Charles City Rotary Club celebrates centennial

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

Seventy-five people celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Charles City Rotary Club with a banquet Monday evening, including area dignitaries and representatives of the Rotary district.

Started in 1918, the club has provided fellowship for members, service to the community and support for Rotary International projects worldwide for a century, speakers said at the event, held at the Elks Lodge.

Special guests included Michelle Bell, Rotary district governor-elect, who spoke briefly about Rotary International’s worldwide efforts to eradicate polio. World Polio Day is Oct. 24, and through the efforts of the international club and others to distribute the oral polio vaccine, incidents of polio have been reduced to double digits annually.

Club members passed a basket and collected $567 to be donated to the polio eradication effort. That gift will be matched 2-to-1 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, making a total gift of $1,701.

Guest speaker was Mary French of Waverly, an Iowa State University graduate with a degree in architecture who was a State Department official and the project director to build the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, in the 2000’s. It has been called the largest embassy in the world.

The evening concluded with a few words from Jim Smith, who has been a member of the club since 1951 and has traveled extensively for Rotary events and visited Rotary Clubs when he has traveled for other purposes.

Smith said he had visited Rotary Clubs in India, East Germany, France and in Britain, and “the quality of people that are running our Rotary affairs is amazing. You should be very proud of them.”

“Every one of you would be welcome if you decided to go visit, as I have,” Smith said.