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Rotary Club gives dictionaries to third-graders
Friday, Oct. 17, 2008
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by DARWIN WEIGEL
Mutual Elementary School third graders Alex Roth, 8, and Haley Mister, 8, look up the word "beneficial" in the dictionaries they received from the Prince Frederick Rotary Club on Wednesday. The club distributed 700 dictionaries to Calvert County third graders this year.
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Eight-year-old Maysen Salazar was surprised to learn that the longest word in the English language was not the famous one sung by Julie Andrews in Disney's "Mary Poppins."
"The longest word in the world is really long," Salazar said, thumbing to the last page in her new paperback dictionary. "I thought it was ‘supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.'"
In fact, she learned by looking at the last page of her dictionary that the longest word in the English language consisted of 1,909 letters and was a type of enzyme.
Salazar was among nearly 700 other third grade students in Calvert County elementary schools to receive brand new copies of "A Student's Dictionary," provided by the Rotary Club of Prince Frederick on Wednesday.
Gene Karol switched hats from his elected position as a member of the Calvert County Board of Education to his role as a philanthropist with the Rotary Club. As Karol and teachers passed out the dictionaries to students in the cafeteria at Mutual Elementary School in Port Republic, students began to audibly show their excitement, furiously flipping through the pages, some stopping on big words and challenging their friends to say them, while others tried to mimic a sign language chart near the end of the book. The book also includes details about the 50 United States, world maps and facts about foreign countries.
"Our Rotary Club, after every meeting, we ask ourselves four things," Karol said to the students after their excitement momentarily subsided. "We ask ourselves, ‘Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned?' We ask ourselves ‘Will it build goodwill and better friendships?' And, finally, we ask ourselves, ‘Will it be beneficial to all concerned?'"
After telling the students about those four questions — which are part of the Rotary Clubs' mission — Karol asked the students to look up the word "beneficial."
Students in the cafeteria raced to find the word, hands shooting up in the air, one with the exclamation of "I found it," then several more in rapid succession when one student leaked out on which page number the word could be found.
"This is really cool," said Kevin Pitcher, 8, of Port Republic of his new dictionary. "I'm thankful that [the Rotarians] came here."
"This is very exciting. I'm very happy I got one," Michael Peyton, 8, of Port Republic said.
Karol said the Rotary Club of Prince Frederick has been donating the dictionaries to third graders for more than four years. He said Rotary Clubs in the Washington, D.C.-area were distributing thousands of dictionaries to third graders.
Rotary International "is the world's first service club organization.
"Its more than 1.2 million members volunteer their time and talent to further the Rotary motto, ‘Service Above Self,'" according to the foundation's Web site.
rperry@somdnews.com
