After receiving Charter No. 834, Wooster Rotary elected the first officers of the Club:

 

A few Rotary members have been asking about the Rotary Youth Exchange program, no doubt prompted by the excellent article about our current inbound and outbound students in the Daily Record last week.

The Rotary Club of Denmark initiated the first Rotary youth exchange in 1927 with the Rotary Club of Nice, France following in 1929. The exchanges then usually took place during summer or school vacations and only lasted for a few weeks. Exchanges were abandoned in the mid-1930’s because of economic conditions and the impending unrest which ultimately led to World War II.

 

 

 

The year 1950 was a very busy year for Wooster Rotary beginning with the election of William C. Craig as Wooster President. Soon after his election the Wooster Rotary hosted its first District Assembly. The daytime sessions were held at Taylor Hall on the Campus of The College of Wooster. The evening session was held in the assembly hall of the Wooster Methodist Church. Wooster Rotary was also awarded the Governor’s Award for being the outstanding club in District 229.

 

 

In 1954 Harold Freedlander became the 34th President of Wooster Rotary. 1954 was also the 50th Anniversary of the founding of Rotary International. The occasion was celebrated with the laying of the cornerstone of a new headquarters in Evanston, Illinois. Engraved on the cornerstone was, and is, “Service Above Self - He Profits Most Who Serves Best”.
 

 

The Wooster Rotary Year 1956-1957 began as J. Garber Drushal took the helm as President of Wooster Rotary. Dr. Drushal, PhD., was, at the time, Professor in the Speech Department at the College of Wooster. Membership in Wooster Rotary at that time stood at 161.
 
A very active topic for discussion at the September 21, 1956 meeting was the use of Weitzel Hall as a noon meeting place for Wooster Rotary. President Drushal began the discussion because of the poor attendance recently at Wooster Rotary. It was noted that the main reason seemed to be the inaccessibility of the stairs to the Hall for many of Wooster Rotary’s aging members. Earlier, Paul Weitzel had been approached about installing a small elevator, but he evidently declined. Another possibility floated for discussion was buying a building on the ground floor for Rotary’s exclusive use. This would permit larger meetings such as Ladies’ night. That idea also evidently went nowhere. The Masonic Lodge was approached as well to rent their ground floor room out, but they declined. The Board of Directors was directed to continue the search for a suitable ground floor meeting place. As an added to note to this issue, we hope everyone had a chance to read page A8 in the 7/2/2020, Sunday Daily Record. There you would have noted Dr. Edward Brown, a polio survivor and Wooster Rotary member, being carried up the stairs to Weitzel Hall by Ivan Steiner, Jr., also a Rotarian.

 

 

 

 

 

Wooster Rotary honored our members, our family members (i.e. spouses, children) and community members who are veterans at our November 11th meeting. Major General (Ret) Tod J. Carmony was the day's speaker.  He noted the impact that a nation of WWII veterans had on the generation after them, as parents and as community leaders, and how many of those veterans shaped his own passion to serve.  MG Carmony is a Wooster native who served 39 years in the US Army; in addition to numerous deployments around the world, he also deployed to Mississippi as part of the Katrina Relief mission in 2005.