Rotary International, one of the world’s first service organizations, was founded on February 23, 1905. That first Rotary Club in Chicago has the name Rotary One. According to this on the Rotary One website:
On February 23, 1905, Paul Harris had dinner with his closest friend, Chicago coal dealer Silvester Schiele. Afterwards they walked up to Room 711 of the Unity Building where they met their host, Gustavus Loehr, a mining engineer; and another friend, Hiram Shorey, a merchant tailor. Harris proposed that they form a club. No name was chosen for the group. But they agreed to meet next at the offices of Silvester Schiele. The second meeting was March 9th. Three other men, Harry Ruggles, William Jenson, and A. L. White joined them. Ruggles was a printer, and created the “name badge” version of the Rotary “wheel” and also started singing in Rotary. In fact his singing kept the group from disbanding more than once. It was also decided that “rotating” the meetings made “Rotary” the most logical name. Two weeks later the group gathered at the office of Silvester Schiele, in his coal yard at Twelfth and State Streets. Six of the previous seven were present along with Charles Newton and Arthur B. Irwin.
The first four Rotarians (from left): Gustavus Loehr, Silvester Schiele, Hiram Shorey, and Paul P. Harris.
Paul Harris, spent most of his childhood in Vermont, after he and his brother were sent to live with his grandparents in Wallingford, Vermont. While a student at the University of Vermont, he joined Lambda Iota (the Owls) a local fraternity founded in 1836.
Paul Harris as a University of Vermont student. That badge that he is wearing is the Lambda Iota badge, from the local fraternity at the University of Vermont.
He was expelled in the late 1880s for refusing to name the students involved in the painting of the statue of the Marquis de Lafayette. Years later, the University of Vermont awarded him an honorary doctorate.
Marquis de Lafayette statue, University of Vermont
Since 1905, Rotary International has taken its commitment to service to heart. The first mass inoculation of American children began in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1954. PolioPlus, Rotary International’s program to eradicate polio from the world began in 1985. Since then, more than 2 billion children have been immunized, 10 million children have been saved from lifelong paralysis, and all but two countries are now declared polio-free.
This video tells the story of Rotary’s founding and it has a surprise visit from Charles “Chic” Sale. He grew up in Champaign, Illinois. As a high school student, he hung out with his friends, some of whom were Sigma Nus, at the chapter house on the University of Illinois campus. In those early days of the 1900s, fraternities sometimes pledged men before they enrolled at the institution. Sale was pledged to the Gamma Mu chapter in 1906. The Sigma Nus gave him the nickname “Chic” when he entertained them at the chapter house. He had a way of making the chapter members laugh while entertaining them, and they encouraged to make his way as a performer. He left Champaign and tried his hand at vaudeville. He became one of America’s best-loved character actors and comedian on both stage and screen. During his travels, he frequently visited Sigma Nu chapter houses or attended alumni association meetings. One of his close friends was University of Wisconsin Sigma Nu alumnus Nick Grinde, who became his publicity man and later a renowned movie director.
Sale was an instant success in the film The Star Witness and his popularity grew with the publication of his humorous book, The Specialist. The book was published in 1929 and was a best seller (and this was before books of this type were published – vaudeville was rife with plagiarism). It was a play about an outhouse builder. Sale, at a luncheon of the Sigma Nu Alumni Association, dined with a few lawyers who encouraged him to copyright and publish as a book the tale that he told them, the funny story about Lem Putt and his outhouses. He did just that. (Since the history was about the chapter and not Chic Sale, I did not take good notes on the meeting, but that is my recollection of the story.)
Sale, who apparently was also a Rotarian, was initiated into the Gamma Mu chapter in 1927 by an act of the Sigma Nu High Council. He was named to the Sigma Nu Hall of Fame in 1986. Sale died in 1936 at age 51.
© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2015. All Rights Reserved. If you enjoyed this post, please sign up for updates. Also follow me on twitter @GLOHistory and Pinterest www.pinterest.com/glohistory/
