Pat Starke begins his second month as this year’s Rotary Club of Coronado president, a role that comes after embodying the magic of the club for the past four decades.
Starke, 69, the club’s 99th president, said having fun, doing good things and finding new people to connect with are the three stated goals he strives for this year.
“If you’re looking for something to do to expand your social and your intellectual world as well as your service opportunities, have a look at Rotary,” said Starke. “There’s probably an outlet there for any talent you have that you want to share or you want other people to benefit from.”
The month of August also marks Starke’s 40th year as a Rotarian since his 1984 introduction to the organization in Kansas City, Missouri.
Being a Rotarian runs in the family as his daughter Vanessa was recently sworn in as president of his previous club, the Rotary Club of Blue Springs, for the 2024-2025 year.
For years, Starke has adopted the organization’s motto of “Service Above Self” while encouraging those around him in the process.
“The concept of being of service to your communities has always been near and dear to my heart. My mother always used to say ‘public service is the price you pay for the space you occupy,’” said Starke. “To make my neighborhood, my town, my community, my state, my country a better place. Rotary is the really really effective tool to do that.”
Joining during the pandemic
Starke said his family purchased property in Coronado after years of vacationing in the community, officially relocating in 2020.
That same year, Starke transferred from his previous club to the Rotary Club in Coronado.
“It’s a very very unique Rotary Club given its camaraderie, its energy and its fundamental welcomeness,” said Starke about Coronado.
But his switch into the club got off to a difficult start given the virtual accommodations presented by a global pandemic that year.
“It was a little challenging for new people coming into the club, including myself, to connect with everybody,” said Starke. “They can still participate in the meetings because we’re still providing online access…that’s been a good outcome.”
Today, Starke leads 250 club members in the upcoming 40 Wednesdays of his tenure.
“One percent of this town are Rotarians, it’s kind of hard not to go somewhere and bump into one,” said Starke.
Ongoing club projects
The Rotary Club of Coronado conducts service projects across Rotary International’s five avenues of service which include club service, vocational service, community service, youth service and international service, according to their website.
And in order to finance service projects, the club hosts four major fundraisers: Member Pledges, the Jim Laslavic Charity Golf Tournament, Low Tide Ride & Stride and Polio Plus Wine Tasting.
“We try to have some fun,” said Starke. “It’s not all serious…It’s designed to be fun.”
For now, Starke said the group is also looking to expand the club to younger generations of leaders in Coronado, because they’re the future.
“We’re going to celebrate our 100 Years of Rotary Club a year from March,” said Starke. “That committee is already meeting and the central focus of that committee is how can we celebrate our 100th birthday by making a gift [to] the city of Coronado? What should that gift look like? And I think that embodies what Rotary is really all about.”
Rewarding lifestyle
Starke speaks volumes of past, future and present projects, especially an ongoing club project that involves collecting food and personal items for the Imperial Beach Food Bank.
“It’s incredibly rewarding to know that what you’re doing allows people to eat a little better,” said Starke. “The same thing can be said for money that we raise, for example, for ending Polio.”
And Starke’s acts of kindness point to a deeper connection between his own family history and service.
The son of a career Army officer, Starke lived across the U.S. and overseas, including Austria, Germany and Iran.
Starke said his parents met at the end of World War II when the Russians entered Eastern Austria and his mother fled during her first year of medical school in Vienna.
“She knew what it was like to be very poor and like many people in my generation we grew up eating burnt toast because you didn’t throw toast away …we weren’t destitute poor, but we didn’t have lots of extra,” said Starke. “We had…a mom and a dad who were firm in their convictions about what was important and what wasn’t.”
Starke credits his Austrian mom, Heidi, for instilling the importance of community service.
“She set the example that you could do anything you wanted to but you needed to make sure that what you wanted to do was something that was good for not just you but everybody around you,” said Starke. “Even when she had all five kids at home, she was still volunteering.”
Beyond pride in his family upbringing, the retired attorney also credits his family’s significant military background for teaching him values he carries to this day.
“I was always proud of my dad,” said Starke. “It’s a family with a long history of service to country and that translates into just generally being of service.”
