A good bet for the Foundation and an Indianapolis hospital

 

 

Chicago Rotarian Don Garner settles a friendly wager with Elaine Bedel in front of the Rotary Club of Indianapolis after the game.

This year’s Super Bowl may be long over, but its impact will live on through a friendly bet between Rotarian football fans in Chicago and Indianapolis.

After the Indianapolis Colts beat the Chicago Bears 29 to 17 in Miami, six members of the Rotary Club of Chicago headed southeast on a chartered bus to pay up their debt: a $1,000 donation to The Rotary Foundation made in honor of the Rotary Club of Indianapolis.

The donation settled a bet between the clubs initiated by 2006-07 club presidents Elaine Bedel of Indianapolis and Don Garner of Chicago. They made the wager over the phone just before kickoff on Super Bowl Sunday.

“I was looking around for a crow to eat, but all I could find was a little goose,” Garner joked at the Indianapolis club’s April lunch meeting after handing over a black stuffed bird. He and his fellow club members also brought a Rotary Club of Chicago centennial banner; a Chicago Bears pin that, according to Garner, “designates our loser status”; a golf ball with the Bears logo; and a 102-year-old bottle of wine from Ukraine that the club received in 2005 for its 100-year anniversary as the first Rotary club. (The Rotary Club of Indianapolis will celebrate its centennial in 2013.)

Bedel arranged to have the Vince Lombardi Trophy on hand. Club members paid $10 to have their photo taken with the championship prize, raising $600 for an Indianapolis children’s hospital.

Though a bet is usually winner-takes-all, Chicago Rotarians didn’t leave completely empty handed. Each received a T-shirt with Super Bowl photos from the Indianapolis Star newspaper on the front.

“It was great fun,” said Indianapolis club member Kent Millard, who added, “If they had won, we would be eating crow.”