October 26th Meeting

The prayer will be led by Linda Lynch

The Pledge & 4-Way Test will be led by Connie Mauney

Dick became a Rotarian in 1996, when he was asked to join the Maryville Rotary Club in District 6780 in East Tennessee. After serving in a number of Club leadership positions, and leading a Group Study Exchange Team to Brazil, he became President of the Maryville Club (2002-03).  He served as a member and subsequent chair of District 6780's GSE Committee, and for three years chaired that District's Rotary Foundation Grants Committee. In 2006, Dick and his wife, Kay who was also a member of the Maryville Club, moved to Nashville, TN.  He became a member of the Brentwood Rotary Club, and Kay joined the Nashville Club. Both are multiple Paul Harris Fellows, members of the Bequest Society and have attended a number of International Conferences. 

Dick was born in Missouri, grew up near San Francisco, and studied political science, economics and international relations at the UC, Berkeley, earning BA and MA degrees with honors. At the height of the Cold War in the early 1960's, he served in the U.S. Army as a Russian linguist in West Berlin. In 1967 he became a career member of the U.S. diplomatic corps and served tours of duty in the American Embassies in Panama, Poland, Singapore, Germany and Bolivia.  While serving at State Department headquarters in Washington D.C., he traveled to over 75 counties on negotiating, fact-finding and trouble-shooting missions. He was the United States Ambassador to Bolivia from 1991 through 1994. He speaks several languages and retired from the Foreign Service in 1995.

In addition to his passion for Rotary, Dick is an avid sportsman who enjoys hiking, mountaineering and backpacking. In 1996 he "thru-hiked" the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine with his dog "Happy."  He then began a quest to get to the highest point of each of our 50 states, which he completed in 2004 when he got to the top of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Dick and Kay have five adult children in their blended family, 5 grandchildren and share their home with a very lively Labrador retriever, Happy Too.