Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 19, 1995 TAG: 9501230007
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MATT CROWDER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"I've met a lot of people I never would have seen outside of Kiwanis," Vinyard said.
The Kiwanis Club of Roanoke is celebrating its 75th anniversary Friday. Its international organization will be 80 on Saturday.
To celebrate, the Roanoke club will hold a gala at the Jefferson Club, said public relations chairwoman Lee Wolfe.
The club was chartered Jan. 20, 1920, with 118 members, although community and business leaders who started it had their organizational meeting Nov. 26, 1919. Charles S. McNulty, a Roanoke lawyer, was the first president. The last surviving charter member, Lawrence Jennings, died in 1984.
The Kiwanis Club of Roanoke's membership include every Roanoke mayor since Willis M. Anderson, who was mayor from 1960 to 1962.
Vinyard said that when he joined, the club was much smaller, both in focus and scale. The club had 50 to 75 members then. It now has 286 members, including 42 who have been with the group 25 years or more.
There also was a limit of two from each profession. Now, Vinyard said, the club is much more active and involved in many more projects than before.
"It's a different organization almost entirely than what it was 50 years ago, because there's more manpower from all different fields," he said.
"The club only had one main project at that time, which was building the road to Bent Mountain," he said.
The Kiwanis Club of Roanoke has made many civic contributions over the years. In 1921, members raised $3,000 to pay off the mortgage of the Children's Home Society of Roanoke property. In 1923, the club underwrote $50,000 of the stock of the Roanoke Highway Improvement Corp. as part of the campaign sponsored by the Roanoke Chamber of Commerce to improve the roads to Rocky Mount and Floyd.
In 1927, the club held its first Christmas party for underprivileged children, a tradition that continues today. In 1928, along with other clubs, it raised almost $17,000 toward a hospital to help underprivileged and handicapped children of Southwest Virginia.
"One of the most redeeming things we do is to create Christmas for a bunch of kids that normally wouldn't get Christmas at all," said President Steve McGraw. The party typically attracts 40 to 50 children each year.
"It's a very giving club; it's not a very self-serving club at all," McGraw said. "I think that's what makes it so strong. That's why we've got over 250 members; that comes through in things that we do."
Some of the club's major civic projects include providing YMCA memberships for 40 boys; sponsoring children in a YWCA after-school program; providing college scholarships and vocational education scholarships to high school students; and co-sponsoring the Adult Care Center with the League of Older Americans and United Way.
In 1940, the club bought land in Montgomery County for Camp Kiwania, a girls' camp. When the club sold the property in 1978, it used the money to create the Roanoke Kiwanis Club Foundation, which uses income from investments for youth projects.
The club's main fund-raiser is Travelogue, a series of six movies that chronicle photographers' trips to foreign countries or other states.
The Roanoke Club was the 182nd to be chartered, five years after the national group organized. What is now Kiwanis International was started Jan. 21, 1915, in Detroit by Allen S. Browne, a professional organizer. Browne had gone door to door the previous August looking for people interested in forming a club with health benefits for business and professional men.
The original name of the organization was the Supreme Lodge Benevolent Order Brothers. Members eventually changed that to Kiwanis, which was based on the Native American phrase "Nun Kee-wan-is," translated as "we trade." The current motto, "We build," was adopted in 1920.
Kiwanis became an international organization in 1916 with the chartering of a club in Hamilton, Ontario. Today, there are 8,650 clubs with 327,000 members in 77 nations.
In 1987, at its international convention, Kiwanis International voted to admit women members for the first time, a move the Roanoke club had pushed for.
"I think the most noteworthy change has been the women coming into the club," McGraw said. "An expansion of that nature has a profound effect on the direction of an organization. It's been a very positive thing."
McGraw succeeded Jackie Bledsoe, who was the club's first woman president.
Kiwanis International is working with President Clinton on a public awareness campaign to make sure that all children get necessary vaccinations before their second birthday.
by CNB