San Juan Island Rotary Club dictionary project

On October 21st, the Rotary Club of San Juan Island, WA, presented all Friday Harbor Elementary 4th & 5th graders with thesauruses and dictionaries. Teachers Kimberly Warin & Noel Harley chose thesauruses for their 4th-grade students and teachers Andrew Duke, Debra Taylor and C.J. Wavra chose Animal & Environment Gazetteers for the 5th-grade students.

Rotarians encourage students to be curious about our language and have fun reading. Barbara Fagan, the Literacy Chairman for the local club said, “We are also proud of Lindsey Youngquist, a Friday Harbor High School graduate, who is presently studying in Nepal as a recipient of a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship, where she is working on her pathway to becoming a doctor with interests in global health.”

Rotary is an organization of people united worldwide who provide humanitarian service and help to build goodwill and peace in the world. The world’s first service club, the Rotary Club of Chicago, was formed on 23 February 1905 by Paul P. Harris, an attorney who wished to capture in a professional club the same friendly spirit he had felt in the small towns of his youth. The Rotary name derived from the early practice of rotating meetings among members’ offices.

Rotary’s popularity spread, and within a decade, clubs were chartered from San Francisco to New York to Winnipeg, Canada. By 1921, Rotary Clubs had been formed on six continents. The organization adopted the Rotary International name a year later.

As Rotary grew, its mission expanded beyond serving club members’ professional and social interests. Rotarians began pooling their resources and contributing their talents to help serve communities in need. The organization’s dedication to this ideal is best expressed in its motto: Service Above Self.

By July 1925, Rotary had grown to more than 2,000 clubs and an estimated 108,000 members, and now has 32,000 clubs in 200 countries around the world with 1.2 million members . The organization’s distinguished reputation attracted presidents, prime ministers, and a host of other luminaries to its ranks. "Few there are who do not recognize the good work which is done by Rotary Clubs throughout the free world," former Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain once declared.

San Juan Island Rotary meets on each Wednesday at 8AM at Downrigger’s Restaurant. Please call President Jack Cory at 378-4900 for additional information.