Fort Smith Rotary celebrates 100 years of service

Fort Smith Rotary Club celebrates 50 years of service

This paper was taped to the back of the 1960s photo. It identifies the businessmen pictured.
This paper was taped to the back of the 1960s photo. It identifies the businessmen pictured.

"Rotary is a service organization which seeks to do things for the local community, as well as around the world," explained Gary Campbell, currently serving on the board of the Fort Smith club.

photo

Courtesy Photo

The Fort Smith Rotary Club gathered in 1922. The local branch of the national service organization was started in 1916 and celebrates its 100th anniversary Wednesday.

photo

Courtesy Photo

The members of the Fort Smith Rotary Club gathered for another picture in 1960. The officers stand in the second row. (From left) Steve Creekmore; Bill Drenner, director; Larry Pearce, treasurer; Gerry Riggs, secretary; Arnold Monteith, director; Harvey Hopper, director; Harry Hubenthall, president; Davis Kolb, vice president; Paul Sandahl, sergeant at arms; Tom Pryor, director; Bob Brooksher, director; and Joe Vestal.

"Rotary is a network of leaders who tap into the early career of a person's life to help others who are less fortunate locally and around the world," said Fayetteville Rotarian Laura Wilkins.

Fort Smith Rotary

When: Noon every Wednesday

Where: Emmy’s German Restaurant, 200 N. 13th St.

Centennial Celebration Luncheon

When: Noon Wednesday (June 1)

Where: Hardscrabble Country Club, 5211 Cliff Drive

Information:

"Our motto is service above self," Campbell continued. "We look for things that would be helpful to other people. Service is our middle name."

"The 1.2 million-member organization started with the vision of one man -- Paul P. Harris. The Chicago attorney formed one of the world's first service organizations, the Rotary Club of Chicago, on February 23, 1905, as a place where professionals with diverse backgrounds could exchange ideas and form meaningful, lifelong friendships. Rotary's name came from the group's early practice of rotating meetings among the offices of each member," according to the website of what is today Rotary International.

Just 11 years later a Rotary Club came to life in Fort Smith, and that local club -- with 104 members -- celebrates its 100th anniversary this year. Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a former member and now honorary member of the Fort Smith Club, speaks at the anniversary gathering Wednesday.

"We are local club No. 224," said longtime member Conaly Bedell. "And now Rotary has 35,000 national clubs."

"Rotary was introduced to Fort Smith on Jan. 20, 1916, by Sid Brooks, who served as secretary of the Little Rock club for many years," reads a history provided by the Fort Smith club. "The Fort Smith club was admitted to Rotary International on June 1, 1916. There were 16 charter members, and Charles Ruhl served as the first president."

OWNING THE NAME

"The early years were war years, with Rotary taking a leading role in Liberty Bond drives, rural acquaintance meetings and securing Fort Smith's first stadium and athletic field," the history of the club's first 50 years continues. "Rotary also promoted a 6 cent street car fare in order to pave the first street to the factory district."

Other early works included funding Boy Scouts, forming a girls' band and supporting student nurses, Tri-State Crippled Adult Hospital in Memphis, student exchanges and Girls State and Boys State.

A history of Fort Smith Rotary's next 50 years listed packaging seeds during the Great Depression for jobless families to plant backyard gardens, free dental service for school children, establishing Big Brothers and Big Sisters in Western Arkansas, free vaccinations, free surgical clinics and tonsillectomy clinics and providing transportation to surgeries.

In the last 25 years, the local club has been a major leader in district and international projects, said Bedell, who currently serves on the club's board of directors. "This club, in particular, has been active in Belize," said Bedell, a former president and district governor.

The club shipped "many containers" full of school supplies to the country, to be distributed by religious groups associated with the Assemblies of God in Springfield, Mo., and the Subiaco Abbey, and they've sent money to help the schools buy books. Then one good deed led to another.

When local club members traveled to Belize with support, they saw the kitchen from which children and refugees were fed.

"It looked like an old Ozark smokehouse. It even had the knot holes in the wood," Bedell noted. "They were cooking in 5-gallon tins (which he likened to cans of lard).

"[Member] David Webb saw this and said, 'We can do better,'" Bedell related.

Fort Smith Rotarians raised the funds, secured donations of kitchen appliances from Whirlpool and traveled to Belize as labor for erecting a modern kitchen. "And that's not all of it," Bedell said.

Since the year 2000, Fort Smith Rotary has provided people in Belize with a vocational-technical high school and equipment, a woodworking shop and equipment, a sawmill, a sand water filter, online computers for students and adult night classes, six other buildings and repairs at an elementary school, according to a list from the club.

The group also developed a hospital in Ukraine after the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster. A children's hospital in Memphis, Tenn., was closing, Rotary secured all of its equipment, and members traveled to the former Soviet state to help build the hospital in 1997, Bedell said. And in 1999, they built a water system for a mountain village in Mexico, providing every house in the village (about 100) with a faucet.

The group is active locally, too. A 1982 upgrade to Creekmore Park playground equipment inspired others to build a walking trail with exercise stations.

Other programs include a motivational program about education for young teens, a retreat for students showing leadership potential and foreign exchange programs for adults and youth.

But these gifts don't just come from the Rotary Club, they are provided by members themselves, Bedell said. Most money is contributed by individuals, and through club members efforts, by local corporations. Members also pay their own transportation and other expenses on these mission trips.

"We hold a few fundraisers, but we don't make very much," Bedell said.

"It's hands-on," he continued. "Our club members go out and do things. It's not just the money."

PERFECT

Rotary International places high value on perfect attendance to weekly meetings, and members who achieve this are held in high esteem.

The organization requires 65 percent attendance for six months, Bedell said. And members can miss no more than three in a row.

But any missed meetings can be made up by attending the meeting of another local club. Rotarians traveling for business and pleasure become creative in their attendance. Wilkins has achieved perfect attendance. To keep her streak active, she attended a meeting while on vacation in Grand Cayman -- and took her family with her, she said. She also has attended meetings in Italy and London.

"The reason for this rule is for the friendship among Rotarians," Bedell explained.

At its onset, Rotary included just a few people representing each profession. "They have a policy that they're trying to have a broad range of businesses," he continued. "The reason is you act as a representative of that profession. Then members get to know about that part of the world."

NEW FACES

The last 100 years have seen a change in the faces of Rotarians. In 1987, women were admitted into the boys' club.

"On May 4, 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that Rotary clubs may not exclude women from membership on the basis of gender," reads a history on the Rotarian International website. "Rotary issues a policy statement that any Rotary club in the United States can admit qualified women into membership.

"At its first meeting after the 1987 U.S. Supreme Court decision, the Council on Legislation votes to eliminate the requirement in the Rotary International constitution that membership in Rotary clubs be limited to men. Women are welcomed into Rotary clubs around the world."

That year, 1989, Wilkins was the first woman accepted into the Fort Smith club.

"I wanted to be in a service club," she explained. "Carlton Bates invited me to a meeting. I looked around and realized there were no women at the meeting.

It was the first year Rotary allowed women, and the Fort Smith board accepted her membership, she said.

"And then three members quit. It was a 'kerfuffle' -- and then I got pregnant!" she said.

Those members eventually returned to the club, Wilkins said, "and now I know all the boys. Of course, 99.9 percent of the members accepted me with open arms. It's a great club."

Wilkins -- who now lives in Fayetteville and attends that club -- currently serves as an assistant governor for the district covering clubs in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri. In her 26 years in Rotary, she also served as secretary, board member and president of both clubs.

REWARDS

A long participation in Rotary has given Campbell many rewards.

"It's the smiles on those faces of the children when you see them," he said.

For the first time, Campbell participated this year in the club's pen pal program with students at Fairview Elementary School in Fort Smith. Children and members exchange letters every two weeks. The goal is to provide "adult interaction not present in the homes of some students," club information reads.

(The student) might write about the car races he's seen, or maybe his dog died," Campbell said. "And we write about that. I try to put something in every letter to encourage him to have a better life, to plant that seed. I write about 'when you graduate from college' -- not if."

Campbell also volunteers for the club's program providing dictionaries to third-graders. Many groups provide things for the students, but Fort Smith Rotary members write each child's name on the book plate of every book.

"They act like you've given them the world," Campbell said. "They say, 'Gosh, that's mine?

"I enjoy the friendship and the service [of Rotary]," the longtime member and former president continued. "I can't imagine myself not being in Rotary."

NAN Our Town on 05/26/2016

Upcoming Events