September 2019
Key Club did not exist at my high school while I was there. The year after I graduated from Aiea High School, my former Japanese teacher and second mother, Ruby Sonomura, started up the Key Club. Years later, I told her I was hired as a counselor at Leilehua High School. She did not miss a beat and immediately told me to help her old friend Keith Fukumoto, the Key Club Advisor at Leilehua, with the Key Club. That was the beginning of my association with the K-Family and with each passing year, my understanding, commitment and involvement with the Kiwanis Family deepened culminating with my Presidency this past year.
As I reflect on my year as the President of our small but mighty Kiwanis Club of Pearl Harbor, I am amazed and impressed with the tremendous amount of volunteer hours our club performs each year. Although our name is the Kiwanis Club of Pearl Harbor, our membership stretches from the East in Honolulu to the North in Wahiawa and to the way out West in Waianae. Our club members give willingly of their time to volunteer whenever needed, supervise, attend meetings, plan events, take pictures, update our Website, fundraise, create videos, make phone calls on specific dates to reserve our meeting site, answer emails, compile and file reports, work with other organizations and Kiwanis Clubs, and countless other ways to serve our schools and communities. Without this wonderful group of volunteers, the five Key Clubs we sponsor would need to find another sponsoring Kiwanis Club, would not be able to do many of their service projects, and would not be able to attend conferences to name a few.
With that I would like to express my sincerest and most heartfelt thank you so very much to the members of our Kiwanis Club of Pearl Harbor! Your unwavering commitment to serve and to our club, your enormous heart of gold, and your tremendous patience with me as your President continues to make our small club one of the mightiest volunteer organizations I am extremely proud to be a member of!
~ Judy Watanabe