EARLY HISTORY OF ALAMO HEIGHTS ROTARY CLUB
(as printed in the July 1, 1955 Club Roster)
The Alamo Heights Rotary Club was organized in March 1948, and received its Charter on April 21, 1948. Mr. William Turner of the San Antonio Rotary Club was the sponsor of the Club. The Club started with 18 members.
An outstanding accomplishment of the first year was the Christmas tree for the crippled children of San Antonio. The ceremony was held out doors for the children that were brought by buses and ambulances. Each child was presented a gift with their name on it. The Christmas party, in giving a little happiness to these unfortunate children, has brought satisfaction to the Rotary members and has been continued each year.
The first major project for the Alamo Heights Rotary Club was in helping Camp Idlewinde, the YWMCA camp in Comfort, Texas. The members financed and built a cottage at the camp in 1948-49. The following year (1949-50) money was raised to pay for an additional cottage. Also during this year, the Rotary Club became interested in the Warm Springs Foundation in Gonzales, Texas and raised over $1,000 for their first donation. Substantial donations have been made to this worthy cause in subsequent years.
The Little League project was started in 1951 for the 1952 baseball season. This was a community project, spearheaded by the Alamo Heights Rotary in cooperation with the Lions Club and the Alamo Heights Chamber of Commerce. Rotary as a club contributed financially, and many individual members have given extensively of their time and money to make this project the huge success that it is. The undertaking involved securing land and clearing it, building the stadium and installing lights for night games. Each year Rotary has sponsored four teams with three of the teams being managed and coached by Rotarians every year.
In 1954, the Rotary Club of Piedras Negras, Mexico was invited to Alamo Heights for an inter-city meeting. The joint meeting was so successful the Piedras Negras club reciprocated with an invitation to one of their meetings. Both clubs feel that these inter-city meetings do a great deal in their small way to cement good relations across the border, and it was partly due to the warm friendship started that prompted the Alamo Heights Rotary to come to the aid of their friends in the summer of 1954 when many of the border towns were flooded out. Emergency calls were sent out by telephone and by radio stations for food and clothing, and in less than twenty-four hours two van loads of relief donation were on their way to Piedras Negras. The inner-city meetings were repeated in 1955.
As is the case for many other Rotary clubs the Alamo Heights club has always contributed 100 percent or more of its $10 per member goal to the Rotary Foundation. The foundation sends eligible and outstanding students to any foreign school of their choice for a year of graduate study, the purpose being another means of fostering international understanding through the youth of the world.
(Note that records after 1955 are not complete and do not indicate when some of the ongoing projects described in this document were discontinued.)