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Donna Burke: It’s the fellowship
City: Bremerton, Washington
Club: Silverdale
Number of children: 3 children, 8 grandchildren, and 9 great-grandchildren
Occupation: Retired retail clerk (and worked for Boeing in the Engineering Department during WWII)
Year joined Kiwanis: 1987 (officially)
Current Kiwanis position: Member
Previous Kiwanis positions: Club president, vice-president, and board positions
Other community activities/accomplishments: Central Valley Garden Club and Bremerton Elks (Donna is an officer)
Your motivation? She believes strongly in the importance of community interaction and caring for one another—especially children and the elderly. Donna has collected more than 2,600 pairs of eyeglasses for people in third-world countries through the Save Old Spectacles (SOS) program.
Why join Kiwanis? Donna’s husband died, his Kiwanis club invited her to become an honorary member.
Favorite inspirational quote: “You’re only as old as you let yourself think you are.”
Donna Burke is proof that sometimes love leads to Kiwanis. Donna was not quite 18 when she moved to Seattle to find work. World War II was raging, and she found employment working with blueprints in the engineering department of Boeing. Eventually she met—and married—an “army man.” And that army man, affectionately known by his friends as “Bernie,” introduced her to Kiwanis.
“After he started an insurance business, he became wrapped up in many organizations,” Donna explains, among them Kiwanis. She recalls her husband’s passion for community service—especially projects that benefited children’s sports programs. Bernie passed away in 1982. She became an honorary member. Then in 1987, she became an official “dues-paying” member. “Not long after, the men from his Kiwanis club called me up and asked me if I’d like to become an honorary member,” she says. She accepted, and she soon discovered she enjoyed the club—especially its fellowship. “The minute they let women in (in 1987), the club asked me ‘how would you like to become a paying member?’ At least that’s how they put it to me,” she says with a laugh. Of course, again she accepted. And when the club disbanded, she immediately joined the Silverdale Kiwanis club. “I didn’t miss a meeting.”
Why is Kiwanis so important to Donna? “What I like most is the fellowship of it all. Just the plain fellowship,” she says. There’s a little old cemetery in Silverdale, way back in the woods. Most people don’t even know it’s there … It dates back to the 1890s, and every year the club goes to clean it out … I pull weeds. It’s just a fun thing to get out in the air and do that … and occasionally a member will turn to me and ask, ‘Donna, are you OK? Do you need anything?’ and I’ll say, ‘No, I’m fine. Do you need anything?’ “We’re like one big family: Everyone cares for everyone else.”
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