A Detroit native, Joseph Serra served in Korea from 1950 to 1951 as a Navy medical corpsman with the First Marine Division Air Wing. After graduating from Albion in 1956, he then earned his M.D. degree from Wayne State University Medical School. He interned at Los Angeles County Hospital and returned to Wayne State University for his residency in orthopedic surgery. In 1966, he and his wife, Dorothy McEvoy Serra, '59, moved to Stockton, Calif., where Joe entered private practice. He co-founded the Stockton Orthopedic Medical Group in 1970. His special interest has been sports medicine. He has served as orthopedic team physician for the University of the Pacific, the Milwaukee Brewer farm system, and the Stockton Ports baseball team.

A member of the Rotary Club of Stockton since 1977, he was president in 1990-91. He was governor of District 5220 in1994-95 and has also been national advisor to the Permanent Fund Initiative. He is currently a member of the International Polio Plus Committee and the National Polio Plus Speaker's Bureau, as well as a zone coordinator for the Partnering Task Force. He served as an Rotary International training leader at the 1999 International Assembly in Anaheim.

Serra has served the Rotary Foundation as a volunteer orthopedic surgeon in Malawi, Africa, on four tours of duty, primarily performing surgery on polio victims called "crawlers." He received the Rotary Foundation Citation for Meritorious Service, the President's Citation, the Service Above Self Award, and the Foundation PolioPlus Pioneer Award. He and his wife represented Rotary International in Liberia, Africa, during the first National Immunization Days in January 1999.

In his home community, Serra has served on several boards, including Goodwill Industries and the University of the Pacific Athletic Foundation, and is a member of many medical societies and international organizations. He was named "Stocktonian of the Year" in 1987, which he attributes to Rotary's prominent identity in his community.

The Serras have two sons and two grandchildren. Joe's favorite activities include skiing, mountaineering, travel, photography, and giving slide presentations about Rotary's legacy to the world-the eradication of polio.

Symposium Keynote Address
Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut is firmly established as one of the leading figures in 20th-century American literature, with seventeen novels, several plays, and scores of short stories to his credit. Vonnegut’s works have been translated into several languages and reviewed and analyzed by critics and scholars worldwide. His work has also been adapted for or influenced numerous television, theatre, and movie productions, and has inspired musicians, including the Grateful Dead, Ambrosia, and groups in Canada and the Netherlands.

Born and raised in Indianapolis, Vonnegut spent three years pursuing a degree in chemistry from Cornell University before joining the Army and being sent to Europe in 1944. He was captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge, and survived the Dresden bombings as a POW, an experience that was the basis for his bestselling novel, Slaughterhouse-Five.

Upon his return to the U.S., Vonnegut received the Purple Heart. After attending the University of Chicago, he obtained a job as a reporter for the Chicago City News Bureau. Vonnegut later worked as a publicist for General Electric, taught English at a private school, and opened the second Saab dealership in North America. In 1971, he received an M.A. in anthropology from the University of Chicago.

His creative writing career began in the late 1940s, with short stories published in several large-circulation magazines, including Collier’sand the Saturday Evening Post. Vonnegut’s first novel, Player Piano, was published in 1951 and became a Doubleday Science Fiction Book Club selection in 1953. His later novels include The Sirens of Titan (1959), Cat’s Cradle (1963), God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965), Breakfast of Champions (1973), and Hocus Pocus (1990).