The 4-Way Test – Key Largo Rotary Club

Gretchen Holland still remembers the day Chuck Goss walked into her office at Coral Reef Title in 1990. Rotary clubs raise money to help their local community, he explained, and the Upper Keys Rotary Club was at capacity. They wanted to sponsor a new chapter in Key Largo. Would she consider helping to start it?

“The club meets for breakfast every week?” Holland recalls clarifying, already balancing her responsibilities at her title company and the Chamber of Commerce. “I’ll give it a try, but I’m not making any promises.”

Thirty-five years later, Holland is one of two remaining founding members of the Rotary Club of Key Largo. The other still-active founding member, or charter member, is Capt. Spencer Slate, known for providing underwater adventures and feeding sharks and moray eels (sometimes in bunny & Santa suits). Both Holland and Slate have watched their small fishing and diving village transform into a thriving tourist community and have spent decades serving it every step of the way.

Rotary’s Mission in Key Largo

Rotary International was founded on the principle that business and professional leaders could pool their talents and resources to serve their communities. With more than 45,000 clubs and 1.2 million members worldwide, the organization has tackled everything from polio eradication to clean water access. But at its heart, Rotary has always been about neighbors helping neighbors—and nowhere is that truer than in Key Largo.

When the Upper Keys Rotary Club sponsored the new Key Largo chapter in 1990, they invited 66 local business owners to become charter members. The criteria was simple: look for people with the time, passion, and commitment to meet regularly to make a difference.

The 4-Way Test

At the core of every Rotary club meeting is the recitation of the 4-Way Test, a simple ethical framework that guides decision-making:

• Is it the truth?

• Is it fair to all concerned?

• Will it build goodwill and better friendships?

• Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

This metric applies as much to big-dollar initiatives as it does to individual scholarships.

Investing in Education and Opportunity

Their scholarship program perhaps best illustrates the Rotary Club of Key Largo’s commitment to their community. The club offers scholarships to Upper Keys residents who want to enhance their education and/or training and who plan to utilize these improved skills for jobs based in the Keys.

Their efforts center on two primary scholarship initiatives in our community. The first involves co-sponsoring the Coral Shores High School Interact Club alongside the Upper Keys Rotary Club. This youth program for high school students (ages 12–18), emphasizes leadership, community service, and volunteering. Through this program, students unite to participate in diverse community service projects, and their dedicated volunteering qualifies them for college scholarships.

The second focuses on non-traditional scholarships, supporting vocational, technical, and career-oriented training for a broader range of learners. They enthusiastically support adults and students pursuing trade schools and technical training in a wide variety of vocations ranging from local firefighters and nurses to welders and marine mechanics and the culinary arts.

A Lasting Impact on the Upper Keys

Through their annual fundraising events—the Take Stock in Children Backcountry Challenge, the Pickle in Paradise pickleball tournament, and assisting the Upper Keys Rotary Club with the Giant Nautical Market—the club has invested in generations of locals wanting to further their education, awarding over a half million dollars in scholarships over the years.

Those interested in a scholarship can submit to all three Rotary clubs in the Upper Keys: Rotary Club of Key Largo (keylargorotary.org), Key Largo Sunset Rotary (keylargosunsetrotary.org), and Upper Keys Rotary (keysrotary.org). For those interested in joining Rotary, contact a Rotarian listed on their website.

A Promise Kept

Thirty-five years after founding the Rotary Club of Key Largo, Holland and Slate represent just two threads in the fabric of an organization that has woven itself into Key Largo’s identity. When you recite the same principles every week for 35 years, they stop being words and start being a way of seeing the world. Is it the truth? Is it fair? Will it build goodwill? Will it benefit all concerned?

For Gretchen Holland, Spencer Slate, and the other Rotary Club members, the answer has been yes—week after week, year after year, for more than three decades. And for the students, families, and community members who have benefited from the club’s programs, that 4-Way Test has proven to be more than just a recitation. It’s been a promise kept.

– Jerrica Mah is a writer, Army wife, and freelance book editor who loves to travel vicariously through stories.