Thirty-two years ago, a young man named Piotr came from Poland to Georgia on a Rotary scholarship and enrolled at the University of West Georgia. This year, his son is doing the same thing, at the same university.

Maciej Derecki is the Rotary Club of Newnan's Georgia Rotary Student Program scholar for 2026-27. He arrived from Bydgoszcz, Poland, at the end of July, was welcomed to Georgia by club member Kevin Barbee, who serves as a District 6900 GRSP Trustee, and is living on campus at West Georgia. A younger sister hopes to apply next year.

The book he was too scared to open

Somewhere in his parents' house in Bydgoszcz, there is a book about the wonders of space. Maciej opened it once as a boy, found a picture of what a black hole would do to the Earth, and did not open it again for five years.

He is training to be an aerospace engineer now. He already has a year of the degree behind him at Warsaw University of Technology, and this year he is taking the astronomy and mathematics that frightened him and then hooked him as a child, before going home to build aircraft and rocket engines. The goal is engines that burn less and pollute less, at a company like Airbus, Rolls-Royce, or the European Space Agency.

He came prepared to be known

When Maciej introduced himself to the club on August 19, he brought pamphlets about his hometown and handed them around before he said a word. He wanted us to be able to picture the place.

Then he spent an hour on the rest of it: a mother who coached him through mathematics competitions until he outgrew her, 13 years of tennis with the same coach, three years as captain of his school's volleyball team, nine years on a snowboard, and a personal record of 23 doughnuts on Fat Thursday — which is a real Polish holiday and, by his account, a serious one. He finished the International Baccalaureate program ranked second in his high school.

Near the end, he presented the club with a banner from his Rotary club back home.

Some Wednesdays just line up

Piotr came over from Poland this month to see his son, and he sat in on two of our meetings. Nobody planned what happened at the second one.

The program on August 26 was at the University of West Georgia. Jason Carmichael, UWG's director of athletics, gave a campus update — enrollment projected past 17,000, one of the fastest-growing public universities in Georgia, and year three of three in the move to NCAA Division I, with full membership next year. Describing the region drawing students in, he named Poland, with the two of them sitting right there. Then Steve Englehart, the Wolves' new head football coach, talked about wanting West Georgia to be this region's team.

So a father heard what his old university has become, 32 years on, a few feet from the son who now walks that campus. Maciej introduced him from the floor and finished with two words: "Go Wolves."

Eighty years of the same idea

The Georgia Rotary Student Program was founded in 1946 by a Thomasville Rotarian named Will Watt, on a straightforward idea: peace starts when people get to know one another. Our club has been part of this since 1952, when we sponsored our first scholar, who came from Korea. We are still at it 74 years later. A legacy like Maciej's is how a program knows it is working: a scholar goes home, builds a life, and, years later, his children apply, too.

"A guest in the house is God in the house"

Maciej told the club he wants to use his year here to break the stereotype that Poles are cold. Then he gave us a proverb from home — Gość w domu, Bóg w domu: a guest in the house is God in the house.