Spotlight on Rotarian Neal W. Cox

You joined Rotary in 1967 and we hear you’ve been active ever since.   Let’s put it this way: you know the “Rule of 85,” where you get out of attendance if your age and years of membership add up to that number?  Well, add my age to my years of service, and we’re pushing 150!  I get a chuckle out of that one, when I think about it.

 

What brought you to this organization?  I originally joined Rotary because a lot of my friends were in it.  My family was living in Wethersfield at the time.  Shortly after that, I moved to Rocky Hill, which didn’t have a club.  So we changed the name of my club to Wethersfield-Rocky Hill, and that helped to attract some new new members.

 

Tell us a little about your background.  I started out professionally in home appliances in New Britain.  Then I moved my family to Arkansas, where my employer had opened a plant.  From there, they sent a few of us back to New England to open a plant here.  That company later went under.

 

We hear you were very active in Youth Exchange (YEX) over the years.  Well, that’s true.  It might interest you to know that at one time District 7890 ran a YEX program jointly with District 7980 [covering Southern Connecticut].  We had around 70-80 kids participating in the program annually.  I’m talking mid to late seventies here.   You know, we’d actually charter airplanes out of JFK and all the students would leave from there.  I wish we could build that program up again now.  It’s a great one.

 

And how did you get into YEX?  That was a nice story.  How it happened was that my two sons had been in it.  One went to Belgium and the other ended up in Norway.  My son who went to Belgium was just sixteen.   At one point he calls me and says “Dad, someone gave me a bunch of cigars, can I bring those back legally?”  Hah!  Well, those were different times.   Now, my other kid was a jock.  I remember when we got him to JFK for the flight to Oslo, and he saw all these gorgeous young women, he said, “Norway’s gotta be full of beautiful girls!”  Well, when he got over there, they took him straight up into the hills.   He ended spending a year with the elk and the reindeer, among the fjords.  Still he loved it.

 

I was so impressed with YEX that as a Rotarian I volunteered to help run the program for many years.  Then they asked me to be District Treasurer, so I did that for a number of years.

 

How about Group Study Exchange (GSE)?  Yep, did that too.  At one point the District was selecting leaders for a GSE to Argentina, and my wife and I were selected to take a group over there for six weeks.  It was an amazing experience.  We were right there with the locals, learning from the way they did things.  And the Argentinians took us around as honored guests.  There were dinner, banquets – we met all kinds of people.  It was wonderful.

 

Only, when I got back and had some suggestion for how to improve GSE, they made me chair of that committee!  So I did that for some time as well.

 

And at some point you were elected District Governor.  That must’ve been even more work.  I was happy to take it on.  That was in ‘92-‘93.  And we got a lot done that year.  But they weren’t finished with me even then.  In the years after that I served as chair of the Foundation Committee and then chair of the Grants Committee.

 

Sounds like you gave a lot to Rotary, but got a lot back as well.  That’s very true.  Actually that relationship continued long after I retired professionally.  At that time I signed up for something called International Executive Service Corps (IESC).  This non-profit outfit works closely with Rotary.  They solicit professional talent of all sorts from all over the country.  They put your CV in their computer and connect your skills with the needs of developing countries.  I was in the database as a foundry engineer and through IESC, I was sent to Ukraine, Morocco and Thailand.

 

Those are some pretty exotic destinations.  Ukraine’s been in the news a lot.  How was that experience?  Ukraine was especially interesting.  It was after the breakup of the USSR and the old Soviet companies were being turned over to the newly independent countries.  So this foundry I was send to improve had been turned over to Ukraine.  My job was to help get the foundry going again, which involved a lot of problem solving because they were low on all kinds of parts.  My wife was a CPA, so she started helping them get their books in order.

 

One day some government suits showed up and said “we’ll sell this factory to the workers for pennies on the dollar.  And if you pay a little more, you can even be a boss.”  Well, a few of the employees paid in and did become bosses.  And then they realized they were in trouble – when the tax collector showed up!

 

Is there anything you haven’t done because of Rotary?  You know, Rotary has been good to me.  It’s been a very important part of my life.  And when you give to it, it gives back to you.  There are all kinds of things we can do, even now, to help grow this organization.