If you check out this issue’s Neighborhood Magazine cover (page 29), you’ll find out how the New Tampa & Wesley Chapel Neighborhood News Pirates took home the gold in the 2014 Rotary Spelling Bee held at the Tampa Bay Golf & Country Club in San Antonio.
One of the members of that winning team was my fellow Wesley Chapel Rotary Club member Dane Parilo. Dane will freely admit that he had little to do with our team winning the “Bee,” but when he said “I feel kind of useless right now,” because he wasn’t really helping us win, I thought about something that happened the day before the Spelling Bee that let me know that whether or not he could spell “verisimilitude,” Dane is anything but useless. In fact, he epitomizes the “Service Above Self” spirit of Rotary way more than yours truly.
As this issue is reaching your mailbox, not only is Dane in Honduras (for the third time) with eleven other members of our club (providing water purification units for the poor families there), this year, he brought along his 15-year-old son Preston, a charter member of the new Rotary Interact Club at Wiregrass Ranch High (WRH). He wanted Preston to understand why the work the club is doing (in conjunction with Pure Water for the World) is so important and to better understand why we are blessed to live in a country where virtually no one lives without access to safe drinking water.
Prior to joining the Wesley Chapel Rotary five years ago, Dane was a member of the San Antonio (FL) Rotary, and served as that group’s president for two years (2007-08). A senior financial consultant who lives in Wesley Chapel, Dane has served on the Board of the club that meets for lunch at Ciao! Italian Bistro in the Shops at Wiregrass mall, helped organize the Interact Club at WRH, and has been on hand to participate in most of the club’s local service projects, often bringing along Preston and even younger son Jackson. He even hosted the club’s Super Bowl party at his home.
Our meeting on March 26 was a special one, as each of the Wesley Chapel Rotary’s 80 members (which make it one of the largest in Rotary District 6950) were allowed to bring guests interested in finding out more about the club. We packed the room with 127 people that day and president Eric Johnson had club members reading some of the wonderful letters the club has received, not only from the families we have helped in Honduras, but also from our other selected charities — the abused women and children now housed at Pasco’s Sunrise Women’s Shelter, the previously-abused children now being cared for at Everyday Blessings in Thonotosassa, the Food Bank at Atonement Lutheran Church, the group of homeless men living in the woods off S.R. 54 and Support the Troops (also on S.R. 54).
The surprise for most (including yours truly) that day was the presentation of a check (photo) by Dane to Hans and Sigrid Geissler of Morningstar Fishermen, a 14-year-old, Christian-based organization committed to sustainable living for all. The nonprofit organization trains people literally around the world to implement aquaponics as one solution to world hunger. Morningstar’s staff, volunteers and interns are all committed to a shared faith and a common understanding of how that faith is lived out day-to-day.
When I first met Hans at Dane’s Super Bowl bash, Dane said Hans was one of his “heroes.” Well, he sure proved it when the check he presented that day — for $33,000! — would allow the Geisslers to pay off the remaining mortgage on the ten acres of land and the Morningstar building/home that the Geisslers built themselves (with the help of some subcontractors, although Dane says that Hans is a master plumber, electrician and builder himself) and have lived in since it was completed.
It should be noted that Dane says the money he donated isn’t actually his. A client of his created a trust for making such donations and has even entrusted Dane to pick the organization(s) to receive those donations. He said that over the last ten years (since meeting Hans at a Rotary District Assembly in 1995), he has now donated, “almost $100,000 from that trust to Morningstar Fishermen, to help them pay bills.”
Dane (at left in photo) also said that the Geisslers do not take any salary for running the organization, and Hans said, “By paying off our mortgage, we can now use whatever donations we get coming in to pay for the work we do and the trips we take to Africa and Central America to do feasibility studies in the poorest countries. We thank Dane for believing in us and our mission.”
“Believe in them?,” Dane says. “I want to see Hans on the cover of Time magazine someday!” We thank you, too, Dane!
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