The Rotary Club of Sebastopol celebrates its 100th anniversary this week
You're invited to Rotary's Centennial celebration in Ives Park on Sunday, May 25, from noon to 4 p.m.
Very few organizations have been around Sebastopol longer than the Rotary Club of Sebastopol. And no other group of volunteers has made more of a widespread impact on the community’s youth, seniors, parks, schools or other charities and to Sebastopol’s civic pride. That might be because the Rotarians have now been at it for 100 years.
The Rotary Club of Sebastopol was chartered on May 25, 1925, by 24 local businessmen. That makes it almost as old as the City of Sebastopol itself which was chartered in 1906. Only a few church congregations, Analy High School and the Chamber of Commerce are older. Gone are many legacy businesses, the railroad trains, all the apple packing houses, the local mortuary and the town’s printed newspaper, but Rotary is still going strong.
Sebastopol’s Rotary Club might be 100 years old, but it still retains lots of vigorous energy and is as young as its youngest Millennial and Gen-X members and the student members of its Analy and Brook Haven Rotary Interact clubs. (That said, like many local service clubs, they would welcome more younger members.)
This month, the club members are celebrating their Centennial on May 24 with a gala dinner at Balletto’s Vineyards and a free community celebration in Ives Park the next day from noon to 4 p.m. on Sunday, May 25.
The Sunday celebration will feature live musical performances by Revolver, the Sebastopol Community Band, and other performers. There will also be children’s activities, food and beverage booths and free centennial cake for everyone. A dozen other local community groups and nonprofits also will be participating in the celebration.
Sebastopol’s Rotary Club is one of 46,000 clubs located in almost 200 countries around the world, including a “sister” Rotary Club of Sebastopol Sunrise, founded here in 1997. In all, there are 1.2 million Rotarians in the world affiliated with Rotary International, considered one of the best endowed global nonprofits dedicated to humanitarian projects, community building and peacekeeping efforts.
Since 1925 in Sebastopol, generations of local Rotarians have contributed volunteer hours and financial support for such projects as erecting lights at Analy’s Karlson Field in 1950, sponsoring local Boy Scouts, adding improvements at the city’s Ives and Libby parks and, since 1984, teaching west county second graders how to swim and be safe around water. The club has promoted literacy programs and given away free dictionaries. Members continue to grab their hammers and tools to aid the senior center building on High Street, annual Rebuilding Together workdays and similar “sweat equity” projects.
Internationally, Sebastopol Rotarians have visited and supported Rotary International projects in Vietnam, India, Uganda, Kenya, Ukraine, Japan and Puerto Vallarta in Mexico, among other countries. The Rotary Club annually sponsors a foreign student exchange program. Club members host a visiting high schooler from another country while supporting the travels of a local student abroad.
“I truly believe that the Rotary Club of Sebastopol will be around for at least another 100 years,” said Cindy Carter, the current club president. “I joined Rotary in 2015 after recently moving to Sebastopol. My partner and I joined the club, and we found a very diverse membership. The club is financially sound and well run by a cadre of doctors, lawyers, financial advisors and CPAs. We have retired educators and a retired judge who want to give back to children via educational programs.”
Women were not admitted into Rotary clubs until 1988 when the Sebastopol club welcomed its first woman professional, Susan Agnew, a local banker. Today more than a third of the local club’s membership is female. The club has been meeting every Friday at noon, except for holidays, since before the Great Depression. (During the COVID-19 pandemic, the club held “hybrid virtual” and socially distanced weekly meetings.)
Sebastopol’s two Rotary clubs often partner with other local civic and charity organizations, which have contributed to the community’s well-being and civic spirit. These partners include the Gravenstein Lions Club, the Sebastopol Kiwanis Club and the revived Sebastopol Grange, as well as a few dozen other nonprofit and church-affiliated groups.
For the first several decades, the Rotary Club met at the former chamber of commerce building, still standing at Petaluma and Sebastopol avenues across from Screamin’ Mimis. The club moved to the Sebastopol Veterans’ Memorial Building (now the Arts Center) before moving to its current meeting location at the Sebastopol Community Church on North Gravenstein Highway in 1995.
Also to mark its centennial year, the local Rotarians have launched a campaign to fund and build several improvements at Ives Park. The Sebastopol Rotary Centennial Project includes building a new refreshment stand and bathrooms at the Polley Little League Field; adding a new ADA-accessible entrance to the park on Jewell Avenue with new signage; and refurbishing and enhancing a public gathering space to be named Rotary Centennial Plaza. This month, the club is launching an $800,000 fundraising campaign to complete the multi-year project.
Perhaps the Rotary Club of Sebastopol is best known for its annual fundraisers and for its many community partners. Through recent years, Sebastopol people have attended the annual Rotary Crab Feed every February as well as a series of events such as lobster dinners, Cajun Festival, pancake breakfasts, Great Getaway auctions and its bygone “Suitcase Nights.” Community partners have included all the local schools, Peacetown, Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Sebastopol Senior Center, Ives Pool, Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation, Sebastopol Community and Cultural Center, Western Sonoma County Historical Society and Museum and many others.
Besides its annual Learn to Swim program, the club is also known for its Teacher of the Year awards, student scholarships, unique teacher mini-grants and volunteer workdays for Rebuilding Together, Libby Park super playground, Analy campus improvements, post office landscaping and Ragle Ranch Regional Park memorial grove maintenance. The Rotary Club of Sebastopol is currently joining with other Rotary Clubs around the county to double the number of local children who receive books from Dolly Parton's Imagination Library (like a book-of-the-month club for the age 0-5 set).
The 100-plus members of the Rotary Club of Sebastopol include a half dozen new faces recently admitted to the club’s ranks, as well as members as old as Norm Stupfel, age 90-plus, who served as club president over 50 years ago in 1973. Stupfel was the owner of downtown Sebastopol’s Carlson Department Store where Silk Moon is now located.
John Blount is another long-serving local Rotarian, joining the club in the 1970s after moving here to open his dentistry practice. Blount served as club president in 1982 and also served as Rotary’s northern California district governor in 1990 and on the board of directors for Rotary International in the last decade. His wife Patti is also a local Rotary club member.
“Rotary has survived and expanded here and worldwide, I think, because of its unique blending of relationships, integrity and service,” said Blount. “Rotarians share a common ethic around the world, rooted in our Four Way test of honesty, friendship and fairness.”
Rotary’s Four Way test asks:
Is it the truth?
Is it fair to all concerned?
Will it build goodwill and better friendships?
Will it be beneficial to all concerned?
Blount sees a bright and viable future for Rotary in Sebastopol. “There are significant and necessary service projects and programs (to complete) here in Sebastopol, just like in tens of thousands of other communities around the globe.”
More than a dozen Sebastopol Rotarians have been named Citizens of the Year by the Sebastopol Chamber of Commerce, and this year the Rotary Club was honored in the Apple Blossom Parade as a “Hall of Fame” organization.
Rollie Atkinson is the former owner of the Sonoma West newspaper group. He is currently a reporter for Sebastopol Times and a proud Rotarian.
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