Service Above Self: Rotary’s century in C.R.

Rotary in Cedar Rapids officially marks its 100th year in April.

It began with 18 men meeting at the Montrose Hotel for lunch March 23, 1914, to lay out preliminary plans for the Cedar Rapids Rotary Club.

Clubs from Des Moines, Sioux City and Davenport were invited for the official formation of the club April 6, again at a luncheon at the Montrose. After the constitution and bylaws were adopted, the club's officers were installed: Fred Fisher, president; Luther Brewer, vice president; Tom Powell, secretary; and Ed Wilcox, treasurer. Almost as soon as it was official, the club received a number of applications for membership.

The club's practice was to meet for lunch each Monday at the Montrose. In line with Rotary's motto of service, members were asked to come to the June 1 meeting with an idea about how to make Cedar Rapids a better place to live.

Among the ideas presented were a 'safety first” movement for motor vehicles; a fund to support new factories and aid local industry; a free employment bureau; improvement of roads leading into the city; and preservation and beautification of Cedar Lake.

The first project the club got behind was an effort to clean up vacant lots, removing weeds and keeping properties in good condition.

Original member Keith Vawter started scheduling speakers to talk to the club in the early 1920s. He felt that if speakers were well-received they would sell on the lecture circuit. So the Rotary club was treated to the likes of William Jennings Bryan, Will Rogers, William Howard Taft and Harry Lauder - all for free.

National history

The Rotary organization was started in Chicago in 1905 by University of Iowa law school graduate Paul Harris. He and a group of friends wanted a club for businessmen that would recapture the comraderie of the small towns from which many of them came - a group Harris described as 'an adventure in friendship.”

The club met in the office of one member at lunchtime, each man bringing a sack lunch. The name Rotary came from the rotation of meetings among the members' places of business.

Rotary soon became too large for just Chicago. A second club started in San Francisco in 1908 with 14 more added by 1910, when a national association was set up. Branches were cropping up all around the world, and Rotary became international in 1912.

'These clubs have had a wonderful success in most cities where they have been established, representing as they do, the highest class of membership, which is limited to but one trade or profession of a kind,” a 1914 Gazette editorial said.

'For instance, there can be but one doctor, one lawyer, one newspaper man, and so on. Thus when members come together, they can discuss a wide range of topics concerning the various trades and professions, profiting and learning by the other fellow's experience. Each member feels free to speak of his business and how it is conducted without the fear that a competitor in the same line might be listening.

'But it is the spirit of camaraderie which has made the Rotary club so popular. The air of good fellowship pervades all meetings and no matter how prominent the guest of honor may be, he understands the other fellows have the right to call him by his first name if they so desire. In other words, it's a sort of ‘big brother' movement among busy business men.”

Expanding its reach

By 1980 there were three Rotary clubs in Cedar Rapids. The original club had sponsored the Marion-East Cedar Rapids club in 1969 and the Cedar Rapids-West club in 1980.

The Cedar Rapids-West Rotary in turn sponsored three new clubs: Sunrise (1990), Daybreak (1995) and Ely-Gateway (2001). Rotary Club of Metro North Cedar Rapids was chartered in 2003.

Rotary arrived in Iowa City in 1915. In 1989, the Iowa City A.M. Rotary was chartered with 57 members who wanted to participate but couldn't make the Thursday noon meetings of the existing club. Iowa City Rotary Downtown was chartered in 2004.

Other area Rotary clubs were established in Belle Plaine in 1942 and Monticello in 1921, and Marshalltown in 1915, sponsored by the Cedar Rapids club, and in Independence in 1919, with the Waterloo club as its sponsor.

Opening up to women

Rotary in Cedar Rapids was men only until November 1987, when Cedar Rapids Downtown Rotary inducted its first women. Lisa McGrath, Tara Moorman, Davida Handler, Jo Elizabeth Hatch, Ellyn Wrzeski, Peggy Whitworth, Mary Quass and Mimi Meffert were introduced in the same way men had been since 1914.

Their admission to Rotary was the result of a unanimous May 1987 Supreme Court decision. Associate Justice Lewis Powell wrote, 'Indeed, by opening membership to leading business and professional women in the community, Rotary Clubs are likely to obtain a more representative cross-section of community leaders with a broadened capacity for service.”

Before he died in 1947, national founder Harris described Rotary: 'There was no inspired beginning. Young business men, mostly from the country, gathered to help and befriend each other. We had been lonesome and we found a cure for lonesomeness. No, I did not in 1905 foresee a worldwide Rotary movement. When a man plants an unpromising sapling in the early springtime, can he be sure that someday here will grow a mighty tree? Does he not have to reckon with the rain and sun - and the smile of Providence?”

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