75 Years… and Counting
Service above Self for the Rotary Club of Orinda began on March 18, 1949, when the club’s first 21 members received their official charter.
As we celebrate our 75 years of service, we reflect on Rotary’s significant role in Orinda’s development from a small town of ranchers and summer homes to the thriving, vibrant place we live in today.
The first mayor of Orinda? Rotarian Dick Heggie. He served twice. Joyce Hawkins, still an Orinda Rotarian and community leader, served three times! They are two of the most delightful people I have had the privilege to meet, and I met them because I became a Rotarian.
The gazebo in the Orinda Community Park? Donated and built by our Rotary club.
Orinda’s longest-running public event? More than 70 years of Rotary’s Frank Isola Field Day – connecting generations of Orindans who competed as kids and come back to cheer their children on years later. We will be running the field day again at Miramonte Stadium on May 18, so save the date!
And the best two minutes in Orinda every year is our Spring Egg Hunt, probably the second longest running public event in Orinda at 60+ years, which we now do in partnership with Orinda Parks & Rec.
Everywhere you look in Orinda, you will see Rotary contributions from over the years: the gazebos, frog pond and landscaping at the Friends of Orinda Nature Area; just last year – new landscaping at Orinda Oaks Park and new trees in the Community Center Park; the development of the Community Center kitchen, the Founders Auditorium sound system and its high definition projector; the scoreboard at the Wilder fields … etc. etc. etc.
And our service doesn’t stop at the edges of Orinda or even the United States border.
For nearly 30 years we have brought kids from the Oakland Boys and Girls Club to the San Pablo reservoir every year to fish, drive a pontoon boat and get outdoors. We serve Meals on Wheels weekly in Lafayette, volunteer monthly at the Food Bank, tutor children in Oakland and Richmond and help support transitional housing, veterans’ events and a wide variety of other causes and events across the Bay Area.
Internationally we have installed solar panels to power an eye clinic in Zambia, where we also added to a library and continue to supply books; supported an orphanage in India with visits, equipment and a school bus; donated fire trucks and ambulances to small towns in Mexico; helped bring clean water to a town in Guatemala; and brought the first electric lights to a Haitian town via solar-powered street lights.
And those are just our more recent projects.
Over the years, Orinda Rotarians have helped distribute polio vaccines, assisted clinics providing free reconstructive surgery and contributed close to $2 million to projects that save lives around the world.
It’s an impressive, yet far from complete, list.
But the greatest thing about Rotary and Service above Self is its ability to change lives. It changed mine. I’ve made some of my best friends through Rotary and, through service, become connected to this community in ways I did not understand to be possible.
It changed my daughter’s life in high school when she volunteered at that eye clinic and an orphanage in Zambia. And the things Rotarians do collectively through Rotary International change lives – save lives – every day.
That’s 75 years of Service above Self here in Orinda and around the world.
