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, Paul agreed for the first time to visit a club outside of the United States in March 1926.
Both Paul and his wife Jean were greeted lovingly by the Rotary Club of Bermuda upon its second anniversary. Later that same year in December, George Harris, Paul’s father, died in Denver; he was eight-four. As one may recall, Paul’s relationship with George had become strained over his father’s repeated requests to have access to the trust containing the inheritance from his father. George had been placed in the care of the Sisters of Mercy, a charity hospital, and not surprisingly, he had not adjusted well to that environment. However, years later, Paul’s view of his father softened, as he recounted how George had cared for his mother in her final years, writing to him posthumously, “Mother was sadly broken; she was totally blind and helpless, and then came the great transformations in your life. You waited on mother so tenderly all those later years, lifting her from her bed and placing her in her wheelchair. I remember so well how patiently you fed her with a spoon - how you hung on her every word and became her abject slave and when she passed away. You tried so bravely to face life without her. You expiated all shortcomings of former years.” Paul did travel to Denver for his father’s burial and interment next to his mother.