By Zach Hirsch

(Ed. Note: Rotary International is an organization of service clubs located world wide. The first club was formed in Chicago by attorney Paul P. Harris on February 23, 1905, meeting with three business friends and choosing the name Rotary because they rotated club meetings to each member’s office. By 1910, the clubs were nationwide and, in 1922, because branches had been formed in six continents, the name was changed to Rotary International. By 1925, Rotary had grown to 200 clubs with more than 20,000 members. Today, there are more than 32,000 clubs and over 1.2 million members world-wide.)

On September 9, 1921, 25 local men committed to join the Rotary Club of Prescott. It was installed on October 1st by the Phoenix 100 Rotary Club (so-named because it was the 100th Rotary club formed), with Harry W. Heap as President, making it the second club in the state. That was just 16 years after the first Rotary Club in the world was started. Among the first members in Prescott were such familiar names as: Lester Ruffner, Joe Acker and Moses Hazeltine.

They began their first community service project to raise funds for the new city playground on East Gurley Street, known today as Ken Lindley Field. Their key fund-raising effort was to stage The Rotary Minstrels at the Elks Theatre. Fund raising was difficult, and it was not until 1933-34 that the concrete stadium seats were finally completed and paid for.

In 1935, there were 35-40 members and they were still meeting in their original location – the Owl Candy and Drug Store at the northwest corner of Gurley and Montezuma Streets. Moses Hazeltine was the song leader from the beginning and the club won prizes at Rotary District Conferences as "a great singing club."

Over the years such familiar names as A. H. Favour, Abia Judd, Roxie Webb, John Lincoln, Ray Sigafoos and Rowle Simmons were members. Woody Smith served as Governor of the District which, at that time, included all of Arizona. Later, Charles "Chuck" Pfifer of the Frontier Rotary Club chartered in 1973, served in the same position.

The tradition of "passing the cup" started in the 1930s with members contributing a dime. It was increased to 25 cents in the 1950s and remains so today. Right from the early days the club supported the Salvation Army, Boys State, children to summer camp and other community projects.

One Fourth of July weekend in the 1950s, the club sponsored, under medical supervision, 1,200 polio inoculations right on the Courthouse Square. An ongoing project of the Rotary Inter national Foundation is the elimination of polio from the world and only in four countries is it still endemic.

In 1962, members built a replica of the first schoolhouse in Prescott on the Sharlott Hall Museum campus. Jack Osborne, still a member, was part of the construction team.

The club eventually grew to 90 members and, as meeting space was limited in Prescott, a second club, Frontier Rotary Club was organized in 1973. In later years the Sun-Up Rotary Club, which meets for breakfast, was added, followed by the Rotary Clubs of Prescott Valley and Chino Valley. It made it possible for Rotarians to visit a local club which met on a different day. Women were admitted as members both locally and internationally in the 1990s. All Rotarians meet classification standards as far as their vocation is concerned and a great variety can be found in each club.

The Prescott Rotary Club meeting location, which included lunch, shifted from time to time: 1921-36, Owl Drug and Candy Store; 1936-63 Hassayampa Inn; 1963-69 Fox and Hound; 1969-77 Hotel St. Michael; 1977 Sunset Hills, which later .changed its name to The Bronze Saddle and then to Fin and Feathers (Red Arrow Real Estate is there now). Since then it has included the Prescott Resort, the Timbers, Petes, and, currently Casa Bonita, meeting Fridays at 12:05 p.m. Frontier meets at Petes Tuesdays at noon and Sun-up meets on Wednesdays at Hotel St. Michael at 7:15 a.m.

Each local club has its own fund-raising activities to fund both local community and international service projects. The Frontier Club yearly published an addition to the Prescott Courier giving the full story of the annual Rodeo. The Prescott Club has sold radio ads and aired them from the Gazebo on the Courthouse Square. Local clubs may "team up" with a club from another country to underwrite a need. A deep-water well in Kenya and wheel chairs in Mexico stand out as programs that have been funded by local clubs.

Numerous organizations and programs have been the beneficiaries of funding by local clubs. These include the summer school reading classes, the large viewer area of the YMCA pool, funding the costs of the Prescott Police Department’s "Project Dare" for three years, Discover Garden’s pre-school program which includes instruction to non-English speaking children and their parents, Shelter Boxes that include tents, sleeping bags, and kitchen utensils for people affected by floods and/or hurricanes and recognition to Boy Scouts who have hiked the various Grand Canyon trails.

All Rotary Clubs world-wide adhere to the tenets of: Community Service, Vocational Service, International Service, Club Service (featuring speakers of interest at meetings) and Youth Service, all under the watchwords of "Service Above Self". The purpose of the organization is to bring together business and professional leaders to provide humanitarian service, encourage high ethical standards in all vocations and help build goodwill and peace in the world.

Rotary has clubs in almost every country in the world. Local Rotarians have served as leaders of a program called Group Study Exchange in which four or five young business men and women get an opportunity to visit another country for four or five weeks and investigate their profession in another land. A similar group from that nation visits Arizona, in turn. Some of the interchanges established with local clubs have been India, Argentina, Japan, Sweden , Pakistan and the West Indies.

A yearly program of the Rotary Districts across the world is a three-day intensive program at a camp designed to build leadership potentials in high school sophomores and juniors, including youth exchange students studying in that school district. The Rotary Foundation also administers the Ambassadorial Scholarships Program founded in 1947. Since then, nearly 38,000 men and women from about 100 nations have studied abroad under its auspices. It is the world’s largest privately funded international scholarship program for undergraduate and graduate students as well as for qualified professionals pursuing vocational studies.

(Zach Hirsch is a long time Rotarian and active member of the Prescott Fine Arts Association where he has directed many plays.)

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(shm154p). Reuse only bypermission.

On the Sharlot Hall Museum campus, the construction complete, this plaque read: "This replica of Arizona’s first graded public school was erected by the Prescott Rotary Club in 1962. The original built near Granite Creek in 1864 was destroyed by fire, September 18, 1948". Combined members of the NEA and Rotary Club, from left are Dr. Dixon, Paul Toci, Franklyn Brown and David C. Trimble.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(pb150f3i7). Reuse only bypermission.

Owl Candy and Drug Store in 1910, located at the northwest corner of Gurley and Montezuma Streets, where the Rotary Club of Prescott met weekly from its inception in 1921 until 1936.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(pb132f6i10) Reuse only bypermission.

Harry W. Heap, first president of the Prescott Rotary Club when it was fo