District 9800 Loses a Legend: Quite a Cross to Bear!
Gerry Cross joined Rotary Launceston 31 years ago. He enjoyed the camaraderie and opportunities to help others. Later, when posted to the Solomon Islands, he joined Rotary Honiara.
For the last 20 years, his name has kept ‘bobbing up’ in Rotary District 9800 with work at Donations in Kind (DIK), such as collecting used hospital furniture, packing containers and driving the truck. He had been Chairman of DIK some years ago.
Gerry has been President of Rotary Canterbury twice, helped with local emergency projects after floods and fires, and packed meals on many occasions for the Club’s ‘ForaMeal’ project, providing nourishing food for people in need.
He has helped seven times with the Club’s highly successful Cataract Foundation project in the Philippines. In an interview with colleague Doug Hawley for an earlier edition of Networker, some 800,000 people have had their sight restored through the assistance derived from this project.
It seems that ‘No’ has never been in Gerry’s vocabulary: a fellow Rotarian observed that Gerry was always first to put his hand up to be involved at the sharp end of projects.
Gerry believes Rotary’s greatest challenge is linking with younger people, and he thinks school Parents and Friends Associations and Rover Scouts could be good recruiting grounds.
When he has had such “a wonderful time” through Rotary fun and fellowship over the years, it prompts the question of why we are losing him. Well, Gerry is moving house, and does not relish the thought of dealing with busy traffic to attend meetings after pandemic restrictions are lifted.
Will he join Rotary in his new location? The jury is still out, but the fellowship offered by both Rotary and Probus might prove attractive.
Go well Gerry, and thank you sincerely for all you have done.