Jeffrey Mehler: Head of Rotary’s Tri-Club International Committee

This should be an easy question: If you wear red socks seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, what baseball team do you root for? Not so fast-Jeff Mehler says despite his footwear, he is a Yankee fan.

He's also an enthusiastic fan of the work of the Tri-Club International Committee of the Rotary Clubs of Essex, Deep River, and Chester. Jeff himself is chairperson of the Tri-Club International Committee and a past president of Essex Rotary.

The international committee, according to Jeff, has sponsored humanitarian initiatives from Africa to the Caribbean and South America. The Nomad Foundation, supported by the Tri-Club Committee, provides everything from wells and clean water to maternal health care and solar technology in the landlocked West African country of Niger.

ShelterBox, another of the organizations that has received aid from the local Rotary, furnishes disaster victims throughout the world with large plastic containers with the basic physical necessities of life, from a sturdy tent to a cook stove and water purifying equipment.

Simply Smiles works to improve the lives of impoverished children in southern Mexico. At the moment, the local clubs are planning a mission trip to Mexico this summer to participate in the work of Simply Smiles.

The international committee has also involved itself in a number of programs that link the local communities to Haiti, which the United Nations Human Development Index has identified as the poorest country in the western hemisphere. The local international committee is a supporter of Sister Cities Essex Haiti (SCEH), which is working to build a library in the Haitian village of Deschapelles. The Tri-Club Committee has pledged to provide 1,000 books in Kreyol, the French-based vernacular that is the most commonly spoken language in the country for the library. According to Jeff, some 60 to 60 percent of the books have already been purchased and he hopes to have the project completed by the end of this year. (See story on SCEH on page 8.)

Rotary has also donated funds to Hôpital Albert Schweitzer in Deschapelles, which was founded by the parents of Essex resident Jenifer Grant. The hospital provides both in-patient and outreach services to the residents of Haiti's Artibonite valley.

"Jenifer is a gem, a really special person," says Jeff, "and this was something right in our own backyard."

Rotary, which encompasses some 1.2 million members and 34,000 clubs throughout the world, has a number of global programs, most prominent among them the fight to eradicate polio. But local clubs also undertake their own international initiatives, with support provided through local fundraising events.

Since Rotarians volunteer their own services at these events, Jeff points out, more of the donated dollars can go directly to the projects. According to Jeff, local projects are also funded through grants from the Rotary International Foundation that provides $3 for every $1 raised by local clubs.

Until recently, Jeff says, the focus of the Essex Rotary Club was supporting local organizations and undertaking local projects. In 2006, Jeff and fellow Rotarian Susan Carpenter encouraged the local club to think about projects outside the United States, given the multiple needs of countries beyond our borders.

He says that the international committee has never focused on a formal mission statement, but rather on identifying areas in which it could make a contribution.

"We look at what we can do and then we do it," he says.

He also praises the cooperation between the three local Rotary clubs that make up the international committee.

"This is a collaboration that has produced amazing things," he says.

Jeff, who began a career as a certified financial planner in New York City, moved to this area in the mid-l990s. It is, he says, the farthest away he has ever lived from his native New York City. He crossed the Hudson River to get a college degree at Farleigh Dickinson in New Jersey and then returned to New York for a master's degree in business administration from New York University. He says that at that same time he moved his business, Jeffrey N. Mehler, CFP, to Essex, two large financial firms, Morgan Stanley and Edward Jones, opened up in the area.

"I like to explain either they had great demographic studies or they were following me," Jeff says.

Investment, he points out, necessarily involves uncertainty.

"After 2008, no one can say they don't know stocks go up and down," he says. "If you need a certain interest rate, there is no way you are going to get it without accepting a certain level of risk."

And he has another observation of how people sometimes approach financial management.

"It is easier to spend than to save," he says, joining that thought to another of life's sad but true discoveries, "and it is easier to gain weight than to diet."

On weekends, Jeff likes to play a game he describes as bad golf.

"It's amazing how compelling it is. I can't give it up," he says.

He cautions that his kind of golf should not be compared to the golf the professionals play.

"That's an entirely different game," he adds.

Jeff and his wife Mary Russell have one son and two grandchildren. He says that wearing his trademark red socks was Mary's suggestion. He adds that it was Mary's father, a longtime Rotarian, who urged for many years that he become a member.

"I finally got involved in 2000 and I knew instantly it was a great group," Jeff says.

He is clear about why working with the Tri-Club Committee is so important to him.

"We have such idyllic lives. We really have an obligation to give back," he says. "There is so much need."