BRUCE AJARI RECEIVES FELLOWSHIP AWARD FROM TRUCKEE ROTARY

(Following is the text of the Truckee Noon Rotary Club presentation in June to Bruce by Richard Anderson, Rotary member and publisher of the California Flyfisher Magazine.) “Many of you know Bruce Ajari through his fishing column in the Sierra Sun, which has been in print for close to 20 years. Others of you know Bruce as a property assessor for Placer County, or as a father and husband who has lived in the Truckee-Tahoe area for 27 years.

In that nearly three-decade period, Bruce has selflessly given back to the community. He is one of the lucky few who has turned his avocation for sports into avenues of service. As an angler, for example, Bruce helped form the Truckee Tahoe Fly Fishers, a club dedicated to advancing the camaraderie of angling and the protection of fisheries in our area.

He has been instrumental too in creating trout-in-the-classroom programs in our local schools that have young people raising fish and learning their life histories. And he was instrumental in launching the Boy Scout’s fly-fishing merit badge program here, which has had the singular and welcome benefit of giving parents a day’s respite from their adolescent sons.

As for lesser sports, Bruce has served for a number of years as a well-regarded swim coach for local youth teams, and he has taught his athletes the importance of sacrifice, discipline, and good sportsmanship. These are qualities that Bruce himself embodies, having spent untold hours and driven many miles to officiate swim meets.

Although he is modest by nature, Bruce is also a leader, and his long-standing service as a volunteer has proven his deep care for our community. It is for this reason that Bruce Ajari is being given this year’s Paul Harris Fellowship Award. Please join me in congratulating him.”

Andy Otto, club member and Truckee Noon Rotary executive, tells us that the Paul Harris Fellow recognition is awarded by the Rotary Foundation of Rotary International to acknowledge financial support to the Foundation. In this case it represents a contribution given by the Rotary Club of Truckee in the name of the Paul Harris Fellow (Ajari). The support is used to underwrite the many programs of the Foundation to build goodwill and understanding in the world. It was Arch Klumph, father of the Rotary Foundation, who said, "We should look at the Foundation as being not something of today or tomorrow,
but think of it in terms of the years and generations to come."