Making Basil proud -a tribute to the founder of Rotary Grantham Swimarathon

19 days to go. Our Marathon Swimarathon weekend is now over, and at today's club meeting there was a very special atmosphere. The 6 members of the Rotary Rollers swimming team, including 3 members in their 60s and 70s who had each swum in all but 1 of the 23 years of swimarathon were awarded their event t-shirts and team photos.

Event chair Roger Graves stood up and read out a very special note.

It was written by the daughters of the late Rotarian Basil Blackham, who passed away in July 2011 aged 86. Basil was a member of the Rotary Club for 40 years, President 1982-1983 and was the man who first introduced Swimarathon to our town 23 years ago, having seen the event idea at a club in Somerset.

They wrote of how proud he would be , looking down from the heavens, seeing swimarathon going from strength to strength. For the large part of 22 years Basil ran the event, and he never missed a single swimarathon.

As a prospective new member visiting the club in December 2010, I will always treasure the way Basil, one of the elder-statesmen of the club, made his way over to me and gave me the warmest possible of welcomes. As I'd been told that the dress code regulations were a little more relaxed, I'd left my tie off for this first meeting. In the most gentle way possible, Basil suggested that wearing a tie was something I might consider for the next meeting as a mark of tradition, and from that day onwards out of total respect for him, I always wear a suit and tie. When I was inducted into the club, I'll never forget him coming over and handing me his much treasured book about the history of Rotary of written by a long serving secretary of RIBI. That spirit of recognising the need to look to the future but always understanding where we've come from, inspired me to become a member of the Rotary Global History Fellowship. He truly was a remarkable gentleman in every sense, and Roger's tribute reminded us all of the importance of honouring his memory.

As you'll see from this moving Tribute to Rotarian Basil Blackham Basil was also a much travelled Rotarian visiting clubs in an amazing 45 countries during his years as a member.

I'm sure he would be as proud as anyone could possibly be of how our incredible Rotary family have helped us to share the event with every corner of our globe. We have just under 3 weeks to go now to Global Swimarathon - we've come so far now - let's make this the greatest coming together of Rotary clubs in the history of our organisation. Each and everyone of us taking part has the power to make it happen , and together we will.

Thankyou.