Health & Fitness
Patch Blog: How the Japan Earthquake Led Me to Join Rotary
A life changing event helped me join Rotary and I want to share it with you.
A life-changing event helped me join Rotary and I want to share it with you. On March 11, 2011, my family and I were living in Tokyo, Japan. I was an expat working as an attorney at a U.S.-based investment management company. As you all know, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake hit northeastern Japan at 2:46 p.m. March 11 on a Friday afternoon, and fortunately for me and my family, I had taken the afternoon off from work so that we could get on the roads before the massive rush to go snowboarding in Niigata. Well, needless to say, we never made it to the mountains, but unlike many of my friends and colleagues who spent several hours of their lives walking home, not knowing the condition of their homes, I was safely tucked under our dining table with my family.
Though the events that followed in the several hours and days after the Tohoku earthquake will remain with us for a while, some things will stay with us forever. What followed from this horrific event was amazing outpouring of support from all corners of the world. The U.S. Military, the Red Cross, the person standing on the street corner with pocket change to spare...everyone became Japanese for that one moment, and everyone realized their own humanism.
It was through the Red Cross that I was introduced to the . I now live in San Marino, my kids go to school at San Marino schools, and so it was just natural that I would get involved with the local Rotary Club. And, I am so glad that I did!
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Just last month, on the one-year anniversary of the disaster, my wife and I had the great pleasure of notifying the Rotary Club of North Sendai (Sendai being one of the cities hit hard by the quake) that San Marino Rotary would be making a sizeable donation to this local Rotary Club. It was such a great feeling and I can only imagine how the North Sendai club members felt about receiving the support from the small town of San Marino, CA and its devoted Rotary members.
It is moments like these, that motivate me to blog about Rotary...
