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The Fairfield
Rotary Club was organized January 23, 1920,
by Dr. J. Fred Clarke. The meeting place and time were the Leggett
Hotel, 12:15 p.m. Friday. Closing time was set at 1:15, but in 1924
it was changed to 1:30.
When the club was first
organized, there was no coffee shop in the Leggett, so the meetings
were held in the public dining room. The hotel's regular and
transient customers were often startled and astounded by the stunts
staged by the Rotarians, including elopements, pursuits by irate
parents, escaped convicts, robbers and inmates from Mt. Pleasant. In
the early years, no meeting was complete without a good stunt!
The minutes from those years
contain a great many references to "the swimming pool," to good
roads, and to "the pig club." The Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts both
got liberal support from our club. There was also considerable
discussion about cleaning up the site for the new Post Office
building; a committee was formed to study traffic problems and to
attempt to frame new parking regulations.
In May of 1925, President Cohagen announced the delivery of a
"President's Bell," presented to the club by Governor Boardman at
the Ft. Dodge conference in recognition of the "consistently fine
attendance record" that the club had earned over the years.
In September of 1925, Dr. J.
Fred Clarke presented a resolution that had been proposed by Jack
Ireland: "That the members of the Rotary establish a rotating fund
for the purpose of educating worthy boys of the community." The
first loan, for $200, was made to an unnamed Parsons College
student. After a few years this student loan concept seems to have
been transferred entirely to Parsons, and it lost its Rotary
identity.
It was Fairfield's own William
Louden who first introduced the concept of make-up meetings to the
Denver International Convention in 1926. His resolution read,
"When a member is away from
home and is thereby unable to attend a meeting of his club, he
shall have the privilege of making up his attendance by attending
a meeting of another club during the six day interim preceding
said meeting, as well as during the six day interim after the
meeting."
This resolution was adopted,
and is still in effect throughout the entire Rotary organization.
Another tradition that began
in 1926 was the annual Christmas Parade, with Santa carried in a
sleigh drawn by four horses carrying treats for local children.
After a number of years the parade was dropped, but was reinstated
in the Fifties.
During the Depression years,
the Fairfield club was active in providing milk for the
undernourished children in the Fairfield schools; a collection was
taken at each meeting. In addition, the club raised the money among
its members to buy a range for the kitchen at the Baptist Church,
which was also helping to feed the needy children of the community. |
