The Rotary story

The influential and world wide organisation that we know today as Rotary International had its beginnings in Chicago in 1905 when Paul Harris and three friends, Silvester Schiele, Hiram Shorey and Gus Leohr met in the office of the last named on the 23rd February and agreed to form a club.

The driving force was Paul Harris, a young lawyer, who as a boy and a young man had been brought up in Wallingford, a small town in Vermont. He missed the friendliness of the small town in the great impersonal city of Chicago. Fellowship was therefore one of the basic principles of this new club and it was agreed that membership should be drawn from different businesses and professions, the 'single classification' rule was established at a very early date.The name Rotary was finally adopted probably because the club meetings originally rotated around the offices of the various members.

By 1910, there were sixteen clubs in the United States and a Convention held that year Paul Harris was elected as President of the newly formed National Association of Rotary Clubs. Equally important was the election of Chesley (Ches) R.Perry, a member of the Chicago club, as Secretary of the new Association. His drive and single minded devotion to Rotary ideals led to the world wide expansion of Rotary in the next thirty years. As Paul Harris himself said "If in truth I can be called the Architect, Ches.can with equal truth called the builder of Rotary International"

 In fact, Rotary became International in the same year, 1910,when the Rotary Club of Winnipeg was formed across the border in Canada. A year later, Rotary arrived in the British Isles, first in Dublin and then successively in London, Belfast, Manchester,Glasgow and Edinburgh. Liverpool and Birmingham followed and in 1914 these clubs formed themselves into the British Association of Rotary Clubs (BARC) with their headquarters in Edinburgh, which club provided a Secretary, Dr T Stephenson until 1921, and three Presidents between 1914 and 1928 in the persons of R W Pentland, A Wilkie and Dr T Stephenson.

Meantime the National Association of Rotary Clubs in the United States had also undergone changes to take into account the internationalism of Rotary and at the 1922 Convention it was decided to adopt the present nomenclature of Rotary International, curiously enough the suggestion of Charles White of the Rotary Club of Belfast. The British Association quickly fell into line and adopted a similar terminology which gives us the present title of RIBI.

The constitutional relationship between RI and RIBI remained for many years as a matter of some controversy. Agreement was finally reached in 1968 whereby the existence of RIBI was recognised within the clauses of RI Constitution(Article VII)as an 'administrative territorial unit' with direct supervision of the clubs of Great Britain and Ireland.

The headquarters of Rotary International are in Evanston near Chicago: http://www.rotary.org administration is by a Board of Directors elected democratically and drawn from various parts of the world on a recognised formula. For administrative purposes Rotary International is divided into more than 500 Districts each with its District Governor who is an officer of RI.

RIBI consists of 29 Districts of which there are three in Scotland; 1010 in the North and 1020 and 1030 sharing the lowlands and the South to the East and West respectively. Our own District has now 59 Clubs with a total of 2,100 members.

The Rotary emblem is a wheel symbolising rotation. The earliest example drawn in 1906 by Montague Bear for the Rotary Club of Chicago was appropriately enough a simple wagon wheel, and the wheel in various forms figured in the emblems of Rotary Clubs as they were formed down the years throughout the world.It was not until 1921 that the present design of the Rotary emblem was finally approved by the International Association. The 6 spokes and 24 cogs have no special symbolism, but the keyway was added deliberately to indicate that the wheel was not  an 'idler' but a working wheel that can transmit powerto or from a shaft. Rotarians who 'wear  their badge with pride' should recognise the significance the the keyway.

                                                     http://www.rotary.org

                    PAUL  HARRIS : FOUNDER OF THE ROTARY MOVEMENT