You knew Don Hester would be at his desk early as president of Percy Hoek Inc. Insurance on Sayville’s Main Street. Some of his customers would find him at his desk after climbing the stairs to his office at 8 a.m. to speak to him. Now his son Rob Hester, the third generation of the family business, heads up the company. (He’s in early, too.)

A choir member of St. Ann’s Episcopal Church, his robust singing is performed at  Sayville Rotary meetings, sometimes after a sleepless night as a Community Ambulance volunteer.

Hester was known to regularly buttonhole people to help or host a young person in Rotary’s Youth Exchange Program over the years, especially when he would take about 20 of them into the city for a marathon tour. His devotion to youths was a passion, whether he had them at his home in Sayville or at his beach house on Cherry Grove. (He serves with the Cherry Grove Fire Department and the Dune Society.) Then he introduced the Rotary Youth Leadership Association (RYLA) in 2001 to a new generation of high school students when he served as district governor.

He does a mean barbecue at Rotary’s annual Beefsteak fundraiser at the Long Island Maritime Museum, carefully guarding the secret sauce recipe. No way will you get it!

But Hester’s sterling distinction is also as a loyal Sayville Rotary Club member for 60 years. Arranged by president Carolyn Leyboldt, he was surprised last week at Land’s End, when Sayville Rotarians, his family, and those he worked with in other clubs as well as St. Ann’s Deacon Susan Klopfer Ellinghous, toasted him.

(His wife, three children, and grandchildren who were in on the secret, were mum when he left the house. Then they followed. Surprise!)

About 60 people showed up at Land’s End for his recent luncheon. Leyboldt asked those from other clubs to introduce themselves and comment on their connection to him.

“Here is a message from Nathalie Landmetres of Belgium, one of our favorite students,” announced Leyboldt of Landmetres, who she herself hosted 26 years ago as well one from Leyboldt’s son, Alex, who became a RYLA student. Both included funny anecdotes and comments about the transformative impact he had on them.

Hester told the Suffolk County News he joined Rotary because his father-in-law, Percy Hoek, had been a Rotarian who, even in a wheelchair, had perfect attendance.

“I worked with my wife, Judy, at Camp Edy in Bayport, and we were both camp counselors,” he said. They dated on and off, then joined up again in college. “In my senior [year], we became engaged. I joined the Army, became a second lieutenant, and planned to become a career officer. Percy knew my next tour was Saigon; he suggested I work for him as an insurance agent.”

Besides raising their three kids, Joseph, Ann and Rob, his wife, Judy, was right there with Don in mentoring young people’s lives.

“Judy and I were both interested in kids from our days at Camp Edy,” he explained. “Judy was a Girl Scout leader. She also was a Youth Leader at St. Ann’s Church, and I was asked to become leader of the local Boy Scout Explorers post.”

Their patient, hands-on advice and kindness was eventually utilized with the Rotary International Exchange program. Three or four high school students were hosted from other countries in the district a year. They attended local schools, a three-month stint that made it easier to find families.

Years ago, there was even an exchange with the Soviet Union, Hester said. “Judy and I were asked by Rotary International to chaperone the first group of high school exchange students from the Soviet Union the years Mikhail Gorbachev was president; his wife Raisa was interested in establishing a youth exchange. We toured Moscow and did the exchange with over 300 kids.”

Hester hears from many of them frequently.

“I feel I have a family all around the world because of it,” he said of the hundreds of students he and Judy have sponsored.

The exchange, he said, fosters peace. “All of those fears fall away, and the kids get along.”