Recently I was looking through some of the Rotary documents that are passed down from President to President for safekeeping. I came across an old booklet titled ‘Historical Review of Rotary’. In it I learned numerous interesting facts about the personal life of Paul Harris, Rotary’s founder.
Paul Harris was born in Racine, Wisconsin in 1868 and, when he was three years old, he and his older brother were sent to their paternal grandparents in Wallingford, Vermont because their father had ‘fallen on bad times’.
Fortunately Paul was happy with his grandparents and loved them very much. However he was relatively young, in his late teens, when they both died within two years of each other.
In his second year of studies at the University of Vermont, Paul was expelled from the University after being wrongly accused of the ‘hazing’ (humiliation and degradation) of a freshman. It was many years later, in 1933 that the University conferred on Paul an Honorary Doctorate of Laws.
In 1887 Paul entered Princeton University, New Jersey and in 1889 he read law at the University of Iowa, graduating in 1891.
| "Rotary has succeed because in Rotary the standing of a man depends upon his deeds, not his creeds; and, because its course leads toward the brightest and most alluring human objectives: the brotherhood of man." - Paul Harris |
At this stage in his life, Paul spent 5 years travelling and working in many different jobs both in America and England, Scotland, Ireland, Belgium and Italy. Paul experienced many types of employment such as working as a reporter, fruit picking, teaching in a business college, acting in a theatre, working on a ranch, working as a night clerk in a hotel and becoming a salesman for a marble and granite company, which took him to overseas countries.
In 1896 Paul moved to Chicago where he set up a successful legal practice and in 1905 Paul Harris established Rotary. Paul Harris named the club ’Rotary’ because members met in rotation at various places of business. The name met with general approval and club membership grew rapidly.
Watch this rare video of Paul Harris, filmed in 1942, where he speaks about the history of and creation of Rotary and about the future of the organisation he founded.