Rosa Lavender provided the program last Wednesday on the first twenty five years of our club.
Rosa was the third woman inducted into our club, and has been active in many capacities since then. She came to Kerrville fifty five years ago, and taught at Tivy for many years until her retirement. Before she joined the club, she became the Tivy Interact sponsor, and then beame the coordinator at Tivy for our Rotary exchange students. She is the historian for our club, and researched numerous records to provide a history of the early members and activities.
Paul Harris started the first Rotary Club in Chicago in 1905, so professionals with diverse backgrounds could exchange ideas and form meaningful lifelong friendships. They initially "rotated" to members places of business for meetings, but eventually settled on a specific meeting place each week.
The Rotary Club of Kerrville was chartered on February 23, 1926, when there were about 3,500 people in Kerrville. Wool and mohair were big business back then, and the early members of the club were names many locals will recognize. The club started with twenty members, including Sam Thompson, owner of the Thompson Sanitorium, Louis A. Schreiner, banker and son of Charles Schreiner, and Scott Schreiner, who managed the mercantile store, and was also the grandson of Charles Schreiner.
Other charter members included S. Dick Eastland, Dr. E. Galbraith, John L. Pampell and Hal Peterson. Meetings were at the St. Charles Hotel. The first community project was to sponsor the first boy scout troop in town, and they also built a "scout hut" for the scouting program.