Lafayette Rotary, partly because of the presence of Purdue University, has long had numerous contacts with Rotary Fellows, Exchange students and other people from foreign lands. Some attend the club as guests but frequently they contribute greatly to the club's programs. For instance, this year Athanasios Koralis, a Purdue student from Greece gave a most interesting talk on his native land. He told us that Greece is primarily an agricultural country but in recent years it is becoming more industrialized. Agriculture and tourism are the two greatest sources of income for the country. Then Magid Mazen, a graduate student from Egypt, addressed us telling that of their 40 million population, 8 million are in Cairo; that 55% of the population is Moslem and that 95% of the country is desert.

Susan Christoffers, an Exchange student from Germany, who had attended West Lafayette H.S. the past two years, left for home and was high in her praise of her Rotary Host Families: Larry and Jane Lane; Paul and Jane Hess; and Fritz and Leona Cohen. Then there was Mitsue Kitamura of Japan who was here for three months and was hosted by Jack and Jean Irvine duing the Christmas holidays. She presented the club with a Rotary banner from the Tokyo club.

Rotary Fellows, Alberto Cabero, El Salvador, and Richardo Fasces, Brazil, were taken by Dave Dewitt to be guests of the Hartford City Club. When 32 Taiwanese in an Exchange group were here to present a program in the Slayter Center, Lafayette Rotarians provided housing and meals for many of them. Rotary Fellow, Toshiro Abe, Japan, a student at Purdue, showed slides of his homeland and told of trips he had made while here to Mexico and to Michigan where he had won honors as a skier. "The Rotary Foundation offers the best scholarship program there is", said he. Going in the other direction were Exchange student, Penny Morris and Graduate Fellow, David Jerrison of W. L.

Annual activities repeated again this year were a successful Rotary Booth at the Park-O-Rama, chaired by Trey Reisner; the Purdue Football Kick-off Luncheon with John Totten, formerly with WHAS but now a sports announcer with WRTV, as master of ceremonies; a very successful booth at the Home Hospital Fair with Bob Neff as chairman that made sales of $2,000 and was assisted by 72 girls from Chi Omega.

The Rotary Stag was held in a barn on the Eric Holm farm. The New Member dinner was at the Lafayette Country Club and Harold Michael was again the very effective speaker outlining the history and principles of Rotary; Wayne Kirkham headed the Rotary bell ringing for the Salvation Army and Rotary topped Kiwanis by '$4,046 to $3,025. Our own Rev. Ken McCullen spoke at the Thanksgiving joint Rotary-Kiwanis dinner on "The True Meaning of Thanksgiving". The Jefferson H.S. Acappella Choir again sang an excellent Christmas program for us, 40 girls and 40 boys strong and the following week, Al Stewart with 40 members of the Heritage 75-76 chorus entertained with an outstanding musical program concluding with the club joining in on Christmas carols.

The Fellowship Dinner-Dance at Howard Johnsons, chaired by Bob Neff was a great success. District Gov. Laughlin and his wife were guests. During Holy Week, the club attended the religious services at the Mars with Pres. Wm. Smith presiding and Bob Verplank leading the singing. "Pete" Putnam chaired the Intercity Rotary-Glee club dinner and saw to it that numerous ones of our Rotarian widows were present.

At the Scholarship-Citizenship Award program chaired by Harley Griffith, Beverly Stone, Dean of Students at Purdue, told the award winning Seniors from the five Tippecanoe County High Schools, "Use your ability to stand up and say "This is right or this is wrong!" and at the Rotary-Glee Club outing, held at the Conservation Club, all 60 present had plenty of fun, refreshments, food and games, thanks to the good work of Y. B. Hall.

The Club sent Steve Koppel to Boys' State and Susan Phillips, Marvin's daughter, to Girls' State. Each week, the club had as their guests, two outstanding students from one or the other of the counties High Schools.

The Constitution was amended to fit new Rotary International rules and to change the annual meeting date to not later than the first Tuesday in December.

The club visited the new Lyn Treese Youth Straight Arrow Day Camp southeast of town. This is operated by the YMCA. The 84 youth campers, age 8 to 11, entertained us with many songs.

The Umbilical Chords, a "five man quartette" made up of Purdue Ag. staff members kept the club on its toes with a wonderful musical program filled with typical Mauri Williamson humor.

There were many excellent talks during the year and, as usual, those by our own members were among the best. John Bradshaw gave a fine message on "The Mechanics of Liberty". "The Bible is the base and structure to work with our constitution," said John, "to insure freedom, to try, to buy, to sell and to fail." Harold Taylor presented an excellent word-picture report on his recent trip to China. Mauri Williamson gave an illustrated program on Two Hundred Years of Agricultural Progress. He pointed out that our nation has gone from 92% to 6% of the population engaged in farming because of innovation and efficiency.

Other noteworthy talks included that of the new Purdue Football coach, Jim Young, who said that to be successful, the coaching staff and all players must have a great deal of pride, poise and attitude.

In our community, the biggest news story of the year was the shake up in the Lafayette Police Department in the spring of 1977. After more than a year of controversy following the special grand jury investigation, Chief Paul Butler and Deputy Chief Robert Harrington requested retirements.