ROSEMARY WHITNEY FRANCE

Since joining Rotary in 1994, Rosemary has attended two Rotary International Conventions (St. Tropez, France and Calgary) and has become a Paul Harris Fellow and a Paul Scea Fellow. She has chaired the Club-sponsored Immunization Clinic since asked by President Tom McNair to start the project in 1996. Also, she organized the first Annual Rotary Tennis Tournament in 1999 which was won by the team of Stuller/Tilly, closely followed by Flores/Howell. She also chaired the food and decorations committees for two Rotary auctions (1996 & 1998).

Her goal of perfect attendance, which stands at 4 years, was interrupted in 1998 when she fell at a spa in Budapest and had to be air-lifted home for her broken hip to mend. About her goal of perfect attendance, she says, "Nothing less than a broken hip could keep me from achieving it."

Her formal higher education began at 17, with a scholarship to a college in her home state of Arkansas, after which she came with her family to Wenatchee. She has a BA in Education from Central Washington University and studied French at the University of Washington.

She married Howard France in 1951 and they were blessed with two daughters, now grown. After his death in 1998, she carried on with the family business, France & Company, which is now owned by one of the daughters.

Howard approved of, but did not join her in her pursuit of an interest in ethnic dances. Her travels to study dance drew her to some of the world's exotic locations:

• Dakar, Senegal (the Paris of Africa) to study African dance.
• Cairo, Egypt twice, meeting Tahia Carrico, a famous Egyptian dancer, now deceased.
• Pakistan Frontier Territories, a dangerous area forbidden to foreigners, where the ladies of the harem of a tribal chieftain danced for her.
• Damascus, Syria, where she was asked to perform a dance at a posh family wedding. Having over-stayed her visa, illegal exiting was accomplished with the help of a British Airlines Pilot.
• Misawa, Japan, representing the Wenatchee-Misawa Sister City Committee, teaching the Misawa Endo Dance upon her return.

Stamps on her passport pages also include Helsinki, Finland; Tokyo and three Paris visits.
In Paris she attended the University of Paris after French language instruction at Alliance Francais in Washington, D.C.

Her most recent travels were to Italy in 1999 with the "Holy Bus" tour led by the Reverend Sandy Brown, but that is another story.

Rosemary is "trying to retire" from France Interiors. She is an Allied Practitioner of the American Society of Interior Design

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