The Rotary Club of Dunedin
60 Years of Service
Tom Hood , a former District Governor from Dunn , NC (1947-1948) was a member of the Clearwater Rotary club and owned a local drug store on Main Street . Hood, along with H.E. Winchester (father of Walter Winchester ), Tom Parnell , Ben Skinner , and several others left the Clearwater Club to start the Dunedin Rotary Club. The club was chartered On January 20, 19 47, and held its first meetings at the cafeteria of the Citrus Concentrate Plants on the 2 nd floor. Tom Hood became the Rotary Club's secretary and strictly enforced attendance: if you left before 60% of the meeting was over, he would mark you as absent. Stanley Douglas, father of Bill Douglas , was secretary to Tom Hood . Ken Kerr became the club's first full-term president, followed by Tom Parnell . Walter Winchester , who was at first too busy setting up his medical practice to join the club, joined the club three months after its charter. Walter , who passed away in 2006, was president from 1949-1950 and remained active in the Rotary Club until his death.
Ben Skinner remembers the club's first fundraiser in 1952. The members held a picnic, sold hot dogs, and Cokes donated by Publix and made $1,000. During the following years, the club had many fundraisers and accumulated $30,000. Woody Register , John Powers , Bob Tharin , Sr. , and Russ Hair got together and started several community projects such as beach clean-up, building benches, swings, and helping schools. Unfortunately these activities used up the club's funds, much to the displeasure of then treasurer Frank McCombs , who had held onto these funds for many years. Since then, the club has been actively fundraising and has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars throughout the years.
Over the past 60 years, the Dunedin Rotary Club has completed many projects such as the Stanley Douglas Memorial at the Dunedin Historical Society Museum , a shelter in Hammock Park and the Rotary banner collection, organized by Dr. Bill Sutton . The club planted islands on the Dunedin Causeway and held a beach clean-up through 1990. The club has provided a number of benefits for the community such as support for the Dunedin High School Interact Club and the annual Adopt a Family program, school supplies for the needy, scholarships for Dunedin High School students, volunteers at the Blue Jays games and at the "Great American Teach In." The club also supports the bloodmobile annually, Alcohol-Free Grad Night for Dunedin High School , Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Sherriff 's Youth Ranch, the Dunedin Library and other literacy programs.
The Dunedin Rotary Club's International programs include matching grants to developing nations and sponsoring GSE team members. The Rotary Club has sent GSE group leaders Ann Kennedy to India , Sallie Parks to Scotland , and Julie Scales to Germany . In addition the club purchased an ambulance for the Jaipur Hospital in India , sent computer software to Croatia and school supplies to Haiti and West Samoa . The Rotary Club is presently funding a fish farm in Nicaragua as well as shelter boxes for disasters around the world.
Our club boasts 13 members on the newly charted " Paul Harris Society ," and each member has pledged $1,000 to the Rotary Foundation annually. Our club has the largest number of members in the district, of which 75% are Paul Harris followers.
During 2005-2006, our club contributed more money per member than any other club in District 6950 with an average contribution of more than $275 per member. During the past ten years ( 1996-January 23, 2007) the Rotary Club of Dunedin has donated over $290,000 to a variety of organizations in Dunedin . In recent years, the Rotary Club of Dunedin has consistently been among the top contributors to the Rotary International Foundation in our District.
The two largest recipients of these donations are the Nature Center at Honeymoon Island , the club's Centennial project, and Dunedin High School .
The Rotary Club of Dunedin and the Rotary Club of Dunedin North jointly raised and contributed over $166,000 for construction of the Rotary Centennial Nature Center at Honeymoon Island . In addition, our club has also provided over $96,000 in scholarships to Dunedin High School students in the past ten years.
Some of the other organizations which have received significant contributions in the past ten years include: Dunedin Fine Art Center, Rotary Camp Florida, Dunedin Library, Anclote Lighthouse, Adopt A Family, Literacy Council of Upper Pinellas, Dunedin Commission on Aging, Watson Center , Kiwanis Boundless Playground, Boy Scouts, Pace Girls Center , Children's Home Society, Dunedin Historical Society
To celebrate the Rotary Club of Dunedin's 60 th anniversary, our members have pledged an additional $50,000 for scholarships to high school students living in Dunedin . This additional $50,000 will go to an endowment fund and will allow us to donate more for Dunedin scholarships each year.
For many years the club has been known as "The Banner Club" as a result of its efforts to collect Rotary banners from around the world. This effort started in 1986 in Bill Sutton . The 400 banners Dunedin had collected from other clubs generated the idea of bringing together the banners of all possible Rotary Clubs, about 25,000 at that time. When collecting was discontinued, banners in the Dunedin Collection had come to over 19,000, representing about 190 countries. Made of everything from cloth to wood to stainless steel to elephant hide, they tell the story of what Rotary is all about. Most of them focus on geographical location, local products, or cultural history. The entire collection of about 22,000 banners was donated to Rotary International.
