As The (Rotary) Wheel Turns

Across the country and around the world travelers will find small metal signs tacked to buildings and billboards that represent service club such as Kiwanis, Lions Club and Rotary. If you are not a member of a service club, it’s easy to ignore the signs that are often dented and faded. For many years, however, traveling businessmen and tourists have sought them out to locate meetings and connect with club members far and wide.

Each service club has its unique traditions and goals but they are all more similar than different. Millions of people around the world meet regularly in service clubs for fellowship and the desire to help others. They tackle problems such as eradicating polio or providing clean drinking water or conquering the causes of blindness. They also eat a lot of food, tell a lot of bad jokes and generally have a lot of fun.

One of Allen’s oldest service groups is the Allen Noon Rotary Club, which was chartered in 1978. Allen’s first club was the Jaycees who were formed in 1968. In fact, many of the early Rotary Club members were also part of the Allen Jaycees.

A fellow who called himself Orville Fudpucker was responsible for bringing Rotary to Allen. Orville, whose real name was Terry Dobbins, was chairman of the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) board in Plano and made it his personal goal to start up an Allen club. His Plano club sponsored the new Allen group and Orville attended almost every Allen meeting that first year.

He made contact with Charlie Claytor, an Allen homebuilder and Carl Gilliland, an insurance agent. Charlie’s son Mike was the club’s first president and Carl fell in as president-elect. In all, twenty-five members made up the charter group including familiar names such as ET Boon, Don Rodenbaugh, Newton Buckley, Mike Long, Don Brazeal, John Horn and John Pierce.

The club first met in the old one story cafeteria which sat on McDermott behind the old red brick school on Belmont. Both buildings were razed for construction of the new First Baptist Church in the late 1990’s.

Our lunches were catered by Tinos in Plano, according to Carl Gilliland “but we had to drive down to Plano and pick them up each week. Tino Trujillo was a big supporter of the Rotary Club and deserves some credit for helping us get on our feet financially.”

“We really had no clue what Rotary was when it started. We just listened to Terry (Dobbins) and started recruiting members,” said another charter member Buddy Camper.

Like most service clubs, the Rotary meeting space moved as the club grew and its needs changed. They first moved to St. Jude’s Catholic Church, then the First United Methodist Church, then the Allen City Hall courts building and Chase Oaks Golf Course. Today the club meets each Wednesday at noon at the Courtyard Marriott Hotel in Allen.

Each hour long meeting includes an informative program of about 30 minutes on almost any topic of interest to club members.

The club’s first program chairman, ET Boon, admitted that good programs in the early days were hard to come by. “We pulled in every elected official in the city and county and then brought in police and fire chiefs, football coaches and school administrators.”

One of the more memorable ones, according to Boon, was Billy Clayton, who was speaker of the house in Texas and running for governor. Several days later our Rotary speaker was indicted (but later acquitted) on bribery charges.

Charter members Carl Gilliland and Newton Buckley have remained with the Allen Noon Rotary Club for 33 years.

As Allen has grown, so have the number of service clubs. Our community now benefits from a morning and noon Rotary Club, a noon and evening Lions Club and a noon Kiwanis Club.
Despite the growth, the goal of Allen’s service clubs remains the same; to benefit the community and groan at corny jokes. Some things never change.