
DATE: Thursday, November 27, 1997           TAG: 9711270666

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B8   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY REBECCA MYERS CUTCHINS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH                        LENGTH:   73 lines

5 VISIT IN ROTARY EXCHANGE WITH BUENOS AIRES

The first time Ana Maria Martorella visited the United States, she was surprised by the welcome she received from the American people.

``You have a special way to be warm with the eyes or with the voice,'' she said.

Martorella enjoyed her 1992 visit so much that she jumped at the opportunity to come again.

She got her chance when a Rotary Club in Buenos Aires, ``Remedios de Escalada Oeste,'' began looking for young professionals to take part in a group exchange with Hampton Roads.

Martorella was chosen, along with three other Argentines and a Rotarian leader, to come to Hampton Roads for a month-long stay with Rotary Club District 7600, which stretches from Richmond down to the Carolinas and over to the Eastern Shore. The group spent its first week as guests of the Rotary Club of Churchland.

``The participants in the program are, by and large, younger professionals and are not required to be Rotarians; in fact, none of them is a Rotarian,'' said Ector Hamrick, club president. ``Part of this program is to help them see the broad scope of Rotary, with the hope that they'll become Rotary members and leaders in their countries in the years ahead.''

The exchange program started in 1965 as ``an opportunity for professional business people to go to another culture, to live with residents, to see how they do business, to see their schools, their hospitals, their prisons, their sports - everything,'' said district chairman Don Meyer, who lives in Virginia Beach. ``We're looking for the young professional business person who is going to be the leader of tomorrow.''

Over the years, the district has participated in about 20 exchanges, said Meyer, who will interview and select the American team that will visit Buenos Aires in the spring.

``We're going to Brazil this year, too, and we're trying to get an exchange with a country in Eastern Europe, maybe Lithuania, next year,'' he said.

As part of its tour of Portsmouth, the Argentine group visited the Coast Guard base in Churchland, spent a morning at Churchland High School and stopped in at the Children's Museum of Virginia.

``There, we could feel like children again,'' said Martorella, 40. ``It's a rather amazing place because in Buenos Aires, we do not have that kind of museum for children.''

This past weekend, Martorella and the others toured Jamestown and Williamsburg.

``The pride you feel when you speak about your independence surprised me,'' Martorella said. ``You feel that your freedom is worth being supported and maintained with the same strength as the ones who fought to give it to you.''

The group will spend Thanksgiving with host families in Virginia Beach, then head to Petersburg for a week. ILLUSTRATION: NHAT MEYER, The Virginian-Pilot

Ana Maria Martorella, a resident of Buenos Aires visiting for a

month, laughs as Luis A. Navarrete, a Rotarian and the Buenos Aires

exchange coordinator, sits in an giant chair at the Children's

Museum of Virginia in Portsmouth Friday.

Graphic

EXCHANGE PROGRAM

These vocational pairings were made between Argentine visitors,

all from Buenos Aires, and local Rotary Club members:

Marina Julieta Crovari, bilingual secretary, with Sheila Powell

Pittman, Portsmouth's director of citizen and community outreach.

Ana Maria Martorella, pediatrician and child psychiatrist, with

Ernesto Luciano-Perez, a Portsmouth orthopedic surgeon.