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HISTORY
Rotary's first day
and the years that followed...
On February 23, 1905,
a Chicago lawyer, Paul P. Harris, called three friends to a
meeting. What he had in mind was a club that would kindle
fellowship among members of the business community. It was an idea
that grew from his desire to find within the large city the kind
of friendly spirit that he knew in the villages where he had grown
up. The four businessmen didn't decide then and there to call
themselves a Rotary club, but their get-together was, in fact, the
first meeting of the world's first Rotary club. As they continued
to meet, adding others to the group, they rotated their meetings among the members' places of
business, hence the name. Soon after the club name was agreed
upon, one of the new members suggested a wagon wheel design as the
club emblem. It was the precursor of the familiar cogwheel emblem
now worn by Rotarians around the world. By the end of 1905, the
club had 30 members.
The second Rotary
club was formed in 1908 half a continent away from Chicago in San
Francisco, California. It was a much shorter leap across San
Francisco Bay to Oakland, California, where the third club was
formed. Others followed in Seattle, Washington, Los Angeles,
California, and New York City, New York. Rotary became
international in 1910 when a club was formed in Winnipeg,
Manitoba, Canada. By 1921 the organization was represented on
every continent, and the name Rotary International was adopted in
1922.
What is now The Rotary Foundation
of Rotary International grew from a small endowment fund started
in 1917. It became the Rotary Foundation in 1928 but grew only
modestly until 1947 when it received a number of gifts in memory
of Paul Harris upon his death on Jan. 27 of that year. Accelerated
growth in recent years has made it a major source of activities to
provide humanitarian assistance, to enhance education and promote
international understanding and peace. Since 1917, contributions
to the foundation have totaled $824.3 million including $61.7
million in 1994-95.
A major source of the
Foundation's recent growth, and of Rotary's increasing membership,
has been the burgeoning of the Rotary movement in Asia. Also
growing is the number of new Rotary clubs in countries formerly in
the Communist-governed bloc of eastern Europe. Countries where
there were no Rotary clubs in 1987 now have more than 220.
Among programs that
Rotary has undertaken in recent years, the largest is PolioPlus, whose
goal is the eradication of the disease polio throughout the world.
To achieve that goal, Rotary is working in coalition with the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, and the Task Force for Child Survival and
Development, supplying funds for vaccine purchase and manpower for
polio immunization campaigns in polio-endemic countries. If the
disease is eradicated by the year 2000, the achievement will be
certified in time for Rotary to celebrate the 100th anniversary of
its birth in a polio-free world.
FIRST ROTARY
CLUB
On the evening of
February 23, 1905, Paul Harris and
three friends, Sylvester Schiele, Gustavus Loehr, and Hiram Shorey,
met in Loehr's business office in Room 711
of the Unity Building in downtown Chicago to discuss Paul's idea
that businessmen should get together periodically for camaraderie
and to enlarge their circle of business and professional
acquaintances. From their discussion came the idea for a men's
club which would meet weekly and whose membership would be limited
to one representative from each business and profession. After
enlisting a fifth member, Harry Ruggles, the group was formally
organized as the Rotary Club of Chicago. By the end of 1905, the
club's roster showed a membership of 30 with Sylvester Schiele as
president and Ruggles as treasurer. Paul Harris declined office in
the new club and didn't become its president until two years
later.
Meetings
Founder
Paul Harris
Paul Harris, the
founder of Rotary, was born in Racine, Wisconsin, USA, on April
19, 1868, but moved at the age of 3 to Wallingford, Vermont, to be
raised by his grandparents. In the forward to his autobiography My
Road to Rotary, he credits the friendliness and tolerance he found
in Vermont as his inspiration for the creation of Rotary.
Trained as a lawyer,
Paul gave himself five years after his graduation from law school
in 1891 to see as much of the world as possible before settling
down and hanging out his shingle. During that time, he traveled
widely, supporting himself with a great variety of jobs. He worked
as a reporter in San Francisco, a teacher at a business college in
Los Angeles, a cowboy in Colorado, a desk clerk in Jacksonville,
Florida, a tender of cattle on a freighter to England, and as a
traveling salesman for a granite company, covering both the U.S.
and Europe .
Remaining true to his
five-year plan, he settled in Chicago in 1896, and it was there on
the evening of February 23, 1905, that he met with three friends
to discuss his idea for a businessmen's club. This is commonly
regarded as the first Rotary club
meeting. Over the next five years, the movement spread as Rotary
clubs were formed in other U.S. cities. When the National
Association of Rotary Clubs held its first convention in 1910,
Paul was elected president.
After his term, and
as the organization's only president-emeritus, Paul continued to
travel extensively, promoting the spread of Rotary both in the USA
and abroad. A prolific writer, Paul wrote several books about the
early days of the organization and the role he was privileged to
play in it. These include The Founder of Rotary, This Rotarian Age
and the autobiographical My Road to Rotary. He also wrote several
volumes of Perigrinations detailing his many travels. He died in
Chicago on January 27, 1947.
Room 711
Room 711 of the Unity
Building at 127 North Dearborn Street in downtown Chicago,
Illinois, was the site of Rotary's first meeting on February 23,
1905. At that time, it was the office of Gustavus Loehr, a mining
engineer and one of the founding members of the organization.
Around 1980, the
Rotary Club of Chicago, the club that originated from that
gathering, set about to preserve the site. It rented the room and
undertook an extensive effort to recreate the office as it existed
in 1905. For several years, the club maintained the room as a
shrine for visiting Rotarians. That responsibility was eventually
assumed by the Paul Harris 711 Club, a nonprofit organization
comprising Rotarians from around the world. In 1989, when the
Unity Building was scheduled to be demolished, the 711 Club
carefully dismantled the office, salvaging the original interior
from doors to radiators. Everything was placed in storage until a
permanent place to reconstruct the room could be found. In 1993,
the Board of Directors of Rotary International set aside space for
it on the 16th floor of the RI World Headquarters in Evanston,
Illinois.
back to the top
International Meetings
Rotary International
conducts several kinds of meetings each year. By far the largest
is the International Convention, held at a different location each
year, alternating between regions, and open to all Rotarians. The
largest ever held was in Tokyo, Japan in 1978, attended by 39,834.
The second major gathering held every year is the International
Assembly, and it is considered the organization's most essential
meeting. Its purpose is to train the men and women who will serve
as governors of the 518 Rotary districts the following year.
Regional conferences
are held in specified regions of the Rotary world at the
discretion of the RI Board of Directors. The two purposes of a
regional conference are 1) to bring Rotarians of the region
together to develop and prompt acquaintance and understanding and
2) to provide a forum for exchange of ideas and the discussion of
significant topics. Presidents of Rotary International schedule
presidential conferences to deal with specific subjects that fall
within the Object of Rotary.
Rotary Institutes are
instructional, motivational and fellowship meetings. An
International Institute is for past and present officers of Rotary
International and is usually held at the time and location of the
International Assembly. Timely topics related to the program of
Rotary and administration of RI are formally discussed and
debated.
District Meetings
The two most
important Rotary meetings at the district level are the district
assembly and the district conference. The district assembly is a
gathering of all incoming presidents and secretaries of clubs in a
district, and it includes the district governor-nominee and
certain key club leaders. It is planned and presided over by the
incoming district governor to provide motivation, inspiration, and
Rotary knowledge to incoming club officers so they can better
understand their duties and return to their clubs with renewed
incentive to further the Rotary program. This meeting is
considered vital as a connecting link which enables the Rotary
program of service to continue despite the annual change-over of
club officers each July 1.
The District
Conference, like the International Convention, is open to all
Rotarians and their families in the district. It is always
attended by a personal representative of the RI president. Its
purpose is to further the program of Rotary through fellowship,
keynote addresses, group sessions, exhibits, open forums and
discussions relating to the affairs of clubs in the district and
to RI in general.
One other district
meeting is called the Presidents-Elect Training Seminar, or PETS
for short. It is a training and informational program for club
presidents-elect, planned and organized by the district
governor-nominee in cooperation with the current district
governor. Its main purpose is to help implement the RI theme
Club Meetings
The Standard Rotary
Club Constitution stipulates that Rotary clubs must meet once a
week. They customarily meet regularly for lunch, dinner or
breakfast on a day and time provided by the club bylaws. Member
participation adds interest to programs that feature panels,
quizzes, skits and speeches. Several programs during the year
involve disseminating important Rotary information and briefing
the members on club projects and community needs.
What are called Club
Assemblies are held at intervals during the year, certainly at
midyear. They have no administrative functions but they sustain
club activity and offer opportunities to appraise the club's
service activities and to exchange ideas on how to make the
programs and service projects more effective.
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