Each week, Rick Kowey, ST Rotary Foundation Chairperson, provides a tidbit of information about the early years of Rotary. Paul Percy Harris was a Chicago, Illinois, attorney. He founded the club that became the humanitarian organization Rotary International in 1905.
According to Fred A. Carvin in Paul Harris and the Birth of Rotary, right after Paul’s tour through Europe, he and Jean returned home only to repack their suitcases to journey to his hometown of Wallingford, VT for the kick-off of the Rotary Club of Wallingford in the summer of 1928.
Reportedly, half the town showed up in the auditorium of the American Fork and Hoe Company. Harris’ popularity had risen to an all-time high as the face of Rotary, and he continued to travel the world, visiting hundreds of clubs and giving speeches. Both Paul and Jean were delighted to see the breadth of community service projects that the clubs were undertaking. However, his climb to the pinnacle of success once again began to unravel in May of 1929 when his brother Cecil took ill with food poisoning at the international convention in Dallas, TX. Coupled with a recent ankle injury and exhaustion from the blistering heat in Texas at the time, Cecil passed away at the age of sixty-three. Severely fatigued by the combined effects of Cecil’s death and breathtaking international travel, Paul then became a victim of a massive heart attack. It took two years for Harris to recover, and he chose the 1930 international convention in Chicago to end his eighteen-year absence at conventions, most likely to honor is late brother Cecil and because it was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the birth of Rotary. In fact, no one knew that Paul and Jean would be attending, and the room erupted in applause as they entered the rear of the auditorium and moved toward the podium, just as his usual annual message was being read by the convention chairperson.