Paul Harris, member #2

Paul Percy Harris was born in Racine, Wisconsin on 19 April, 1868, the second of six children of George Harris, a pharmacist, and Cornelia Bryan Harris. At three-and-a half years of age he went to live with his paternal grandparents Howard and Pamela Ruskin Harris in Wallingford, Vermont and thereafter had little contact with the other members of his family. After graduating from Princeton University and the Law School of the University of Iowa in 1891 he spent five years roaming the United States and Europe following a number of occupations, he began practising Law in Chicago in 1896. Since 1900 he had contemplated the formation of a club for men which would encourage friendship. On the evening of 23 February, 1905, he met with Silvester Schiele, a coal merchant, Gustave Loehr, a mining engineer and Hiram Shorey, a manufacturing tailor in Loehr’s office in Room 710 of the old Unity Building. Here, he outlined his ideas for such a club and received the support of all. A further meeting was approved to be held two weeks later, when Schiele was elected president and a fifth member Harry Ruggles, a printer became a member. It is unlikely that any of those first five members could have any thought that their club would last for more than100 years nor that over that passage of time, more than 1.2 million men and women would form nearly 32,000 similar clubs in 158 countries, all joined in the two ideals of Fellowship and Service.

On occasions in those earliest days, Paul Harris sometimes disagreed with the direction taken by his own club, but was always encouraged by his good friend, Silvester Schiele. Harris was a gifted writer and many of his essays not only articulated the philosophy of Rotary as ir developed but…