Published October 2004

Everett Exchange Club begins again

By John Wolcott
SCBJ Editor

Among the oldest and most versatile community service organizations are the “service clubs,” including Rotary, Lions, Soroptimists, Elks, Kiwanis, Optimists and Zonta, to name only a few of the national groups that serve a wide variety of community needs.

One of the smallest, but with significant impact out of proportion to its size, is the Exchange Club. Formed in Detroit in 1911, Exchange has grown to 1,200 clubs and 40,000 members in the United States and Puerto Rico dedicated to crime and fire prevention, service to seniors, child-abuse prevention programs, the GIVEAKIDAFLAGTOWAVE program and the club’s famous Freedom Shrines.

In Snohomish County, there are clubs in Edmonds, Lynnwood, Snohomish and Everett, where the club is beginning over again with new members.

“Bob Long, who died recently, was a 1949 charter member of the Everett club. But many of the old timers are gone now, so we’re recruiting new members,” said Ron Sailer, one of the leaders of the resurgence of the Everett club. After being closed for two years the group now has seven members.

“Exchange clubs get behind things,” Sailer said. “The Lynnwood club founded the Little Red Schoolhouse, Work Opportunities and the Senior Center at Edmonds. The national ACE program that Bill Cosby has embraced to encourage youths to achieve excellence in their lives was started by the Lynnwood club, and the Edmonds club sponsors Deaconess because of its child-abuse prevention programs and provides signs and training materials for Block Watch meetings.”

All of the clubs support Exchange’s national Child Abuse Prevention program — formed 20 years before the subject was a national issue — and the new campaign educating the public about “shaken baby syndrome,” when children suffer from internal brain injuries from being shaken by parents or caregivers at an early age.

The Everett club recently provided flags for 400 youths to wave at an AquaSox game as part of the club’s GIVEAKIDAFLAGTOWAVE program and — like all clubs — Everett supports the Exchange Club’s national Freedom Shrine program.

Across the country, at hundreds of sites, Exchange clubs provide Freedom Shrines that feature copies of such famous documents as the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights and more than two dozen other documents, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech and President John F. Kennedy’s “Ask Not …” address.

The idea is to show Americans that “the freedoms and greatness we enjoy today were not purchased easily … and to remind them that these gifts must be cherished and protected,” according to an Exchange Club brochure on the program.

“Locally, Freedom Shrines have been established at Naval Station Everett and local high schools,” Sailer said. “It’s a great patriotic program.”

To further patriotism, youth programs, community service, leadership development and education efforts against child abuse, Sailer is spreading the word that the Everett club is making a comeback.

“I think Everett deserves to have a club, and we’ve made a start already. I think people who learn about us will join us,” Sailer said.

For more information about Exchange, visit www.nationalexchangeclub.com. More news about the growth of the Everett Exchange Club is available from Ron Sailer, 425-259-1471, or by e-mail to everettexchangeclub@comcast.net.

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