What is Rotary?

To encourage and foster the ideal of service as a basis of worth enterprise and, in particular, to encourage and foster:

1. The development of acquaintance as an opportunity for service;

2. High ethical standards in business and professions; the recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupations; and the dignifying by each Rotarian of their occupation as an opportunity to serve society;

3. The application of the ideal of service by every Rotarian to their personal, business, and community life;

4. The advancement of international understanding, good will, and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service.

Holland Rotary - A Brief History

The Rotary Club of Holland, Michigan, was admitted to membership in Rotary International on March 11, 1920. It was Holland's first nationally affiliated service club. Dr. Rudolph H. Nichols, one of the 17 charter members, lived to see the 40th anniversary of its founding.

The new club quickly identified needs in the community that it could serve, sponsoring in 1925 the first of many clinics for crippled children. They thought maybe a dozen children would come; the turnout was 77. The club covered expenses of the clinics by selling crippled children seals and holding an annual Horse Show. Rotarians also pitched in to provide weekly transportation to a Grand Rapids hospital for those children needing special treatment. When the Michigan Crippled Children Society took over the clinic, the club turned its attention to the special needs of children in the public schools, in what has come to be known as Special Education Programs. That service by Holland Rotary continues to this day, in both the Holland and West Ottawa school districts. In 1958-59, the club worked with Jefferson School to sponsor a new Boy Scout troop for handicapped boys.

Service to children and youth branched out in other ways. For at least the past 45 years the club has welcomed high-school student guests ("Student Rotarians") at its luncheon meetings, a month at a time, and has awarded scholarships to assist promising young people in attending college. On the District level, the club has been especially active in the international Student Exchange Program and the summer Youth Leadership Camps. We also have sponsored recipients of Rotary Foundation Fellowships for graduate study, including Guy VanderJagt, who later was a longtime member of the U.S. Congress.

International service has long been a focus of the club's energies. In the late 1980s the Rotary Club of Holland raised over $100,000 to aid the Rotary Foundation's campaign to eradicate polio and other childhood diseases worldwide ("PolioPlus"); that effort continues. We have helped build and equip schools in two communities in Mexico and currently participate in an ongoing 3-club project sending doctors, nurses, and medical supplies to a needy district in Jamaica ("Trelawny Outreach Project").

In recognition of support for the Rotary Foundation's worldwide programs, more than 200 Rotarians and non-Rotarians have received the Paul Harris Award through the Holland club.

Holland Rotary also has a long history of contributing financially to a variety of civic projects, and currently operates a grants program for which applications are solicited annually.

In the club's early days, the weekly meetings were held in the Community Hall in the former Sentinel Building. The meeting place was changed to the Women's Literary Club, then to the Methodist Church, and when the Warm Friend Tavern was completed, Rotary moved there. Later, after a period at the Elks' Club, the present Holiday Inn location was selected. Summer venues have included Castle Park and the Macatawa Bay Yacht Club.

In 1934 the Rotary Club of Holland sponsored the formation of a new Rotary club in the nearby city of Zeeland.

Two members of the Holland club have served Rotary as District Governors, Fred Bertsch (1979-80) and Tom Bos (1998-99).

In 1988 the formerly all-male club began admitting women to membership. At the beginning of 1998 its roster of 136 members included 19 women, several of whom served as officers and directors.