This year marked 60 years of Rotary membership for Fountain Hills Noon Rotarian Rocco Mittica.

Rocco joined Rotary International in 1954 when he was the chief operating officer for the New England Medical Center in Boston. In 1957 he moved on to become the CEO of Widden Hospital in Evert, Mass.

Rocco retired in 1988 and moved to Rio Verde the next year. Rocco has been a member of the Fountain Hills Noon Rotary Club since 1992.

He has been married to his lovely wife Joan for 60 years. They have four sons. Rocco received his Master’s Degree in public health from the University of Pittsburgh and studied microbiology under the instruction of Dr. Jonas Salk, the inventor of the polio vaccine.

Since the mid-1980s Rotary International has made a global campaign to eliminate polio worldwide. There are only a few endemic countries left with cases of polio.

If you would like to learn more about Rotary, join the group for lunch at Fountain View Village every Tuesday from 11:45 a.m. to 1 p.m.