Paul Harris

Paul P. Harris (1868-1947), a lawyer, was the founder of Rotary, the world's first and foremost international service club. Rotary is an organization of business and professional leaders united world wide who provide humanitarian service, promote high ethical standards in all vocations and help build good will and peace in the world. Paul Harris was born in Racine, Wisconsin, U.S.A. on April 19, 1868. The second of six children his parents were George N. Harris and Cornelia Bryan Harris. Married to Jean Thomson Harris (1881-1963), he had no children. He received the bachelor of physical culture and LL.D. degrees from the University of Vermont and the LL.B. degree from the University of Iowa. He received an honorary Ph.D. in 1933 from the University of Vermont.

Paul Harris worked as a newspaper reporter, a business teacher, stock company actor and as a cowboy. he traveled extensively in the U.S.A. and Europe selling marble and granite. In 1896, he went to Chicago to practice law. In 1900, after dinner with a lawyer in a residential section of Chicago, Paul Harris was impressed by the fact that his friend stopped at several stores and shops in the neighborhood and introduced him to proprietors, who were his friends. his experience caused him to wonder why he couldn't make social friends out of at least some of his law clients--and he resolved to organize a club which would band together a group of representative business and professional men in friendship and fellowship.

On February 23, 1905, Paul Harris formed the first club with three of his law clients--Silvester Schiele, a coal merchant, Gustavus Loehr, a mining engineer, and Hiram Shorey, a merchant tailor. The nucleus was formed for the thousands of Rotary clubs which were later organized throughout the world. Paul Harris names the new club Rotary" because the members met in rotation in their various places of business. Club membership grew rapidly. Almost every member had come to Chicago from a small town and in the Rotary club they found an opportunity for the intimate acquaintanceship of their boyhood days. When Paul Harris became president of the club in its third years, he strove to extend Rotary to other cities because he was convinced that the Rotary club could be developed into an important service movement.

The second Rotary club was founded in San Francisco in 1908. In August 1910, when there were 16 clubs, the National Association of Rotary Clubs was organized. When clubs were formed in Canada and Great Britain, the name was changed, in 1912, to the International Association of Rotary Clubs. In 1922, the name was shortened to Rotary International. Paul Harris was the first president of the National Association and the first president of the International Association.

When Paul Harris passed away on January 27, 1947, he was president emeritus of Rotary International. There were then some 6,000 Rotary clubs worldwide. By 1991, there were more than 25,000 clubs in over 172 countries and geographical regions, with 1,100,000+ members in 491 Rotary districts.