History of the Oshkosh Rotary Club

In 1916, Charles W. Hoyt, recently arrived in Oshkosh from Galesburg, IL., told Oshkosh business and professional men of a national service organization called Rotary, then only 11 years old.  A group of 12 of these men began to meet in December of that year in the basement of the Elks Club.  On March 1, 1917, the group was chartered as a club member of Rotary International, with Hoyt as its first president.

The Oshkosh Rotary club’s meeting “homes” since that Elks Club basement have included the historic Athearn Hotel (until management raised the price of meals from 55¢ to 65¢), Pioneer Hotel, Park Plaza Hotel, and our current location, Becket’s Restaurant meeting room in the City Center Conference Center.

Service to the Oshkosh Community

Supporting programs to benefit the Oshkosh community has been an Oshkosh Rotary Club hallmark from its earliest days.  Those early projects included programs with the Oshkosh Normal School (now UWO), the Salvation Army, and the Boy Scouts; sponsoring a dental clinic at the high school (only one high school in town then); and setting up gardening and landscaping classes. 

Most recently, our club’s annual Flower Sale raised the funds to build a teaching kitchen at the Oshkosh Area Community Pantry, at which food pantry clients learn how to cook nutritious meals using food from the Pantry.  The club’s Scholarship Committee initiated an innovative program in which scholarships, renewable based on performance, are awarded to graduates of the NEWStart program for at-risk students, for continued education at Fox Valley Technical College. 

The club collaborated with Oshkosh Southwest Rotary and Oshkosh Morning Rotary on the “Rotary Shared Harvest” project, in which excess produce from farmer’s markets and home gardeners is collected and distributed to the Oshkosh Area Community Pantry.  In 2009, over 16,000 pounds of food was collected by Rotary volunteers, and 2010’s contributions will probably exceed that mark.  Look for the “Shared Harvest” booth at the Festival Foods Farmer’s Market on Tuesday and the Oshkosh Farmer’s Market at City Hall on Saturday.

Service to the International Community

Opportunities for international service, the factor that distinguishes Rotary from many other service clubs, have long been part of the Oshkosh Rotary Club. An Eye Saver Program, developed by club member Bob Schoenwetter in 1986, was adopted by RI District 6270 as part of its worldwide service.  Our club’s particular effort raised funds to conduct eye camps in India.

In 1989, the Oshkosh Rotary Club joined in the “Polio Plus” effort of Rotary International to eradicate the disease of polio from the world.  Our club has proudly continued its participation in this program, and can report that this massive RI effort is poised on the brink of achieving its goal.  New cases of the disease are being seen today in a small handful of countries, but as long as one child in the world develops the disease, no child in the world is safe.   Oshkosh Rotary Club has been part of this fight for over 20 years, and is determined to see it through to the successful end.

Since 2000, this club has engaged in humanitarian projects in Peru.  These include funding the construction of a new dormitory at the Community of Children Sacred Family orphanage, Lima; providing computers for a Lima trade school; and, in partnership with Oshkosh Southwest Rotary, supporting the installation and operation of locally sustainable mechanical “soy cows”.  The soy cows produce nutritious milk and bread for children and the elderly from soybeans, and are located in La Molina, a suburb of Lima, and Ate, an extremely poor Peruvian community.  These efforts comprise “Project Peru”, through which club members have also been afforded the opportunity to visit Peru to meet the people served by these projects.

Several years ago, two members of our club visited a local Rotary project in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, and came home committed to building a school in a community where there were not enough classrooms to teach children beyond 9th grade.  The rest of the club joined in that commitment, and the school was completed in 2008, inaugurating “Outreach Africa”.  In 2009, the club succeeded in obtaining a District Simplified Grant for $2,126 to provide 200 textbooks, related reading materials, teacher guides, calculators and dictionaries for the newly constructed Nomeva High School. 

The club reacted to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti by raising funds to provide a total of 23 ShelterBox® temporary shelters stocked with critical supplies.

Service + Fellowship = Oshkosh Rotary Club

In addition to its core purpose of service activities, the Oshkosh Rotary Club prides itself on its strong traditions of fellowship and diversity.  Weekly meetings, Mondays at noon, afford the opportunity to get to know each other over Becket’s delicious and never-boring lunch choices.  Meetings usually feature some of the most interesting speakers in Oshkosh and beyond, and have continued over the club’s long history to be a brief oasis of congeniality in a hectic week.