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Birmingham |
| Birmingham and Paul Harris |
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The Birmingham Club was organised by the Irish American Stuart Morrow
and, after his visit to the city in 1928,Paul Harris is reported as
saying that “Birmingham was one of the clubs he had sent Stuart Morrow
to organise and he felt that they were indeed his children.” There is,
however, some question as to whether Harris or anyone in the USA
actually knew about Morrow’s efforts until the clubs applied to be
chartered. On Monday, June 4, 1928, Paul Harris went to Birmingham where he made his first speech to a British Rotary Club before an audience including RIBI President-elect Chadwick. W Unite Jones, the editor of the ‘Rotaria’, the Birmingham Club’s magazine, commented in typically British fashion, “we had an extraordinarily interesting meeting on June 4th when the Founder of Rotary, Paul Harris, paid us a visit. There was a good gathering of members and President William Adams was in the Chair.” In his welcome the Club President said that it was a great privilege to have the father and founder of Rotary with them in the flesh. He went on “The Rotary Movement has grown to a tremendous degree in the few years it has been in existence. In visiting various clubs, (people) would agree that they have built better than they know. The spirit and goodwill and fellowship fostered by Rotary has made Rotary universal.” When Paul Harris rose to address them, the assembled members stood and applauded him for some time. The President Emeritus might have been out of sight for many years but clearly his inspiration had not been forgotten. In his opening comments, Harris said that he was happy in the fact that the Chairman had centred his remarks round the movement he represented rather than around himself personally. He was to try, not always successfully to judge by newspaper reports, to make this distinction on many occasions. The subject of his 20 minute address at Birmingham was ‘The Genesis of Rotary’. As he wrote later......”when the time came, I did my turn and at its conclusion, resolved that I had better tune up or quit.” Despite his own misgivings, his audience disagreed and his address was well received. He began his talk with some reminiscences of his earlier voyages to Britain when he had worked his passage and endured hardships which would appall the present generation. He still had, as The Rotary Wheel reported, “an irresistible urge to visit the country he had always looked upon as the ‘Land of his Fathers’. Every member felt the better for sitting awhile at the feet of the new Apostle Paul.” Here in Birmingham he enunciated a theme which he was to repeat elsewhere on this tour, in saying, “Friendship is not an anaemic thing. It is capable of hurling itself over those barriers which men have been building between each other through centuries of time. I am not going to attempt to affect religious or national feeling, but I feel that there ought to be some place where men can meet on an honest plane, without respect to those other considerations, and I want Rotary to be that sanctuary.” Despite Paul Harris’s opening comments, S.J.Grey in proposing the vote of thanks, said that they were glad Paul Harris had talked upon personal lines because now they had seen the man and heard him, they could understand a little of that breadth of view and sympathy which had made his conception of Rotary possible. He thought that Paul Harris must be a proud man when he realised that the Rotary ideal was permeating the national life of the various countries and business life and that it could be fruitful of nothing but good. Before the end of the meeting, Arthur Chadwick was invited to to address the audience and he too commented on the respect and regard they all had for their founder. Later that day, Harris journeyed to Liverpool to take the night boat to Ireland. In 1934, several Birmingham members went to a big gathering in Manchester where they would again meet Paul Harris, and in 1937, Birmingham members once more met Paul Harris this time at a meeting in High Wycombe. |
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