Bill Sullivan, Jr. was club president in 1973-74. As he recalls, he came very close to being the first Rotary club president to be impeached. Several highly respected members of the club had called his attention to lagging attendance recently, and urged him in no uncertain terms to "fix" it. Attendance, which was the unofficial standard by which every club president was judged at that time, was lagging far below what they considered acceptable. Those of you who know Bill, know that "duty" comes first. Also, you know that he is a strong proponent of rules and tradition as well. The most important rule at the time was that, attending Rotary meetings should be the first priority of club members. As president of the club, therefore, he felt it was his "duty" to "fix" this "lagging-attendance" problem. At the time, the answer seemed simple enough. He would need only to "feed" the ego of this distinguished group by appealing to their palates, so he casually announced that the main course for an upcoming meeting would be T-bone steaks, and invited everyone to come and enjoy. Everyone was excited, of course, and the word spread very quickly that Bill had "upgraded" the main course to T-bone steak.
Sure enough, a huge crowd showed up, fully expecting to sit down and enjoy a T-bone-steak at Bill's expense. (Don't get ahead of the story!!!) The steaks were there as promised, but to their surprise when they arrived, there was no silverware on the tables to eat them, none!
Knowing that the T-bone steaks would cost more than the regular meal, Bill crafted a novel way to cover the extra cost without distressing his budget, and, possibly, he thought, introduce some "humor" into the meeting as well. So, he secretly arranged with the president of the Lions' club to have several of his members "conveniently" seated at a table "selling the silverware for the meal". To be sure, he succeeded in increasing attendance that day, but sadly, not so much adding humor. Fortunately, the talk of "Impeachment" died down eventually, and Bill, much humbled, had to find other ways to "fix" the "lagging-attendance" problem.