HISTORY OF THE

WEST SNYDER ROTARY CLUB

By Ray Kline

The West Snyder Rotary Club was organized to serve the western part of Snyder County. The first meeting was held on the 19^th of February 1958 at Leo’s Restaurant along Route 522 in Beaver Springs. The Selinsgrove Club with the leadership of the Honorable Arthur May helped us get organized. We had about 30 members at our meeting when we received our charter. We then planned our charter night service at the West Snyder High School for May 1^st, 1958. Many of the clubs were present to hear the District Governor Michael Kivo, of the Rotary club of Sunbury, challenge us to the high ideals of Rotary. During the next year, Art May attended many of our meetings and got us many speakers to make sure that we had good programs. Mr. Howard Masters was our first president and since he only had about two months until the end of the Rotary year, was elected to serve the next full year.

It was quite evident from the start the West Snyder Club was going to be a fun club with lots of projects. We had excellent participation in all our activities and we were enjoying our meetings.

Our next big project was to create a student loan scholarship fund. This we did by having a number of “300 Clubs” and by giving a new car as the grand prize. In a relatively short time our assets were over $20,000. We were able to grant a four-year loan each year to what we determined was our most deserving student from the western end of Snyder County. We’ve helped more than 40 students and they are all very appreciative of our efforts. It wasn’t long before our club was winning attendance awards at the annual District Conference. Quite a few of our members attended the International Convention at Toronto, Kansas City and Philadelphia.

Another Program that we have at our club is a Care and Share Program at Thanksgiving time. We invite a senior member of our community that lives alone to join us for the Thanksgiving Program. Two years ago, one of the ladies from our community who had been present at one of our Care & Share Programs, died. Although not associated with Rotary in any way, she left our club $1,000 in her will. This we used to make her a Paul Harris Fellow posthumously. Our Rotary Golf Tournament is one of our major moneymakers. We use this money to finance our Rotary Exchange Program as we entertain exchange students every year and occasionally send a student from our community abroad. Another fundraiser is our Rotary Hot Dog stand at the Beaver Fair in Beaver Springs where we have the best hot dogs on the midway. Recently we added Cow Paddy Bingo to our list of fundraisers, this event is one of our more “fun” fundraisers.

To date, we have had two community service projects, one for the Senior Citizens Center and one for the Middlecreek Area Community Center both of Beaver Springs. Our club submitted a detailed list of articles that were needed by each facility and upon approval, were each granted $1,000 by Rotary International.

Our club has had two District Governors in then District 737 and 7370. Stanley Saylor in 1979-1980 and Howard Benner, Jr. in 2001-2002.

Our membership has dropped off since we were first organized, but the real work of Rotary continues. We look forward to a new year of challenges and will continue to work hard to improve our club always keeping the Motto of SERVICE ABOVE SELF as our goal.