My place will be Central Oklahoma, the medium-sized (80,000 souls) university city of Norman. Norman is only 17 miles from the State capital, Oklahoma City which, spatially at least, is now American's third largest metropolitan area -- after Houston and Los Angeles.   With the title of Diplomat in Residence and the academic rank of Visiting Professor, I will ponder, write, teach, lecture and research for at least one year as a member of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration within the University of Okahoma, which has 20,000 and more students.

The general arena of my research and lecturing will be "grass roots foreign policy formation." This means: can and should (and if so, 'how' should) leading thoughtful private citizens far from a national capiaal contribute to the making of their city's and county's goals and international influence?

My more specific focus will be the role of major service clubs for men and women in Central Oklahoma in grass roots foreign policy-making. It is my personal belief or at least my working hypothesis that service clubs -- all of them, everywhere

--(1) Already do much to educate their members and sensitize them to international affairs;

--(2) Can do even more as instruments of adult education in international affairs;

--(3) Can and should make their international work and linkages better known throughout their local community;

--(4) Will do more for their communities if the various club "families" or "types" (Zonta, Soroptimists, Kiwanis, etc.) consciously link up and pool their resources inter-clubs;

--(5) Will do well to embrace a project to create a national or worldwide center to study and promote service club internationalism. Perhaps someone or some private or governmental body in Central Oklahoma will volunteer to launch this project.


My wife Mary and I look forward to continued contact by letter and visits with our Rotary friends in Paramaribo and elsewhere in Surinam. Please visit us in Norman, Oklahoma if you are anywhere near us betweeen August 1986 and July 1987.

Thank you.  And goodbye.

-OOO-