In 2017-18, we’ll answer the question “What is Rotary?” with RI President-elect Ian H.S. Riseley’s theme, Rotary: Making a Difference. “Whether we’re building a new playground or a new school, improving medical care or sanitation, training conflict mediators or midwives, we know that the work we do will change people’s lives — in ways large and small — for the better.”

W. GREGORY WIMS   –  District Governor 2016-2017

Gregory Wims is a local businessman and community activist who founded the Victims’ Rights Foundation (VRF) in response to the senseless killings of three Washington, D.C. area women in 1996. Moved by the grace of God, Gregory is dedicated in supporting victims and their families of violent crimes and attacks. He was instrumental in forming and supporting the Sniper Victims’ Fund in response to the sniper attacks in the Washington, D.C. metro area in 2002.

In the grand scheme, however, he is really a man with a long volunteer career and a burning desire to bring comfort and aid to those in need. In the last 50 years, he has raised more than $1 million dollars, logged more than 900,000 miles, and volunteered more than 38,000 hours.

He began his volunteer career in 1969, when he was elected vice president of the State of Maryland Youth Commission. The next year, as president of that organization, he played a pivotal role in lowering the voting age from 21 to 18. In the 1970s, he served as the youngest person ever to be appointed by the County Executive as Commissioner of the Montgomery County Maryland Human Relations Commission. In that role, he worked with community officials to hire the first African American to the police department.

From 1974 to 1976, he was the first male Head Start teacher in Montgomery County, Maryland. In 1976, Gregory Wims became the first African American in Montgomery County to work for a member of Congress, the 8th Congressional District. In the 1980s, he led the Social Concern Committee at Goshen United Methodist Church and set up a prison ministry program. He also was the founder of the United Brothers, Inc., organized the first “gun turn-in” program in Montgomery County, and chaired the “Get Out to Vote” campaign.

In the early 1990s, Gregory Wims served as the membership chairman for the NAACP recruiting more than 1,000 new members. In 1994, he was elected president of the Montgomery County Chapter of the NAACP, and one-year later, he was voted President of the NAACP’s Maryland State Chapter. In that role, he led more peaceful demonstrations than any previous president and organized with Janice Washington, the first federal employment task force for the National NAACP. Gregory Wims is the Past President of the Bethesda Chevy Chase Rotary Club; Past Area Governor, Bethesda Rotary Clubs.

1. Congress made Independence Day an official unpaid holiday for federal employees in 1870. In 1938, Congress changed Independence Day to a paid federal holiday.
2. Only John Hancock actually signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. All the others signed later.
3. The only two signers of the Declaration of Independence who later served as President of the United States were John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
4. The stars on the original American flag were in a circle so all the Colonies would appear equal.
5. The first Independence Day celebration took place in Philadelphia on July 8, 1776. This was also the day that the Declaration of Independence was first read in public after people were summoned by the ringing of the Liberty Bell.
6. The White House held its first 4th July party in 1801.
7. President John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe all died on the Fourth. Adams and Jefferson (both signed the Declaration) died on the same day within hours of each other in 1826.
8. Benjamin Franklin proposed the turkey as the national bird but was overruled by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who recommended the bald eagle.
9. Fifty-nine places in the U.S. contain the word “liberty” in the name. Pennsylvania, with 11, has more of these places than any other state. Of the 59 places nationwide containing “liberty” in the name, four are counties: Liberty County, Ga. (65,471), Liberty County, Fla. (8,276), Liberty County, Mont. (2,392) and Liberty County, Texas (76,571).
10. Every 4th of July the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia is tapped (not actually rung) thirteen times in honor of the original thirteen colonies.
11. The tune of the National Anthem was originally used by an English drinking song called “to Anacreon in Heaven.” The words have nothing to do with consumption of alcohol but the “melody that Francis Key had in mind when he wrote those words did originate decades earlier as the melody for a song praise of wine.”  http://www.colonialmusic.org/Resource/Anacreon.htm