A Brief History of
The Cleveland Rotary Club
On March 20, 1924, 19 years after the first Rotary meeting, a charter presentation dinner was held at the Hotel Cleveland, attended by 24 charter members, a delegation of Chattanooga Rotarians and other invited guests.
The charter was officially presented by Will Mainer of Nashville, who later became the president of Rotary International.
The officers were W.P. Lang, president; J.F. Hannah, first vice president; Will H. Fillauer, second vice president; and E. H. Graves, secretary-treasurer.
The following 25 charter members were present: Allie M. Bryant, John R. Cate, T.E.P. Chambers, Dean W. Chase, Sr., Sam T. Davidson, John L. Dethero, Sr., J.V. Dodd, John B. Fillauer, Will H. Fillauer, Walter Franklin, Sr., E.H. Graves, George Hain, J.F. Hannah, Ed J. Hargis, S.L. King, W.P. Lang, C.R. Matlock, Ben D. Moore, John C. Moore, Gale Pearson, M.M. Roddy, W.P. Sykes, Roscoe C. Taylor and James L. Wolfe.
Rotary in Cleveland exists today as the original Rotary Club of Cleveland which meets on Tuesdays at the Holiday Inn at noon, the Bradley Sunrise Club, meeting on Thursday mornings at 7:00 a.m. at SkyRidge Medical Center, the Lee University Rotaract Club, the Cleveland High School Interact Club and the Cleveland Middle School Youthact Club.
The Rotary Club of Cleveland celebrates 84 years of service to this community and to Rotary International projects on March 20, 2008.
A Brief History of Rotary International
Rotary, the world’s first service club, was founded on February 23, 1905, in Chicago, Illinois by a young lawyer named Paul B. Harris. On that day he met with Silvester Schiele, a coal dealer, Gus Loehr, a mining engineer and Hiram Shorey, a tailor, in Loehr’s office in the Unity Building, 127 North Dearborn Street. The group continued to meet regularly with meetings taking place in rotation at the members’ businesses. Thus came the name Rotary.
Five years later, in 1910, sixty delegates attended a convention of 16 clubs that were in existence at that time. A year later a Rotary Club in Winnipeg, Canada, was accepted for admission, and at the 1912 convention the name was changed to the International Association of Rotary Clubs.
Today, Rotary is truly international, with clubs in 163 countries. The worldwide club membership is divided into regions and districts and total membership consists of over 1.2 million service-minded leaders belonging to more than 32,000 clubs.