Club History

The Rotary Club of Buckhead has come a long way in 57 years. Since it began with its first meetings in 1950, the club has grown dramatically with its community, helped form a number of other clubs, and significantly expanded its charitable and community service activities.

The club was formed by six members of the Rotary Club of Atlanta, who recruited 17 of their Buckhead friends to make up the 23 charter members. Today, the club has some 170 members, and is approaching its 175-member limit. Walter Allen, who joined the Buckhead club in 1966 and was its president in 1970-71, said the club consisted mostly of business owners back then, rather than managers, and that geographic and attendance requirements were much stricter. “You had to live and work in the district,” Allen said. “Now you can live in Alpharetta.” Members also had just one week to do make-ups, and had their perfect attendance records zeroed out if they missed time. “If you were sick or in Russia, where they had no Rotary clubs, you were wiped out,” he said. The first meetings of the club were in November 1950 at Hart’s restaurant (lunches cost $1.25). A few months later, in March 1951, the club was formally inducted into Rotary.

For the first several years, fundraising for the club consisted largely of the sale of Christmas trees. Among its earliest service projects was sponsorship of a Boy Scout troop and a Little League baseball team. Today, the club’s main fundraiser is the annual Foundation Ball, which began in 1999. In 2006, it raised $50,000. The club plans to donate nearly $70,000 to a wide range of charities and programs in 2007-2008, including the Tommy Nobis Center, the Boy and Girl Scouts of America, Habitat for Humanity, the GRSP scholarship program, AIDS Awareness, clean water and World Community Service. John Dykes, a member of the Buckhead club for 25 years, says the formation of the Buckhead Rotary Foundation in 1994 was a turning point for charitable giving. Before that, charitable donations were combined with dues and meals on each members’ bill. If costs went up, giving was squeezed, and sometimes went down. Now, dues, meals and charitable giving are broken out separately, and the added emphasis on giving has resulted in an increase in donations. “Members are being asked for more, shown specifically that it is for charity and they are giving more,” said Dykes. Giving has almost tripled since Dykes was club president in 1992, and the Foundation now has $454,000 in assets.

The Buckhead club has ceded some of its territory over the years and helped to create other Rotary clubs. Members of the Buckhead club worked with the Atlanta club to form the Brookwood Club, now known as the Midtown club (1955), with the Decatur club to form the North DeKalb club (1965) and with the North DeKalb club to form the Sandy Springs club (1971). Buckhead also helped form the Atlanta Peachtree and Vinings clubs.

Through the years, Buckhead has joined with a number of sister clubs around the world, starting with Dortmund, Germany. It’s also had sister clubs in Taipei, Taiwan; Dusseldorf, Germany; San Juan, Costa Rica; Moscow, Russia; Tartu Toome, Estonia; and Istanbul, Turkey. Buckhead also had Group Study Exchange programs to Denmark (led by Bob Chambers), India (led by Walter Allen), Bangladesh led by John Thames), Sri Lanka (led by John Dykes) and Australia (led by Steve Bethea). Buckhead’s achievements have been recognized by District 6900. The club has been honored eight times as the Best Club in the district: in 1967, 1972, 1977, 1981, 1986, 1991, 2002 and 2003. In 2007 it won first- or second-place honors in every area measured at the district conference. Dykes said the honors show that the Buckhead club is more than just a club that gives money to charity. “We are an active club in terms of member participation in projects, and we also donate money,” Dykes said. “The active clubs believe participation is a key part of Rotary, not just making a financial contribution.”

The Buckhead club has had some notable members over the years, including Bill Stubbs and Lem Bell, who both served as district governors. Another was Otis Jackson, a distinguished scholar and athlete at Oglethorpe University and a former Atlanta superintendent of schools. The club created a merit-based scholarship in his name in 1988, patterned after the Rhodes scholarship.

Many of the Buckhead club’s programs have long histories. Buckhead started a youth basketball league in 1964. The club has sponsored Junior Achievement programs since1971. The Shrimp Boil has been held every year since 1977. Apples for Teachers began in 1973. And it started a tennis tournament in 1982 to benefit Shepherd Center. But the club has its eyes as much on the future as on the past. It has recently re-designed its Web site (always a work in progress) and added podcasts, to give members a chance to listen or re-listen to its weekly programs.

The club also has created a new long range strategic planning committee, headed by Aadu Allpere. Club President Charlie Crawford said the committee will employ the expertise of several past club presidents and look three to five years ahead. “It’s an opportunity to think longer and bigger,” Crawford said.