Spartan Profiles: Norman Veliquette

ERADICATING POLIO

            His cause is the eradication of polio, and he’s willing to handwalk in front of the Taj Mahal or across open sewers in Nigeria to draw attention to his cause.  At first, however, Norman Veliquette, ’67, president of Great Lakes Packing Co., a cherry processing operation based in Kewadin, was skeptical about Rotary International’s campaign to eliminate polio from the globe. 

             “It seemed like a pie-in-the-sky,” admits Veliquette, who was exposed to the cause after becoming president of the Elk Rapids rotary club in 1988.  “But by the early 90s, polio eradication in the Western hemisphere was complete.” 

            In 2000, he served three weeks as a rotarian missionary in Gujarat, India.  And last fall, he did a stint in Kano, Nigeria.  “This was an even more gripping experience,” says Norm, who has just published a book about that experience—Fulfilling Our Promise:  Rotarians Volunteer in Kano, Nigeria (www.gtrcf.org). 

            A native of Elk Rapids, Norm visited MSU frequently as a 4H club member and “never considered going anywhere else for college.”  Indeed, wife Marjory, sister of President McPherson, and three children all graduated from MSU.  One daughter, Sara McGuire, ’96, was the National Cherry Festival Queen in 1995. 

            Norm credits his education at MSU in agricultural economics with helping him and his brothers and friends to “turn an average family farm to a large fruit growing and commercial processing operation.”  He touts his product, cherries, for being “extremely high in anti-oxidants.”

            Norm, 60, says he learned to handwalk ten years ago.  “It was a foolish challenge for a fundraiser,” he recalls.  “I answered the call.”  Now he finds that it serves as “a useful gimmick” to call attention to polio eradication.  His handwalk at the Taj Mahal, for example, made a splash in The Times of India, one of the world’s largest English-language newspapers.