Rotary Day at the United Nations focuses on Rotary and Diabetes

by Lori McCall

Rotary Day at the United Nations - Wayne Edwards champions the need to provide diabetic children and adolescents all over the world with the means to acquire insulin, monitoring equipment, and the knowledge to successfully manage the disease.

Hometown heroes come in many disguises: soldiers, teachers, police officers, doctors, caregivers, fire and rescue workers, homemakers, and next-door neighbors. They are just ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

But what is their common denominator? Perhaps it is an attitude of humility and unpretentiousness. Not thinking they are doing anything special, they keep a low profile and hardly make a blip on the radar screen.

So let me tell you the story about a local boy who grew up with my husband in Quincy, Florida, just a 30-minute drive away from Tallahassee. Following graduation from high school, he went on to earn a finance degree as well as an MBA from Florida State University.

But his education did not end there. After fulfilling the rigorous requirements for the coveted designation of a Certified Financial Planner™ (CFP®), he founded his own company and quietly began to give back to his community.

In addition to living in Tallahassee, raising his family here, and successfully running his own business, this gentleman has been a member of the Rotary Club of Tallahassee since 1982—serving as club president in 1994 and district governor in 1999.

“FSU grad and small business owner makes good” is not the expected headline, however. Rather, this story is about diabetes and the efforts of one of our own to eradicate the disease. His name? Wayne Edwards.

For Wayne it is a very personal drama. Both his wife Betty and his son Kevin are type 1 diabetics. Betty administered her own injections until the disease progressed to the point where she is now dependent on an insulin pump, and Kevin, who has been diabetic for 21+ years, has to give himself at least five shots a day.

Although Edwards had been approached during the second half of his club presidency to help raise funds for diabetes education and awareness, it wasn’t until he was elected governor of Rotary District 6940 that he was able to respond to this request from Dr. Larry Deeb, a fellow Rotarian and member of the International Diabetes Federation (IDF).

Wayne Edwards receives a congratulatory handshake after speaking before the United Nations Assembly in his crusade against diabetes

After choosing diabetes as the focus of his one-year term, Edwards began his crusade in earnest. “Larry, my wife, and I started the Pink Pig project. We visited 40 clubs in our district and gave each a piggy bank. At the end of the year, just from the loose change collected at meetings, we were amazed that $25,000 had been raised,” he stated. 

In 2000, Pink Pig funds were combined with money secured through a Matching Grant from The Rotary Foundation and donated to the IDF’s newly established “Life of a Child” program. Three years later, Edwards and Deeb traveled to Bolivia to partner with the local Rotary Club of Quillacollo, establishing eight clinics across the country with money from the Pink Pig project. These clinics provide more than 100 children with free clinical care, insulin, syringes, glucose monitors, and diabetes education.

During our vacation to Australia a year and a half ago, my husband and I visited the Rotary Club of Sydney Cove. These Rotarians meet every Friday at 7:30 a.m. on board a Captain Cook cruise ship docked at Wharf #6 in Circular Quay. Imagine my surprise when I was asked if I knew Wayne Edwards of Tallahassee, Florida. It seems that he had made a presentation on diabetes to their club the year before.

In November of 2008, Edwards was chosen from more than 1.2 million Rotarians in the world to represent Rotary International (RI) at a high-level diabetes workshop in London. And he hardly had time to catch his breath when he was off to New York City as a featured speaker for “Rotary Day at the United Nations.”

Here in the Big Apple, Edwards addressed the need to provide diabetic children and adolescents all over the world with the means to acquire insulin, monitoring equipment, and the knowledge to successfully manage the disease.

The part of my narrative that very few readers may be aware of, however, is all the personal time Edwards has spent and the out-of-pocket expense he has incurred in his war against diabetes. And when the hat is passed for other causes, Wayne’s generosity is unsurpassed.

Among other community involvement, Edwards is a member and past president of the FSU School of Theater Patrons; he serves on the Board of Directors for the Community Foundation of North Florida as chair of the Investment Committee; and he is on the Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare Foundation Advisory Council. Wayne has also made guest appearances on WCTV Business and Finance and was a former columnist for the Tallahassee Democrat and Knight Ridder News Service.

Also recognized for his generous contributions and outstanding work as a Rotarian, Edwards received the prestigious “Frederick Clifton Moor Award” in 1997 and both “The Rotary Foundation Certificate of Meritorious Service” as well as Rotary International’s “Service Above Self” Award in 2004.

Wayne Edwards lives “service above self” every day, in every way. Now you know why I wrote this story.