SOME ANNIVERSARY MONTH RECOLLECTIONS
BY THE MOVEMENT'S FIRST PRESIDENT AFTER PAUL HARRIS.
By Glenn C. Mead
President of Rotary International, 1912 13;
Member, Rotary Club of Philadelphia, Pa.
TO STOP and look back into the past in these days when all eyes
are focused anxiously on the future reminds me of a yarn Paul
Harris liked to tell. The story concerned a strange bird that
always flew backward because he didn't care where he was going,
but he certainly wanted to see where he'd been.
None of us wants to fly backward. Few of us groan for the past.
Still, there are certain values in taking an occasional backward
glance for, as our old friend and Founder Paul well knew, "What
is past is prologue." Now in February, as our 7,191 Clubs
celebrate Rotary's 46th birthday, is a fitting time to look at
some of the events of yesterday that shaped the world wide
fellowship we know today. With your indulgence, my fellow
Rotarian, I shall dip into my store of memories to illustrate
them.
One day in August of 1911, 149 men
from various parts of the United States dropped their work and
caught trains for Portland, Oregon for the second Annual
Convention of the National Association of Rotary Clubs. I was
privileged to be one of them, having helped to start our Club in
Philadelphia just a year before. Since its founding in Chicago
in 1905, Rotary had sprung up in 30 of the largest U. S. cities,
and in Portland it was trying to find itself. I was fascinated
to hear earnest fellows from Minneapolis, Seattle, San
Francisco, and other places expound their views on what Rotary
was, how far a Club should go in civic service, how to explain
Rotary to the public.
The climax of that small reunion had overtones
that ring to this day. It came when President Paul, presiding,
read a message from a Chicago Rotarian named
Arthur Frederick
Sheldon, a business school founder. The message ended with the
words "He profits most who serves best."
Instantly the words made a "hit" and when the
Convention adopted a Rotary Platform, they appeared as the final
words in it. Brief in its language but broad in its meaning, the
phrase has stood the test of time as a concise expression of
Rotary fundamentals. For 39 years it served as a motto available
to Rotarians. Just last Summer in
Detroit Rotarians of the world
in their 41st Convention made it, along with "Service above
Self," a Rotary Motto.
Another surprise, with meaning for the years
to come, awaited us in Duluth, Minnesota, where our growing
Rotary family held its third annual gathering. To our joy we
found a delegation of five Rotarians from Canada present. They
represented the new
Rotary Club of Winnipeg, and Santa Claus and
his reindeer could not have been more welcome. So then and
there, with Clubs also formed in
Britain and Ireland, we changed
our name to the International Association of Rotary Clubs, which
later was shortened to Rotary International. Duluth saw the
beginning of one of the most inspirational elements in Rotary
the great annual friendly gatherings of Rotarians and their
wives and children from many, many lands. If you will be in
Atlantic City, New Jersey, for Rotary's 42d Annual Convention
May 27 31, you will see what I mean.
What were Rotarians talking and thinking about
with respect to Rotary in those days "way back then"? Some were
saying that Rotary could not thrive in a city of less than
20,000. felt that it could not flourish outside of the
Anglo Saxon world. Time and events have of course proved both
views in error. On every hand Rotarians continued their groping
for the true meaning of this Rotary and, indeed, in 1914 they
set up a "Committee on Philosophy and Education" to gather the
best thinking of Rotarians everywhere on the subject and then to
"write down Rotary." I was honored to serve with that Committee
and I recall with a great pride in my fellow Rotarians of that
day the vast outpouring of earnest thought they addressed to US.
(The philosophy of Rotary,
suggested by Paul Harris, in 1915, has yet to be created in
2005 ed.)
THE FUTURE HISTORIAN of Rotary will conclude,
I am certain, that the foundations of the movement were planned
and laid with the utmost care.
But my love of Rotary, as I knew it then, is
second to my hopes for it for tomorrow. I can do no better than
to echo words my dear late friend Paul Harris spoke in 1912 as
he stepped down from the Presidency: "The grandeur of Rotary is
in its future, not in its past. This is the matin not the
vespers, of Rotary. The call for ... conscience responsive
thought has never been more insistent since the birth of Rotary
than at the present day. Men will arise to the call . . .”.
THE ROTARIAN, February 1951
Submitted by archivist
Dr. Wolfgang Ziegler
16 February 2005 |
