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It is worth taking a quick
look back at the Casas Adobes Rotary Club's 30-year history.
Rotary began in Chicago in
1905. In 1921 the Downtown
Club was established in the small town of Tucson. Territorial boundaries
were quite important in those days but as Tucson grew, the Downtown Club
shared its territory with new Rotary clubs, retaining the right to accept
members from throughout the metropolitan area.
After World War II business and
population growth along Miracle Mile called for another club.
The Saguaro Rotary Club was chartered in 1963, and in turn
sponsored what was to become the Casas Adobes Club in 1976.
In May 1976. Dean Hooks, a
petroleum dealer, became the leader of the new Northside Breakfast Club,
and Steve Kirkpatrick, an insurance man, assumed the role of secretary.
District Governor, Horace W. "Sonny" Knowles, and his
area coordinator, Porter Williams, met with Hooks to discuss the new club
in August 1976 and Hooks among overtones of animosity. The new club's
members requested a provisional charter. The first officers were Dean
Hooks, president, Sherwin Lurie, vice president; Steven Kirkpatrick,
secretary, and Jack Rumsey, treasurer.
By fall, 25 members were
meeting regularly at 7:00 a.m., at the Cliff Manor Inn. An early meeting featured a debate between Mo Udall,
incumbent Congressman, with Laird Guttersen and Michael Emerling,
competitors for Mo's seat in Congress. Each man spoke for 15 minutes and
the questions which followed were heated. Gutterson, a club member and
former POW who had endured more than five years of brutal captivity in
Viet Nam, failed to unseat Udall.
Early members grappled with a
number of internal matters: attendance rules, dues, and qualifications of
new members, designing an affordable club badge, as well as policies
regarding smoking during the meeting and whether an opening prayer would
offend anyone. It was agreed that four meetings a year would be open to
spouses--a practice that has followed through as the 5th
Wednesday meeting.
The new yet-to-be-chartered
club was nothing if not ambitious. It took on the project of a $50,000
bloodmobile vehicle, hoping for a joint venture with other clubs. When the hoped-for alliance didn’t come to pass, the club
considered going it alone. The financial obligation proved insurmountable
and the project was dropped.
Nels Havens introduced
innovative fines for being
late, leaving early, getting married, buying a new car, etc. These were
adopted along with what in those days was popular - the matching fine. If
the fine was a dollar, many other members would hold up a dollar and
whatever was collected from the club had to be matched by the person
fined.
A charter was issued on
November 11, 1976, and presented at a Charter Dinner at the Skyline
Country Club on December 2. The dinner included steak and lobster, and
cost $24 per couple. Don Ownbey, a past district governor,
was master of ceremonies. A letter of welcome from Rotary
International's President, Robert A Manchester II, was read and Casas
Adobes became the world's 17,018th Rotary club. Governor Knowles and Dean
Hooks were featured speakers.
A member nominee, Mike Harris,
was present at the Charter Meeting. Mike was inducted on December 29th as
a charter member.
The first family Christmas
party saw Jay Wilson as Santa. Jay
has continued that tradition ever since.
The club was hardly organized
when it discovered a fact of club life - membership turnover. The Vice
President moved to North Carolina; Jack Rumsey, treasurer, Peter Evans and
Carlton Mellick also dropped out. Of the many men who joined the club in
the first decade, only six are still active in the club: Mike Harris (1976), Ron Longenbaugh (1978), Mark Grady and Fred Sowerby
(1980), Len Karlberg, and Doug Woodard (1985).
Membership potential increased
in the late 1980s with approval of female membership. The first woman member of our club was Susanne Bozzo
Thomas. Carolyn Christian was
the sixth woman elected to membership, and the first woman member to
receive a Paul Harris Fellowship.
Membership in the Casas Adobes
Club has risen slowly from 35 (1979) to about 50 today.
2000 saw the most members (76).
During the period 1991-99, approximately 125 persons who were club
members have moved, died, or dropped out.
In 1983, John Westover gave a
program about the Rotary Foundation and Paul Harris Fellowship. Using the
matching fine technique which was popular in those days, Westover held up
a hundred dollar bill and challenged club members to make a commitment.
Keith McKenzie and J.E. King each donated a thousand dollars to the
Foundation and became Paul Harris Fellows, with five others signing on as
sustaining members. A system of quarterly billing (1984) greatly increased
the number of sustaining members and in 1987 sustaining membership became
a club tradition. Today the club counts over 75 members, former members,
and transferring members among its Paul Harris Fellows.
The Club moved to the Westward
Look in 1985 because of inadequate space for expansion.
Dues and fines were not
producing enough money to achieve the club’s aims. Additional funds were
gained from pancake breakfasts and bake sales held at the Casa Blanca
Shopping Center jointly with the Saguaro Club.
The first Monte Carlo Night at
the Oro Valley Country Club (19??) was not a great financial success, but
in succeeding years the net proceeds rose above $11,000, largely from Doug
Woodard’s silent and live auctions of donated and purchased items such
as airline tickets or vacation packages.
The most ambitious Monte Carlo
night auctioned off two round trip tickets to Beijing, China, and a week's
stay in a deluxe hotel. The hotel suite was donated by the hotel manager,
a former member of the Club. It
was anticipated that the tickets would be available at a greatly reduced
rate. Spirited bidding for the grand prize was won by a young woman from
California who gave the club her personal check. Then the club received a
real blow-the tickets must be purchased at full price. The club was saved,
however, when the young woman's check bounced.
In 1998 the club sponsored a
"Hold-Up at Westward Look," a western theme program under a big
tent with a western-style meal and a western band.
The successful silent and live auctions (with Doug Woodard the
auctioneer) were continued. Net proceeds in 1999 were in excess of
$20.000.
A new fundraiser, “Ticket to
Paradise,” was tried in 2000. A super raffle with expensive prizes was
combined with an outdoor event at the Hacienda del Sol. Net proceeds
almost equaled the much more work intensive “Hold-Up”.
An additional fundraiser, the
Casas Adobes Golf Tournament, began in 2001 and continues as an annual
event.
In 2003 the
"Hold-Up at Westward Look" returned with a record breaking
performance netting about $33,000.
The increasing income put the
club's non-profit status in jeopardy, so the club established a separate,
not for profit, foundation to receive and distribute money. There is some
correlation between the club and the foundation boards, but it is the
foundation which dispenses funds for the club's educational and charitable
projects.
The Casas Adobes Club is first
and foremost a service club. Our
members have served many directly, swinging hammers, axes and paint
brushes for the YMCA, summer camps, Christmas in April renovation
projects, remodeling an office for a charity, working at graffiti
abatement, cleaning up the Rillito River and visiting institutional
shut-ins. Additionally it has
spent its hard-earned money on hundreds of projects large and small, the
largest being RI’s Polio Plus ($34,500 plus another $4,500 pleadged for
the final polio eradication push).
Other larger grants of $5,000 went toward the San Xavier Mission
restoration and Casa de los Ninos. Significant donations are regularly
made to Amphi High School Summer Basketball, the Northwest YMCA, the
Marshall Home for Men, folkloric dance troupes, the Holiday Center, a Pima
College Scholarship Fund, FINCA, and many more.
Our 8th Grade Program is the
club’s current flagship project. Each
fall our members visit area 8th Grades to challenge the
students to leadership and scholarship. The students are told that the
following Spring, the best among them will be selected for recognition by
their teachers. The selected students, their students, teachers, and
parents to a breakfast at which the students are recognized.
Students receive certificates and their schools receive plaques.
The best of these students are eligible at high school graduation
in four years for Rotary scholarship grants.
In May 2002 nine grants totaling $9,000 were awarded in
scholarships. The program represents a real financial commitment to
scholarship and citizenship by the Casas Adobes Rotary Club.
Other grants have helped youths
protected by the Juvenile Court, supported the Juvenile Diabetes
Foundation and provided gifts for the impoverished at Christmas programs
on the San Xavier Reservation.
International activities
include exchanges with Rotary Clubs in Durango, Torreon, Nacozari and
Hermosillo. We have hosted groups from many Mexican communities. In 1984
our club sponsored a week-long visit by Torreon's chief of public services
during which the Tucson city government showed him how our community runs. Our club participated in the 50th anniversary of the
chartering of the Rotary Club of Torreon.
Individual gifts such as a brace for a girl and a motorized wheel
chair for a woman have been made to handicapped individuals in Nogales,
Sonora. The club has answered many pleas for international help, providing
books for schools in India and driving truckloads of clothing to El Paso
and Douglas for transshipment to the needy in Mexico.
2001 saw the
formal establishment of a sister club relationship with the Rotary Club of
Hermosillo-Pitic in Sonora, Mexico.
Casas Adobes has hosted and
entertained Group Study Exchange members from worldwide. We also have
hosted Rotary Exchange Students from Argentina, Australia, Belgium,
Brazil, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Peru and South Africa.
It is impossible to recount all
of the club's activities during these past 30 years. There is no question,
however, that the Rotary spirit, "Service Above Self', has been
the standard of the Casas Adobes Rotary Club.
John Westover,
former Club Historian
Note
- Several of the club's early members have contributed their recollections
to this short essay.
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