History: a study of the club archives

“Nostalgia and a Confession—Rotary in the early 1950s”

Exploration of the Rotary Bulletins of the early 1950s brought to light not only a number of events of nostalgic interest but one about which I must present my confession. I took part in a BIG FIX.

Rotary seemed to be light hearted in these years. At each meeting Harold Klontz led the group in several rousing Rotary songs. The Auburn High School Octet entertained the members several times. "Ladies Night" featured a barbecue at Dairyland Farms, a rustic building just east of the mall. The Inter-city Club meeting for Auburn, Opelika, Phenix City and Tuskegee was held there.

At a September 1952 meeting, Jim Foy was roundly heckled over a candid shot of him taken at the District Meeting in Selma. The Bulletin gave no details. Do you remember the picture, Jim?

In June 1953 President Frank Davis, whose friends will remember was a big man, won the loud shirt competition with a shirt featuring vertical red, white, green and blue stripes two inches wide. The contest announcer declared that it was specially made by the Wright Awning Company.

We had a serious side too. The Auburn Club joined with the Opelika Club to buy an audiometer to be used in the schools to test for hearing. In 1952 the club admitted Bill Ham, father of our current mayor, into membership, but bounced him in January 1953 for missing nine consecutive meetings. In 1953 the club admitted F.S. Arant to membership—the Villager Club’s student loan of $45 in 1923-24 had paid off! In 1954 the club added a small amount to bring the club to 100-percent participation in Rotary Foundation. Later that year Ed Lee Spencer was selected as a Rotary Fellow.

Now for the details of the BIG FIX. In these times of offshore companies, post-dated stock options, insider trading and money laundering, I am a little embarrassed to confess my part in the BGI SCAM. It happened this way. One of our members, Gus Coats, who managed the Tiger Theatre, supplied a ticket each week to be given out through a drawing. I handled the box of capsules—each one containing a number assigned to one member. At this time Junior Childs was a member of the club. Junior was 75, had been a Rotarian elsewhere and had returned to Auburn to study. He was AU’s oldest student. He had become a club favorite, a kind of mascot.

I took to having Junior draw the number to give out the movie ticket each week. On week when Junior drew his own number, the club members called out FIX, FIX! Junior was greatly embarrassed. We all had a great laugh and insisted he take the ticket. For the next drawing some one, I thought it was me, rigged the capsules so that all of them contained Junior’s number. When he drew his own number for the second week in a row, Junior was horrified and the club broke up. How long we kept it up, I do not remember.

The Bulletin for April 27, 1953, does report “Junior Childs found that Gus Coats had replaced all numbers in the lottery capsules with Child’s own #7 in every one!” I was somewhat relieved to read this report. I had been thinking that I was the perpetrator, not just an accomplice.

Report of the History Committee for November 9, 2006