Grand Bay resident seeks new Longboat Rotary Club chapter

Grand Bay resident Sydelle Pittas is seeking “maybe a dozen people who might be brave enough to think of starting a new enterprise.”

Their mission: form a new Longboat Key Rotary Club.

Pittas, a retired attorney who recently moved to the Key from Massachusetts and a 20-year Rotarian, thinks many Longboaters might be interested in the club.

“I’m told there was a Rotary Club here for a while, that didn’t last,” Pittas said. “But that was then and this is now, and I’m betting there are people right here who would be excellent Rotarians — they have time and resources, ideas and energy, and are eager to be involved in forming and sustaining this kind of enterprise.”

The new club will be a sunset club that meets at 5:30 p.m. Wednesdays in the Court Room of Longboat Key Club’s Tennis Gardens facility.

Longboat Key had a Rotary Club from 2002 until the late 2000s that met for luncheons at the Longboat Key Hilton Beachfront Resort. Its projects included distributing dictionaries to elementary school students and collecting canned goods for Meals on Wheels.

Marilyn Bezner, president of the former club, said Longboat Key has many past Rotarians who also belonged to Rotary clubs in other states.

“My problem with the club was very simple,” Bezner said. “I didn’t have a good enough nucleus year-round.”

Pittas said the Rotary Club depends on its members, along with its local district and Rotary International, to develop project ideas.

“One of the things that I would like to see the members do is focusing on new generations and think of the ways we could work with teenagers and young adults to help them develop life skills they could use in the world,” she said.

To become a chartered club, Pittas will have to recruit 25 members.

The Kiwanis Club, which, like the Rotary Club, aims to help children, has a long history on the island. (One Kiwanis Club formed in 1972, and a second formed in 1984; the groups merged in 1990 and officially became the Kiwanis Club of Longboat Key in 1999.)

Kiwanis Club of Longboat Key President Richard Crawford, who is also part of the Rotary Club of Sarasota, said the groups are not rivals.

“I’m sure some people try to throw that in there in a friendly way, but people in both clubs who I know focus on what’s good for the community,” he said.

If you go
Longboat Key Rotary Club kickoff meeting
When: 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 26

Where: Court Room at Longboat Key Club’s Tennis Gardens facility, 3100 Harbourside Drive

RSVP: Sydelle Pittas, 487-7328 or [email protected]

Contact Robin Hartill at [email protected]