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The Indianapolis Rotary John Henry Weidner Award
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The Rotary Altruism Award
In 2006 the Rotary Club of Indianapolis established the John Henry Weidner Award for Altruism to be presented to college students selected for their altruism by fellow students.
Who was John Weidner, and why such an award? John Weidner, a Dutchman, was in Paris when German forces invaded Holland in 1940. Beginning in 1942 John and as many as 300 collaborators effected the rescue of almost 1000 refugees from Nazi tyranny , nearly 800 Jews and 200 downed Allied Airmen, by aiding their escape through France to Spain and Switzerland. The Gestapo twice penetrated John’s “Dutch-Paris” line and among those arrested was Gabrielle, John’s sister, who died in Ravensbruck.
In 1955 John moved to Monterey Park, California and soon thereafter joined the Rotary Club of Monterey Park where he became a Paul Harris Fellow. He retained his membership until the late 1970’s.
I was asked to join the Board of the Weidner Foundation in 2005 while I was an adjunct professor at Butler University in Indianapolis, volunteering also as faculty representative with the Student Sociology Association(SSA). The Weidner Board asked that I introduce the study of altruism as part of my responsibility at Butler, and I chose to do that with the SSA. The students in SSA had an immediate and unexpected response – no – they didn’t want to study altruism, they wanted instead to seek it out among Butler students and reward it with a scholarship
The students – Stephanie Hansen, Katie Reasoner and Karen Montgomery –and I learned quickly that an endowed scholarship required funding of $25,000, though there was no deadline to raise it. Collectively, we made a deposit, and got started.
Enter Rotary. I have been a Rotarian since I joined in Honolulu in 1981 and am currently a member of the Indianapolis Club. I approached the Indianapolis club with the idea of “tiding us over” while we raised the endowed amount and at the same time recognizing “Service Above Self” in a more tangible way. The Club agreed and budgeted a $1500 award for presentation to a deserving Butler student. The SSA students sought applications from the student body, studied them and chose Katie Doane, an education major at Butler, as the first recipient. Katie organized 100 Butler students to participate as Big Brothers and Big Sisters in elementary schools in the Butler vicinity.
With help from matching funds from Butler University, the John Weidner Endowed Scholarship for Altruism was funded at the end of 2007. For its part and because of the positive effect on the Rotary mission, the Indianapolis Rotary Club continued to fund the Weidner awards which now include the University of Indianapolis, and Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis(IUPUI) . A student group at the University of Indianapolis, with Rotarian Matt Will the faculty advisor, and the Rotaract Club of IUPUI solicited the applications and chose the winners. In October the Rotary Club of Madison, Indiana voted to fund a Weidner Altruism award next Spring at Hanover College. To date, eleven students have received these Weidner Awards at four universities and colleges.
Katie Doane, who graduated from Butler in 2008, is in her third year teaching English as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mozambique. Jessica Jackson, the IUPUI Weidner award winner this year, described her “call to service” as having been set for her at an early age by the example of her parents, both in the service of the United States Air Force.
The character of these Weidner Award winners is as if they listened to John Weidner in 1940 when the Germans began the invasion of Holland, then Belgium and then France. “During our lives, each of us faces a choice: to think only about yourself, to get as much as you can for yourself, or to think of others, to serve, to be helpful to those who are in need.”
This simple program of recognizing “Service Above Self” can easily be established in any Rotary Club in any College town. My personal belief is that a great amount of the satisfaction and learning that comes from this experience is gained by the students who are choosing the award winners. Their exposure to repeated examples of altruism indelibly marks them.
