The six Rotary clubs based in Carteret County, N.C., are counting down to celebrate 100 years of Rotary in 2025. The first Rotary club to form in Morehead City met on May 19, 1925.
Local Rotarians are banding together to plan a colossal anniversary celebration about year from now, but a series of centennial-related events begins with a kickoff ceremony on July 16 at Shortway Brewing in Newport, which is open to the public. A special 100-year logo will be unveiled at that time.
Coordinating all the anniversary activities is Barbara Johnson, a member of the original Rotary Club of Morehead City, who currently serves as Rotary’s Assistant Governor, Area 1, District 7730.
She is in the process of gathering mounds of historical materials and photographs that depict the full spectrum of Rotary’s community service projects that have occurred over the past 100 years. To complement the individual Rotary club archives, Johnson asks descendants of Rotarians as well as citizens to share Rotary memories and anecdotes. Contact her at barbarafjohnson@live.com.
Today, Rotary is a worldwide organization with more than 1.4 million members in more than 46,000 local clubs. It has a fascinating history that is traced back to one man. He was Paul Percy Harris, a young attorney in Chicago, Ill, in 1905.
Harris
who was looking to bring together business and professional people for
friendship and fellowship. Three men accepted Harris’ initial invitation.
Gustavus Loehr, who was a mining engineer, agreed to host the gathering in his downtown Chicago office. Also attending were Hiram E. Shorey, a merchant tailor, and Silvester Schiele, who owned a coal company. The session was productive, as the men benefited from the diverse business perspectives represented at the table.
They agreed to meet regularly to keep up the conversation as well as to “rotate” the responsibility for hosting their meetings, Hence, the name of “Rotary” was adopted.
The first new member to join the group was Harry L. Ruggles, owner of a printing company.
Ruggles is both acclaimed and blamed for having introduced singing at Rotary club meetings. His printing presses published the first issue of a Rotary magazine as well as the first Rotary songbook.
An early edition of the songbook.
Soon,
Harris and the others realized that Rotary “needed a greater purpose” than just
“social camaraderie” in order to be sustainable. That purpose was fulfilled
through a “service component” that could unify Rotarians, allowing them to
channel their energy and talents toward projects that would benefit their home
communities.
The Chicago Rotary Club initiated its first public service project in 1907, the construction of public toilets in the city. Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programs have remained one of Rotary’s core points of emphasis ever since.
Word
spread quickly about the good works of the Chicago Rotary club, and business
and community leaders in other cities formed Rotary clubs as well.
Between 1908 and 1910, new Rotary clubs popped up (chronologically) all across the United States – in San Francisco, Oakland, Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Tacoma, Minneapolis, Saint Paul, St. Louis, New Orleans, Kansas City, Lincoln, Portland (Ore.), Detroit and Cincinnati.
The National Association of Rotary Clubs in America was formed in 1910. That same year, a Rotary club began meeting in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, marking the beginning of Rotary as an international organization. Rotary soon expanded to Dublin (Ireland) and London, necessitating the name be changed to the International Association of Rotary Clubs in 1912.
Rotary’s
early logo was a wooden wagon wheel
Every successful organization needs a logo, and the nation’s first Rotary club, which was formed in Chicago in 1905, turned to one of its members to design one.
He was Montague M. Bear, a professional engraver, who sketched a wooden wagon wheel with 13 spokes as the club emblem. Monty Bear’s intent was to illustrate “civilization and movement.”
When some club members suggested that the graphic design was a tad static and lifeless, Bear added flourishes that lifted the wheel to float on “a bed of clouds.”
Unfortunately, Bear’s clouds appeared more like “dust being kicked up on both sides of the wheel,” which defied the laws of physics. (That Chicago Rotary bunch was a tough crowd to please.)
Bear returned to his drawing board and modified the emblem once again, this time by superimposing a banner with the words “Rotary Club” over the clouds.
Valuing
Bear’s tireless efforts, Chesley Perry (shown below), who was Rotary’s first general
secretary (paid executive), recommended in 1911 that the “Rotary wheel” become
the focal point of the emblem of every Rotary club.
Clubs
were invited to submit designs to an emblem committee prior to the 1912
national convention in Duluth, Minn. According to the Rotary archives, “the
Duluth convention provided some definition.” The Rotarians settled on an image
of a “wheel with gears cut on the outer edge.”
“The spokes are to be so designed as to indicate strength; the object of the gears, or cogs, being two-fold: First to relieve the plainness of the design, and second, to symbolize power.”
Thus, Rotary’s wheel evolved, taking on more of a “manufacturing-oriented workforce” representation.
However, the number of spokes and cogs was left unspecified. As a result, many variations on the emblem began appearing.
To address “uniformity” in 1918, the Rotary board tasked two members with an engineering background, Charles Mackintosh and Oscar Bjorge, “to standardize the Rotary emblem.”
Their solution was “six spokes and 24 cogs, giving the emblem a sturdy appearance. In this design, the number of teeth and spokes was intended to reflect a real, working gearwheel.”
The Mackintosh-Bjorge design was formally approved at Rotary’s 1921 convention.
By 1924, the emblem was improved with the addition of a “keyway” (a suggestion attributed to Will Forker of the Los Angeles Rotary Club) “to transfer power from a shaft to turn the wheel.”
From
that date forward, the Rotary wheel logo has remained basically intact and is
viewed as the organization’s “mark of excellence,” symbolic of “hope,
connection and impact.”
In 1929, Rotary adopted its formal color scheme of “Rotary Gold and Rotary Royal Blue.” Essentially, these colors can be identified using the printing industry’s Pantone Matching System as PMS 130C (a gold/orange hue) and PMS 286C (royal blue).
“The Rotary logo has special imagery for us here in Carteret County,” said Barbara Johnson.
“There are six spokes on the Rotary wheel, and we have six active clubs within the county that are meeting regularly.”
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