Robert E. Lee "Bob" Hill was President of Rotary International in 1934-1935. He had a "special objective" of Friendship, that Rotary Founder Paul Harris singled out for recognition. Unlike the canned biographies that the RI General Secretary would generate for each new president, the following article that appeared in the February 1935 issue of The Rotarian, by E. Sydney Stephens, is a look at a Rotary President through the prism of his hometown friend from Columbia, Missouri.

Robert L. Hill, (left) president of Rotary International, alumni director of the University of Missouri, all ready for a day’s work at his desk in Columbia.

While friends and neighbors tend to be proprietary, there is nothing like a small town to find out EVERYTHING about a resident. Where else would a RIP be compared to a cow, albeit a "world-champion Holstein cow."

When he wrote the article, Stephens was president and treasurer of the E. W. Stephens Publishing Company of Columbia. He was also Missouri Re-employment Director, and operated under the United States Employment Service of the Department of Labor. The reader needs to remember that this was written less than six years after the stock market crash of 1929, and the United States, not to mention the entire world, was still caught tightly in the grip of the Great Depression.

Doug Rudman

I Knew Bob Hill When-

By E. Sydney Stephens

A friendly sketch of a friendly man who didn't surprise his home town neighbors by being elected president of Rotary International.

BOB HILL Has Gone International!

This was the news that came to Columbia, Missouri, from Detroit one day last summer. It meant that Bob had been elected president of Rotary International. Here among his friends and neighbors the news was universally pleasing, but not at all surprising.

Columbia is accustomed to having world-wide recognition. What with the first school of journalism in the world, and a world-champion hurdler, and a world-champion Holstein cow, Bob's home town already had become accustomed to international prominence.

Furthermore, people who bad seen Bob grow up from the boy who wore a stiff white collar on the outside of his coat, and had long curls, through the stages of a grade school and college career, to the position of university official and outstanding Rotarian, felt sure that he was on his way. They nodded knowing heads when it was suggested that it would be only a matter of time until his good qualities were recognized in the remotest reaches of Rotary.

There is a reason for this expected recognition. It lies solely in the fine qualities of humanity which go to make up the institution we call Bob Hill. It has fallen to the lot of one of his friends and neighbors to have the enviable privilege of telling those Rotarians not yet personally acquainted with their new president, something of what the people back home know about him.

I want this message to be a personal one, and, therefore, I beg forgiveness if I indulge in the frequent use of the personal pronoun

Robert Edward Lee Hill-that name just had to spring from the Old Dominion, and that's exactly where it originated. Bob Hill's grandparents on both sides of the house were citizens of Virginia, and fought with General Robert E. Lee in the War Between the States, known in some quarters as the Civil War. That's where Bob gets his name. As long as his two grandfathers lived, they boasted of the fact that while the Confederate army through its generals had surrendered to General Grant, they as individuals had never surrendered. Such was their fidelity to the cause for which they fought. It would not be difficult right now to provoke an argument with Bob's father on the question of state's rights, and his mother marches on, keeping alive the name of the Confederacy. She is one of the most active figures in Missouri in the organization known as the Daughters of the Confederacy. Thus Bob is by birth, by tradition, and by temperament, a true son of the Old South.

Bob, emulating his predecessors, joined 400 Rotarians and wives from 26 clubs, at their annual "Duck Feed" at Stuttgart, Ark. Here (below) he is appropriately decorated as the occasion's honor guest.

 | KNEW him as a boy; we were boys together. In college we were members of different social fraternities, but belonged to the same inter-fraternity. Since graduation we have been associated in many activities: civic, commercial, political, social, and recreational. I have sat with him in duck blinds on the wind-swept sand bars of the Missouri River, in the bayous of Arkansas, in the endless marshes of Louisiana.

I have tramped the hills of Missouri in a score of counties during the autumn days, and have stepped in front of pointing dogs in his company for twenty years. I have camped with him on the banks of our rivers, and we have trekked together the Ozark hills in mid-winter in vague search of the elusive wild turkey. Such contacts reveal the primary qualification of a hunter-unselfishness. Bob is a mighty hunter.

I have served with him on numerous boards and committees, where matters of importance to the community and the state were concerned, and where decisions of serious import were made. I have faced him across the conference table, the luncheon table, and the card table. I have seen him tested in all relations. I have seen him victorious, and I have seen him defeated. He measured up to all tests. He is the most popular winner and the best loser of my acquaintance. He is a good sportsman.

He is equally at home in the duck blind and in the drawing room. As a wing shot he is deadly. As a golf player he is not far from par. He walks with the highbrows, but he keeps the common touch. He shows up big at the banquet table. Bob Hill is a man's man.

It is these traits of character as well as others, but principally these, that made him a leader during his school days, and a goodwill crusader ever since. In the university he was president of his division, the agricultural college. His leadership was recognized when he was made manager of the Farmers' Fair, so-called student stunt, said to be the largest student enterprise in America.

It may be surprising to some of his Rotary friends to learn that he holds a degree of master of science in agriculture, and that he was also graduated from the School of Journalism.

Upon graduation from the university he engaged in farming, but it was apparent from the beginning that he required other activities to keep his versatile and active mind engaged. He soon began to produce pure-bred livestock, and he established a clientele throughout the nation; he was on the boards of livestock record associations, judged livestock shown at the great fairs of the nation, wrote books on livestock, and became editor of a leading livestock magazine.

It is not unlikely that his experience in that capacity led to his selection as director of alumni activities of the University of Missouri. To the duties of that office, he has devoted his principal interests; that is where he has rendered his greatest service. Under his care he has some 40,000 alumni and former students of his alma mater.

Clicking o' heels is still music to President Hill's ears, for he was a cadet at Culver (Ind.) Military Academy back in 1907. Here he is visiting alma mater with Brig.-Gen. L. R. Gignilliat (at his right) as host. Mrs. Hill and their daughter, Mary Jane, are fourth from the left and third from the right, respectively. Maybe the reason for Bob's grin is the special review just staged in his honor.

To keep alive and militant the interest of 40,000 alumni, scattered to the four corners of the earth, to pacify all those who may by one reason or another become disgruntled, to greet personally every visitor who comes to Columbia from among this wide circle, to keep all informed of the activities of the institution, its plans, its problems, and its purposes, is the duty which has fallen upon Bob for the past fifteen years. As one means of performing this task, he publishes a monthly magazine known as the Missouri Alumnus which circulates among the wide membership of the Alumni Association, and which contains so much news that the advertising space has to be pre-empted by the editor so that all the items may be accommodated.

Every year the University of Missouri holds a homecoming of its alumni and former students. On these occasions Bob is the official and perennial host. As chairman of the homecoming committee, he invites all of the university family to be his guests. He provides a warm and cordial reception and organizes a varied program of entertainment for them; and then when they come as they do by the thousands, it's Bob who shakes every hand and asks about every member of the family, present or absent, and calls everyone of them by name, no matter how old or young they may be. Bob calls everybody by his first name the second time he sees him. Sometimes the first.

"The memorial stadium at the University of Missouri and the memorial tower (below) and union building, are concrete evidences of the devotion of Bob Hill to his university and to his country."

After the World War, when the university came to honor those who had made the supreme sacrifice for their country, it was Bob to whom they turned as the guiding spirit in a movement to erect memorials to the university dead upon the campus. He, with others, but principally he, asked for the funds for this purpose, and ten thousand alumni answered with a million dollars. The memorial stadium at the University of Missouri and the memorial tower and union building, a Gothic structure said to be one of the choicest examples of its type in America, are concrete evidences of the devotion of Bob Hill to his university and to his country.

It is impossible to include here a catalog of the myriad services rendered by this new president of Rotary. In his home town he is secretary of everything, and that of which he is not secretary, he is president. So you see it was not at all surprising to his fellow townsmen, nor to the thousands of others throughout this country who know him and love him, that Rotary international should have recognized his fitness for the position of president of an organization which is consecrated to the promotion of goodwill.

Yes, Bob Hill is an institution, but like all institutions he has certain indispensable adjuncts. One of these is his family. It is probably true that most of the 40,000 alumni of the university have visited Columbia, and that many thousands have visited the Hill home. There they have found Bob and Gertrude and Mary Jane and Virginia Lee, who are so much an integral part of the tradition and atmosphere of the university and the state that they have been recognized as the "Hills of Old Missouri." One of the most cherished of the university songs is named in their honor.

This limited array of Bob's fine qualities and accomplishments should serve to explain why the friends and neighbors believe that by the time he has finished his administration, every Rotarian will know him as we know him. Too, they will second what we long ago said of him: He knows more people; he calls more men, women, and children by their first names; he kisses more babies; he makes more after-dinner speeches; he shakes more hands and slaps more backs than any other man in the world. Indeed, he is the maestro of goodwill.