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ROTARIANS attending the
1931 RI convention in Vienna, Austria, |
were thrilled by a
performance of Franz Lehar's "The Merry Widow" operetta |
conducted by the composer
himself. |
Local Rotarians took extra pleasure in the performance,
for Lehar was an active member of the
Rotary Club of Vienna.
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Other Rotarian composers
have included Jean Sibelius, once a member of the
Rotary Club of Helsinki- Helsingfors, Finland; and ... |
Sigmund Romberg (the
operetta, "May time"), a former member of the Rotary
Club
of New York, New York, U.S.A.
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Rotarians have been, and
are, prominent in other areas of the arts.
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German novelist Thomas
Mann was an active member of the Rotary Club of Munich.
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The Nobel Prize in Literature 1929 |
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U.S. poet James Whitcomb
Riley was a member of the Rotary Club of
Indianapolis, Indiana.
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Edgar A. Guest (a frequent
contributor to THE ROTARIAN) was also a Rotarian in
Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A.
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Joel Chandler
Harris, author
of the "Uncle Remus" stories, was an active Rotarian, and his son, Joel
Chandler Harris, Jr., was a district governor and member of the
Rotary
Club of Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A.
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(Walt Disney, who brought
some of the Harris tales to the movie screen, was an honorary member of
the Rotary Club of Palm Springs, California, U.S.A.)
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Science fiction author Jack
Williamson comes down to earth to meet with the Rotary Club of Portales,
New Mexico, U.S.A.
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His fellow writer, John
Jakes � author of an extremely popular series of novels about U.S.
history � is also a Rotarian.
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Admiral Richard E. Byrd, the
intrepid Arctic explorer, was a member of the Rotary Club of Winchester,
Virginia, U.S.A. |
Another daring adventurer,
Thor Heyerdahl, is an honorary
member of the Rotary Club of Larvik, Norway.
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Many of the illustrious
figures in world affairs have been and are Rotarians. Royalty and
elected political officials have been drawn to Rotary's ideal of
"Service Above Self."
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The Presidents of the United States that were Honorary
Rotarians are: Woodrow Wilson (RC of Birmingham, AL) (TR April 1915 p.76),
Calvin Coolidge, |
Only "Real Rotarian" Warren G. Harding - Member
Washington
D.C. Rotary Club since December 10, 1920. See The Rotarian March, 1921 Vol.
XVIII No. 3. |
Other honorary U.S.,
Presidents were Herbert Hoover, ... |
Franklin D. Roosevelt
(honorary member of the RC of Albany,,
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Harry S. Truman, ... |
Dwight D. Eisenhower,
(honorary member of the RC of Abilene, Kansas (1942), Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania (1952), and Newport, Rhode Island, (1957)),
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John F. Kennedy have been
honorary Rotarians. . |
Richard Nixon - Whittier, CA since 1948 |
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Gerald R. Ford -
Grand Rapids, MI
since 1966 |
Jimmy Carter - Americus, GA since 1995 |
Ronald W. Reagan - Pacific
Palisades, CA |
George W. Bush -
RC of Washington DC (made an honorary
member by RI Past President Frank Devlyn at a ceremony on 2 July, 2001 at
the White House) |
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Adlai E. Stevenson, U.S.
Ambassador to the UN and governor of Illinois, was a member of the
Rotary Club of Springfield in that state.
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Earl Warren, Chief Justice
of the Supreme Court, was a Rotarian, ... |
Edward VIII, Duke of Windsor - Honorary member of two
Canadian Rotary clubs. TR March 1936 p. 27.
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Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister, Birmingham, UK |
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as was Associate
Justice William O. Douglas.
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Wayne Morse, former U.S.
senator from Oregon, was a past president of the Rotary Club of Eugene.
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Mark O. Hatfield, former
governor of and present U.S. senator from Oregon, was also a member of
the Eugene club.
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J. Millard Tawes, former governor of
Maryland, was a charter member of the Rotary Cub of Crisfield. |
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Two former RI presidents,
Luther H. Hodges
(1967-68) (Mr. Hodges served as
governor of North Carolina and U.S. secretary of commerce). and |
Clinton
P. Anderson (1932-33) achieved levels of importance in U.S. (Mr. Anderson served as U.S.
secretary of agriculture and U.S. senator from New Mexico.)
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Carlos P. Romulo,
Rotary
Club of Manila - Philippine Brigadier General in WWII,
Ambassador of the Philippines to the US, Permanent Representative to the UN,
President of the 4th session of the United Nations 1949 and
Past Director of
Rotary International. (speech by Romulo at UN page) |
Guglielmo Marconi inventor of the wireless, was
an active member of the Rotary Club of Bologna, Italy.
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Aesgeir Asgeirsson, former
president of Iceland, was a charter member of the Rotary Club of
Reykjavik. |
Sir Winston Churchill was an
honorary member of the
Rotary Club of London, England.
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Jan Masaryk, former president of the Republic of Czechoslovakia,
and ... |
Eduard Benes, former minister of foreign affairs for that country, were
members of the Rotary Club of Prague. (Today, of course, there are no Rotary
clubs in Czechoslovakia.) |
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There is royalty in Rotary. |
The honorary president of
the Rotary Cub of Monaco, Monaco, is Prince Rainier III.
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King Baudouin I of Belgium, is an honorary member of the
Rotary Cub of Brussels.
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King Hassan II of Morocco,
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Albert I
King of
Belgium |
I. K. Gujaral, Prime Minister |
H. R. H. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh - honorary member
of the Rotary Club of Winsor and Eton, England - TR June 1970 p. 28
an honorary member of the
Rotary Club of Edinburgh. |
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher - 1990 |
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King Carl VI Gustav of
Sweden, and ... |
Prince Bernhard of the
Netherlands are patrons of Rotary in their countries.
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Italian politician and couturier Emilio Pucci,
is a member of the Rotary Cub of Florence. |
General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, chief executive of Chile, is an honorary member of the Rotary Club of
Santiago. |
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Many of the world's leading
industrialists and businessmen are Rotarians. |
Konosuke Matsushita,
president of Japan's Matsushita Electric Company was a member of the
Rotary Club of Osaka. |
The late J.C. Penney,
founder and chairman of the board for the J.C. Penney stores, was a
member of the
Rotary Cub of New York, New York, U.S.A. |
Charles R. Walgreen, Jr.,
chairman of the board of the Walgreen Drug Company, is a member of the
Rotary Club of Chicago, Illinois, USA |
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U.S. sports figures Tris
Speaker and .... |
Cornelius "Connie Mack"
McGillicuddie
were Rotarians |
as was Olympic gold medalist
swimmer Duke Kahanamoko. |
Dr. Karl A. Menninger, M.D. - Chairman of the Board of
Trustees Menninger Foundation - Honorary Member Rotary Club of Topeka,
Kansas. Rotary International Archives / Central Files-Subject Files /
Notables - General. Letter dated 28 January, 1977 from Claire Hettinger, DG
571. |
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Dr. Charles H. Mayo,
co-founder of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, U.S.A., is a
member of that city's Rotary club. |
Francoise
Barre-Sinoussi along with her partner Jean-Claude Chermann (right)
isolated the aids virus at the Pasteur Institute |
They are both PHF of "La
Rochelle-Aunis D1690" The first publication of the
discovery of
AIDS
Virus was in 1983. |
Nobel Prize winner Dr.
Albert Schweitzer, philosopher and physician, was an honorary member of the
Rotary clubs of Colmar, France, and Passau, Germany. |
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PHOTOS Pierre Belujon
PP-PHF
La Rochelle - Aunis
d1690 |
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Clarence Birdseye - Gloucester, Mass, USA - Developer of a
process for quick freezing food. - TR December 1935 p. 27 |
H. E. Soleiman Frangieh,
Republic President of Lebanon,
1969-75, founding member of RC Tripoli - Tripoli, Lebanon,
January 1950. |
Sir Nigel Gresley
(see article below)
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Richard Knowles
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Provided
by
PAG Dr. Michel P. Jazzar
RC of Zgharta-Zawi� |
There are probably few if any
Rotarians who have had a mainline railway
steam engine named after them, particularly one which they designed
themselves. Sir Nigel Gresley is certainly one. In 1921
when the
Doncaster Rotary Club was chartered, Gresley was working as Locomotive
Superintendent of the Great Northern Railway based in the town.
A founder
member of the club, he was elected as one of the first two Vice
Presidents.
Two years later, the railways of Britain were re-organised into four
main
companies and the GNR became part of the new London and North Eastern
Railway. Nigel Gresley was appointed Chief Mechanical Engineer
of the new
company and in that capacity had to move to London, relinquishing his
membership of the Doncaster Club. However, he continued to
maintain
connections with Doncaster until his death in 1941 at the age of 67.
Among
the locomotives which he designed were, and indeed still are, 'Flying
Scotsman', the steam engine record holder 'Mallard' and the
streamlined
pacific, the 100th to be built at Doncaster, which was called 'Sir
Nigel
Gresley' in his honour.
Basil
Lewis
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R.G.Knowles . RC London
1858-1919
Richard Knowles's name is little known today but from late Victorian
days
through the Ffirst World War, this Canadian born artist, was a
popular and
clever entertainer. He was one of the early members of the
Rotary Club of
London, where like Harry Lauder, his classification was 'comedian', a
description which was enhanced by his stage appearances in a red wig,
a
battered opera hat, white ducks and a frock coat.
As a patter comedian, Knowles toured the Halls in various parts of the
Empire being especially well received in Australia. He was
much in demand
as a visiting speaker at the early British Rotary clubs, and was a
keen
Rotarian, being the only British member to attend the 1917 Convention
in
Atlanta.
He died at the age of 60 in 1919.
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Rotarians are impressive
travelers. Sir Edmund Hillary, an honorary member of the
Rotary
Club of Auckland, New Zealand, has trekked to the top of Mt. Everest.
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Another
honorary Rotarian
has flown to the moon! Former U.S. astronaut Neil
A. Armstrong is an honorary member of the Rotary Club of Wapakoneta, Ohio,
U.S.A. |
Former astronaut Alan B. Shephard, Jr.,
was an honorary Rotarian in
Derry, New Hampshire, U.S.A. |
Aviation pioneer Orville
Wright was an active member of the
Rotary Club of Dayton, Ohio, U.S.A. |
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Astronaut L. Gordon Cooper was once a
down-to-earth honorary Rotarian in Space Center (Houston) Texas, U.S.A |
Frank Borman, Astronaut,
Houston #53 |
Charles Lindberg, First Trans-Atlantic Flight |
Swedish
photographers Lennart Nilsson ("Behold Man") and Karl Gullers are Rotarians.
(Linnart is a
member of the Rotary Club of Stockholm.)Karl, who was
profiled in the April 1975 issue of THE ROTARIAN, is a
Phoenix, Arizona,
U.S.A., Rotarian. |
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Author, minister, and
lecturer, Norman Vincent Peale, a former member of the RI public
relations committee, belongs to the
New York, New York, U.S.A., club. |
Influential and internationally famed editor
of the Emporia (Kansas, U.S.A.) Gazette, William Allen White, was a
Rotarian |
Thomas A. Edison - Inventor - Honorary member of the RC of
Orange, NJ - The Weekly Letter Monday, 26, 1931 page 1. |
General John J. Pershing - WWI US General - Honorary member
of the RC of St. Louis, MO - The Rotarian December 1938 page 33. |
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General Douglas MacArthur
- WWII US General - Honorary
member of the RC of Tokyo, Japan (Approximately April or May 1949) The
Rotarian - July 1949 page 21. |
Diane Feinstein, U. S.
Senator, RC of San Francisco |
Richard Lugar,
U.
S. Senator,
Indianapolis #58 |
Sir Harry Lauder, Vaudeville
Comedian,
Glasgow, SC #60 |
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Charles 'Chic' Sale, Writer, Film, Performer,
Scarsdale, NY |
Gordon Selfridge, Store Owner,
London #50 |
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