The 10th Convention

Salt Lake City, UT June 16-20 with 2,588 in attendance

“A Rotarian who sees nothing in Rotary beyond the business he can get out of it is

a dead Rotarian and the sooner he can be buried the better for the cause”.

Further history notes from RC of Salt Lake City,

a strange tale from RC of Pueblo, Colorado, Charles E. Barker on youth,

and notes from our Rotary Global History researchers

1918-19 RI board

Rotarians of SLC

Salt Lake City Scene

1966 RIP Evans

Paul Harris address: About the pain of war

Stressing the ideals of Rotary in a peaceful world.

We are “among the enduring world forces.”

Proceedings: TThe officers

Opening program

Opportunities for service

First day of legislative action

Tours, elections, legislation

Adjournment

“Perhaps the biggest event of these years for the Salt Lake Club was hosting the International Rotary Convention in Salt Lake in 1919. Salt Lake had bid for the convention as early as 1915 and had withdrawn its invitation. The Salt Lake club had also been willing to defer their request for the 1919 convention date if wartime exigencies made it necessary for it to be held in a more central location. As it turned out, the war was over by then, and so the Rotary International “Victory Convention” came to Salt Lake City. The Salt Lake Club made many preparations for this event, some of them indicated in the note in the minutes of April 1, 1919, which reads:

Moved and carried, that from this date, until after the Convention that the Club entertain no visitors, except Rotarian visitors at its meetings and that there be no speeches except for members, without the unanimous consent of the Club, and that Roy Daynes be invited to use 30 minutes at each meeting, drilling the Club in singing.

Later in April they adopted a uniform outfit to be worn during the convention consisting of a blue serge jacket, white or cream serge trousers, white shirt, white shoes a white straw hat and an appropriate armband. That they were serious about this prescribed outfit is shown by the imposition of a ten-dollar fine for anyone not wearing it during the convention week and a provision that anyone not paying this fine within twenty days after the end of the convention was to be automatically dropped from membership.

3,467 Rotarians attended the convention, the plenary meetings of which were held in the Salt Lake Tabernacle. Most of these delegates arrived in special trains and quickly made their presence known by songs and yells. Some brought bands and marched to the hotel, carrying banners and cheering for their own cities. Many groups were in costume, giving an air of festivity. Convention days were ablaze with flags of the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and Club – Cuba being the first country after Canada and the British Isles to join Rotary, and by that time having five clubs. Among those attending were delegates from ten clubs in the Mountain West that Club 24 had helped organize – those in Billings, Butte, Great falls, Helena, and Missoula, in Montana; Boise, Idaho Falls, and Pocatello in Idaho; and Logan and Ogden, in Utah.

It is of special interest to Club 24 that Richard L. Evans attended this tenth convention of Rotary international as a Boy Scout on duty. Among his ushering and other jobs was moving the pushcarts brought to Salt Lake City by Atlantic City Rotarians as a bid to the next convention. He later declared that his duties in connection with the convention made his think of Rotary as something different and significant. It was also at this convention, in the Tabernacle, that Dr. Charles E. Barker delivered his inspired talk, “A Father’s Responsibility to His Son”-a memorable address that started him on a series of lectures which eventually reached more than 10 million high school and university students.”

A member of the Pueblo Club, a banker, Alva Adams, who was a former Governor of Colorado, happened to remember that Poole had a substantial loan outstanding. And so it came to pass that on 14 June 1919, the Poole special arrived, not in Denver, but in Pueblo for a day planned for them by Rotarians.

101 more clubs had appeared by the time of the Convention giving a total of 530 Clubs in the world (though only 496 were officially affiliated). The growth of Rotary was still predominantly occurring in the land of its birth.

Paul Harris sent his message addressing the Convention as “Friends of the Victory Convention”. “A Rotarian who sees nothing in Rotary beyond the business he can get out of it is a dead Rotarian and the sooner he can be buried the better for the cause”.