For nearly 40 years, Mark Daniel Maloney and his family have demonstrated that Rotary connects the world. Now the self-described “cheerful traveler” embarks on the next phase of his life’s journey: serving as Rotary International’s new president.
Since joining Rotary in 1980, Maloney has served as (deep breath) district governor, RI director, presidential aide, Rotary Foundation trustee, and chair of the Council on Legislation and the 2014 Sydney Convention Committee—and that’s only a few of the offices he has held, all of them prologue to his new leadership role: president of Rotary International.
Mark Daniel Maloney was born on 14 May 1955. His family had a 1,200-acre farm situated outside the small town of Ridgway. For decades the family had raised beef cattle and grown cattle feed, but Patrick Maloney (Mark’s father) and his two brothers shifted the focus to growing corn, wheat, and soybeans. They also more than doubled the farm’s size when they bought an additional 1,500 acres across the Ohio River in Kentucky.
This was the environment in which Mark Maloney grew up, though it quickly became obvious he was not destined for a career in agriculture. At 4-H competitions, the proving ground for future farmers, he would walk away with top honors—for public speaking. His 1966 speech, “A Dream Becomes a Goal,” won the blue ribbon at the Illinois State Fair. Two years later, he won the county spelling bee by properly spelling “bludgeon;” two years after that, he was president of the Gallatin County 4-H Federation.
In 1968, as he prepared to graduate from eighth grade, Maloney attended Ridgway High School, where his mother, Doreen, taught English. As usual, Maloney excelled. He held several offices, including president of the student council and member of the student-faculty committee on school policy. While maintaining a prominent role in 4-H, he also was active in the band, chorus, newspaper, yearbook, Spanish club, and the National Beta Club—an academic honors society that promotes good ethical and moral behavior—where he was a state officer. At graduation he delivered his class’s valedictory address. His classmates went out on a limb and voted him “most likely to succeed.” In 1972, the year he graduated from Ridgway High, Maloney was recognized as Outstanding Catholic Youth of the Year in his 28-county diocese.
That fall, Maloney left for Harvard. He would later earn a degree cum laude in history. At Harvard, Maloney had been president of the Harvard Memorial Society, manager of the football, soccer, and lacrosse teams, president of the Undergraduate Managers Council, [and] a member of the Harvard Faculty Committee on Athletics.
Maloney met Gay Blackburn in the fall of 1977 when the latter was in her second year at Vanderbilt Law School. A conversation about hometown attractions ensued and led to Maloney and Blackburn dating regularly. “We felt like we were a good match,” Gay recalls.
What Maloney calls “Gay’s first and fateful visit to my family” followed in early February. He and his family introduced Gay to 22 of his relatives. They had a fancy dinner at the Red Geranium and played a card game called 500. Gay took pictures of Mark’s parents.
Come Sunday, on their way out of town, they stopped at the Maloney farm so Gay could snap a photo of the house. Mark’s parents came out on the porch and waved.
Ten days later, Mark’s parents had been driving on the Ridgway Spur when another car collided with them head-on. Pat, 48, and Doreen, 46, were dead. Gay’s pictures were the last photos of them.
Within weeks, Mark established the Pat and Doreen Maloney Memorial Scholarship Fund at Ridgway High. Around the same time, a notice appeared in the Gallatin Democrat. It expressed “deepest and sincerest gratitude” to all those who had stood by the family after their recent loss.
On a weekend visit to Decatur, Gay’s father, J. Gilmer Blackburn, took Mark for a drive. “Gilmer explained the benefits of living in a small city and of being in a family law practice,” Maloney explains. A new prospect opened for the couple: making their home in Decatur and joining Blackburn’s law firm. Gay and Mark debated the possibilities, though, he says, “we were not on opposite sides.”
Following their marriage in June 1979, and after Mark earned a Master of Laws degree in taxation at New York University, the Maloneys settled in Decatur.
Maloney joined Rotary in 1980; five years later, when he was 30, he was president of the Decatur club. That’s when he learned that a Rotary-sponsored Group Study Exchange team from Nigeria was slated to visit.
“We just went all out,” Gay remembers. “Mark and I had a party for them at our home, and we made sure they had outstanding hospitality. The team leader said, ‘I want that young man to lead the team to Nigeria next year.’
So when our daughters, Phyllis and Margaret, were four and two, Mark was gone for 40 days and 40 nights to Nigeria”— planting the seeds for his presidential theme: Rotary Connects the World.
The Maloney daughters were as much a part of that Rotary journey as their parents. “As we evolved into a Rotary family, our girls grew up with a broad vision of the world,” Gay says. Between them, Phyllis and Margaret have attended more than 30 conventions, and the youthful interactions they had as children with people around the world influenced the course of their lives. Phyllis went on to study British history and literature at Harvard and the University of Cambridge before earning a law degree from Yale. On the other hand, Margaret studied linguistics at Harvard; after a career in publishing in New York City, she’s completing her fourth year of medical school at Stony Brook University on Long Island.
In 2014, the Maloneys welcomed Suzanna Greer into their home as their third daughter after the death of her mother. Now 25 years old, Greer is a student at the University of South Alabama and a veteran of three Rotary conventions—while Patrick, 7, and Peter, 4, the children of Phyllis and her husband, Blake Johnson, already have two conventions under their belts.
Residents of Decatur are proud of their hometown hero. “The fact that Decatur, Alabama, should be home to the president of Rotary International,” marvels David Breland, a former Morgan County district judge who now serves as Decatur’s resident historian and director of historic resources and events. “We’re in the high cotton now.”
“Mark’s a unique guy, one of the most impressive people I know,” Bill Wyker, who has known Maloney for nearly 40 years, says. “I’m tickled to death he’s Rotary’s next president. He will make his mark.”
Read the full story in the July 2019 issue of the Philippine Rotary magazine.
Add Comment