(soft music) (soft music continues) (soft music continues) - Hello and welcome to "Prairie Pulse."

Coming up a little bit later in the show, we'll hear a short musical performance from Recital With a Cause.

But first, joining me now is Gary Nolte, and you're the Rotary District 5580 Polio Campaign Chair.

- That's correct.

- [John] Gary, thanks for joining us today.

- Thanks for having me.

- As we get started, tell the folks a little bit about yourself, and maybe your background, and maybe where you're originally from.

- Okay, well, I was born in Fairmont, Minnesota a long time ago, immigrated here in 1962, and graduated from high school.

Tried to go to college on the eight-year plan.

Ended up getting drafted, went to Vietnam, came back, went to college on the GI Bill.

Went to work at the Forum for 12 years, and then I joined Piper, Jaffray and Hopwood as a stockbroker in 1982, and retired in 2010.

(Gary laughing) - Well, you're here today to talk about a couple of things, and one is the recital that's coming up, but also Rotary.

So tell us about, what is Rotary and Rotary International?

- Rotary International is a group of business people that got together to do good in the world, essentially.

We have 35,000 clubs, 1.3 million members, in 172 different countries.

And I can go to any one of those clubs at any time, show 'em my pin, and they'll let me in.

I might not understand the language, but we're welcome anywhere.

- Okay.

So how and when was Rotary founded?

- It was founded in 1905 in Chicago by a gentleman by the name of Paul Harris.

And what he was, he was a transplanted lawyer from the East Coast and he needed some companionship, some relationships.

So they did Rotary; they'd met in one person's office this week, another person's office next week, rotary.

- And then over time, it's coming to, what did you say, 35,000 clubs, and a million something members?

- Yeah, yes.

- So what's the mission of Rotary Clubs?

- It's essentially to do good in the world.

We have a number of initiatives, maternal child healthcare, clean water, we do a lot of construction projects, major construction projects.

It's whatever the club wants to do that's within our purview, is what we do.

- So what clubs make up District 5580?

- We have clubs in all of North Dakota, as far west as Bowman and Williston.

We have clubs in Northern Minnesota over to Duluth, clubs in Wisconsin, out to Ashland.

And then we go up into Canada to Nipigon and Thunder Bay.

- Okay.

So and 'cause you're here today to talk a little bit about this Recital With a Cause.

And so what's different this year?

'Cause it sounds like the district's coming together to raise money.

Can you talk about that a little bit?

- Our Rotary District Conference is in Fargo this year.

- [John] Okay.

- The last time was 10 years ago.

And what we're trying to do, the district does money every year, but we're trying to get all the clubs to do something for us or for this project, for polio.

And the district will match it with funds up to 25,000.

- Now you mentioned polio.

Why polio?

- Polio is Rotary's signature event right now.

We started out in 1985 in the Philippines, and we found that we could eradicate a disease.

Smallpox was just done.

So in '89, they began a program called Polio Plus where we started out with over 200 countries that had polio endemic, which means that it's in the groundwater and anybody that is not vaccinated can get it.

And polio is a strange thing, because 99.9% of the people that contract it are only carriers.

They don't get paralyzed.

But if you're the one tenth, the 1%, it's not good.

- Yes, Sir.

So what I understand of Rotary, of course, is that you were a big proponent of helping to essentially eradicate the disease.

- Well, we've got the CDC signed on with us.

We've got a bunch of other major health organizations in the world that have come together on this; The Red Cross, that Turkish Red Cross.

I mean, I've got a picture of the sponsors of one of the events, and it's a banner clear across the bottom with flags, and it's a world effort.

- Mm-hmm.

Well, let's turn to, I guess, your upcoming fundraiser.

The Recital With a Cause is what it's titled, but tell us about it.

Is it First Lutheran Church in Fargo?

- First Lutheran Church in Fargo.

It's a free will offering.

There's no ticket sales.

You just show up and sit down and watch it.

And if you're moved, you can give us some money.

(Gary chuckling) - Well, again, tell me a little more about it.

I know you got a flyer sitting in front of you there, so you're gonna have, yeah, who do you have performing?

What's gonna happen?

What's it about?

- Well, we go to the symphony and the symphony has a contest, a competition each year.

And we pick five or six of the winners of that youth competition and have them perform again.

That's the recital part of it.

This year we have six.

There'll be an artist on later that will perform for this segment.

But last year we had a marimba player.

- Now when is it exactly?

Do you have- - It's April 11th, seven o'clock, - April the 11th at seven o'clock.

And then how can people make a donation to it, maybe if they don't go?

Or of course, if they go, you said it's open- - And yeah, that's- - [John] But if somebody wants to make a donation to it- - They can send it to the Fargo Moorhead Rotary Foundation.

- [John] Okay.

- Look it up on the web, on- - [John] Just Zoom, online?

- Google it, you'll get it, get a box office.

- You know, talk a little more about Rotary's efforts, 'cause you said, you mentioned this earlier, around the world, all the countries, all kinds of venues to end polio.

I mean, you talked about why, I mean, you had only a fraction even have it, but, so you know how did it take place?

Just how- - Well, it was, like I say, it started in the Philippines and we figured out we could do it.

So then we started picking countries and mobilizing the Rotarians in those countries that would be our hosts and guide us because, I mean, we don't speak all the languages that there are in the world.

And for instance, in India, the population of India goes up by the population of Australia every year.

If you think about that, that's a lot of people that need to be vaccinated, 'cause it's until it's done, until we're certified polio-free, we have to vaccinate, even here in the States.

My grandkids had to get vaccinated.

- So how and why can the virus resurge?

- Well, it comes, for the want of a better word, it travels through the body, goes through the stool into the groundwater, and you consume the ground dirty water, and there you go.

- Mm-hmm.

Can you talk about the vaccines?

Like, you know, maybe not a specific number, but how vaccines are given around the world and they'll be administered, even this year?

- Well, every year we've used the polio drops.

That's a frozen, attenuated, live virus.

I mean, it's a weak virus, but it's a live one.

And what it does, it goes in, goes through the body, gives immunization, goes out the other end and goes into the groundwater.

Somebody else, now it's a weaker virus, somebody else that drinks the water would get vaccinated.

We want 90% vaccination coverage, and the balance will be taken care of.

- Well, that's interesting, then.

But I guess with your district meeting that you've been talking about this year, do you have a special guest coming this year?

- We do.

A gentleman by the name of Mike McGovern, and he is Mr. Polio in our rotary world.

He's been to a number of countries, and he's just almost got to go to Pakistan, but he decided that it wasn't a good idea right now, but he'll be here to speak and to encourage us.

- So are there still any polio cases in the United States and Canada?

- There was a case of a, and it's in a borough in New York, the guy immigrated from Israel and this borough is kind of vaccine-resistant.

They don't like to vaccinate.

Two years ago there were 400 cases of measles in that borough in New York because of a lack of vaccination.

So that's the only case that I'm aware of, that we are aware of in the states.

Now, in 2006, a gentleman immigrated from Canada, from Calgary to Long Prairie, Minnesota, and 12 cases of polio showed up there.

We used to say that it was a ship ride away.

Now it's a plane ride or a bus ride away.

I mean, 'cause it takes five days for the virus to go through your body.

So you could get on a plane in Pakistan, fly to New York, and you could be carrying the virus.

The difference here is that we have clean water.

- Yeah.

Okay.

Let's turn to a subject here.

What was the so-called iron lung?

Some people have heard about it.

Some people have obviously seen one.

That that had to be used in the past to keep patient patients alive.

- Well, it depends on where the polio attacked your nervous system.

If it went all the way through your body and just maybe I've had people come up to me and say, "I can't smile 'cause I had polio."

I've had other people come up and pull their pants leg up and show me a brace.

That was their polio.

But some people were affected in the breathing, in their lungs.

And that's a breathing machine, a positive-negative breathing machine.

It makes a really strange sound, 'cause I've heard it and it just inflates.

It's atmospheric; it inflates and deflates your lungs.

It breathes for you.

- Yeah.

So are there still patients on an iron lung today?

- I think I just heard that one of the last ones has just passed away, but he's been in that iron lung for 50, 60 years.

- Yeah, 'cause it's not that people can't survive.

Well, they can't survive without it.

But they can live with the iron lung.

- With it, yes.

- Yeah.

But you made a comment to me that, for years, they were having to get parts from museums, I think you said.

- Yes, they did, 'cause nobody's making them anymore.

- Mm-hmm.

- I tried to buy one a while ago online, and the bidding got too high.

(John chuckling) - Well, you mentioned vaccines.

Can you talk about Jonas Salk and his revolutionary vaccine?

- Well, that's the live, attenuated virus vaccine.

And that's two drops, more than a couple times.

I mean, we have to vaccinate three or four times to get immunity for these people.

So six months later, we've got to go back and do it again.

More recently, we've had to start using injectable dead virus because the kids are so immune-compromised that they can't keep the vaccine in their bodies for five days.

So now we're using an injectable also.

Now my wife is a nurse, public health nurse, but in Nigeria for instance, she can't give the injectable vaccine.

It has to be a nurse in that country.

But we can do the drops.

And I've done literally thousands of drops.

- Yeah.

Now is that the second one you're talking about?

Is that the Sabin vaccine?

- The Sabin is the injectable.

- Is the injectable.

Okay.

When was that discovered or created?

- It's about the same time.

- Okay.

- About the same time.

We used to get the injection when I was a kid and you wanted to get it in your left arm so you could still play baseball, 'cause it really, really just, it hurt.

- Yeah.

Go back to your Rotary District and how much money have y'all raised?

Of course, it says here since 2010, but can you gimme some numbers about how much money y'all- - Well, the recital itself has raised $158,000.

And if you take that along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation match, that becomes three times that much money.

And anytime you get that kind of return, as I'm an old stockbroker, anytime you get that kind of return, that's pretty good.

But the district has raised well north of a million dollars in the time since we started this.

- And the majority of that money goes directly towards eradicating polio?

- All of it.

When we travel to India, when we travel to Nigeria, Niger or Ghana, it's our nickel.

Not a nickel of that money goes for our travel, transportation or for our lodging.

- Okay.

Well, you mentioned 158,000 for the recital.

Can you tell us a little bit more about some of the musicians who will be performing?

- I'm gonna actually read.

- Okay.

- Because they're gonna be violinists, they're gonna be piano players, it's gonna be a trombone player.

There's gonna be a saxophone player.

And these kids have all won competitions, so they're good.

- Mm-hmm.

And again, that's on April the?

- 11th.

- April the 11th.

Okay.

Let's turn to you; you mentioned yourself and I guess your wife's been involved according to this.

Can you talk about some of the missions that you and your wife have been on?

- Our very, very first mission was to Honduras in 1996.

And Cindy was a student nurse at Minnesota State, and she was getting her Bachelor's degree in nursing and she needed to do a preceptorship.

So we got the opportunity to go to Honduras to do it and work in a hospital there.

Now, because I'm a stockbroker, I drove the truck and I fixed machinery that was broken.

And that was my job there, but I drove the truck.

We drove around, we did eyeglasses, we did dental work.

That was the very first mission.

And we got into building because the hospital was a separate entity.

So we got into building things, built schools, built a hydroelectric power plant in San Fernando, Honduras.

And that was a amazing project.

And that was Honduras.

And then we got going to, I went to Nicaragua to build a school and then Guatemala to build a school.

And then we started going to, we went to India on our very first mission.

We worked in the Muslim enclaves in Northern India.

And one of the things that came up during, and this will be part of the vaccination story, one of the things that came up with the Muslims is that they thought we were sterilizing their children.

So I had went to one door and knocked on it and the guy said through the interpreter, "No, no, you're gonna sterilize my children."

So I said, "Fine."

I gave myself the drops and walked away.

Pretty soon I heard, "Wait, wait," and he came running down the street with a child under each arm and one tagging behind, and I vaccinated them.

- Wow.

Well, now were those missions with your church or with another group?

- [Gary] That's with Rotary, - With Rotary?

All this has been with Rotary?

- [Gary] All this has been with Rotary.

- Okay, so all of it has been with Rotary.

- [Gary] Yeah.

- So can you tell us a little bit more about, well, polio eradication missions you've been on, you just mentioned the one.

- [Gary] Yeah.

Well, we've been, Nigeria was an interesting one.

We were in Enugu Nigeria, which is a Christian part of the, so there wasn't the violence that they're experiencing in the northern part.

And we set up vaccination clinics and we vaccinated literally thousands of kids.

And the next year we went to Niger, which is right next door.

Different language; that's French and all the dialects.

So we had local, what they call rotor actors, drive us around in trucks.

Everything had to be paid for in cash.

So I have a picture of my boot, which has got 4 million francs in it any given day because everything had to be paid for in cash.

Credit cards didn't work.

But that was an interesting time.

You got to work.

We worked until noon because it got too hot after that.

Even though I had the only truck that had air conditioning.

- Were any of your trips, did you ever feel like any of them were dangerous or that you were in danger?

- No.

No, I would say not.

- [John] Okay.

- The Rotarians are very powerful people.

I mean, they really sincerely are.

And for instance, just to give you a for instance, we were working in Haiti at a hospital.

And the dentists that was working there had all of their stuff stolen, their passports, the satellite phone, their money, the whole thing.

The director of the hospital happened to be a Rotarian, said, "I want all that stuff back by Tuesday."

It was back Monday night, including the satellite phone.

- Yeah.

Can you tell us about your five Vietnamese foster children too?

- Yes.

And I was in the Naval Reserve after I got back from Vietnam, and one Sunday at a meeting, we got a presentation from Luther Social Services about foster parenting.

And they thought it would be a good place 'cause it'd be a lot of us that had been in Vietnam.

I got home and said to my wife, "I got something to talk about."

She says, "I got something to talk about, too."

And it was the same thing.

They had a presentation at church at Trinity the same day.

So we talked about it.

We called LSS on Monday, Tuesday they came out, and they evaluated us, and Thursday we had two girls and no English.

We got a English-Vietnamese dictionary, sat down on the bed and walked through words, went to ESL classes, got 'em through, got 'em through that first year.

And then our church sponsored her family, their families.

And there was nine more people that came.

And now they live all over the country.

One of them just showed up at my house two years ago, phoned to say wanted to show her children where she lived, which I thought was neat.

And after that we got a boy, and then another boy, and then another girl.

And the last girl has been very much in touch with us, Lynn.

And she's just, her daughter just made me a great-grandpa.

(Gary chuckling) - Well, Gary, Rotary is all about service.

Service before self.

- Yes.

- And it sounds like you've lived that life, all your life.

- It's been interesting.

I can say that.

I've gotten to go places that no people, no other buddy gets to go.

I've got to, for instance, when we were in Niger, we sat down with the Iman who had been speaking for two weeks on the radio about the Rotarians are coming to the country to vaccinate the kids, welcome them into your homes.

We sat down with his 10 lieutenants and discussed how we're gonna do it.

And afterwards, they invited us to go to the mosque on a Thursday and the women got to go into the men's part, which is carpeted and not graveled.

And then we also got the ability to take pictures and we could climb the minaret if we liked.

But we were all jet lagged, so we just went back to the hotel and went to sleep.

- Well Gary, again, going back to the recital, 'cause I know that's what you're here to promote a little bit, and we're gonna hear a performance in just a moment, but if people want tickets or find out more information, where can they go?

And- - They can go to Google the recital.

- [John] Mm-hmm.

- Or go to First Lutheran Church Thursday night, the 11th of April.

Everybody's welcome.

- Okay.

Well, Gary, thank you so much for joining us today.

- [Gary] Thank you.

Thank you for having us.

- Stay tuned for more as we have a special performance from the Recital With a Cause.

(soft music) (saxophone music) (saxophone music continues) (saxophone music continues) (saxophone music continues) (saxophone music continues) (saxophone music continues) (saxophone music continues) (saxophone music continues) (saxophone music continues) (saxophone music continues) (saxophone music continues) (saxophone music continues) (saxophone music continues) (saxophone music continues) (saxophone music continues) (saxophone music continues) (saxophone music continues) (saxophone music continues) (saxophone music continues) (saxophone music continues) (saxophone music continues) Well, that's all we have on "Prairie Pulse" for this week.

And as always, (soft music) thanks for watching.

(soft music continues) (soft music continues) - [Narrator] Funded by the members of "Prairie Public."