On January 19, 1915, a luncheon meeting was called at the Norval Hotel in Lima attended by twelve Lima business and professional men.  This meeting was held to begin the process of organizing the Lima Rotary Club.  The twelve attendees were: W. H. Moore (who was the first President of the club), Charles W. West, E. C. Eppley, M. Hofeller, George Carver, Henry Wemmer, W. L. Russell, Nelson Shook, J. C. Bucher, L. S. Galvin, E. M. Gooding and Harry O. Bentley. 

Sponsored by the Toledo Rotary Club, the Lima Rotary Club received it charter No. 143 on April 1, 1915, with thirty-four members.  By September 16, 1916, the Lima Rotary Club had grown to approximately 135 members representing most of the business, professional and industrial leaders of the community.  The first women were inducted into the Lima Rotary Club in 1988. 

From the beginning of the club, Lima Rotarians have actively served the greater Lima Community through financial support of and personal involvement in community activities.  Sponsorship of the Boy Scout movement was the Lima club’s first project in this community.  The club hired the first Scouting director and financially supported the organization until the scouting program established itself and other funding became available. 

Throughout its history, the support and leadership of Lima Rotarians has been, and continues to be, reflected in almost every charitable, religious, civic and youth organization in the greater Lima area.  Members of the Lima club have contributed in a variety of ways to a broad array of community organizations from the arts to recreation to health service and anti-drug campaigns.  The club sponsored the Lima Rotary Boys Choir for many years.  Lima Rotary built the Rotary Pavilion in Faurot Park where a series of free concerts are performed during the summer months.  In addition, the club has been responsible for underwriting chairs for the Lima Symphony Orchestra, has supported the Veterans Memorial Civic and Convention Center and has provided a Council for the Arts dance stage to be used in area schools.  A boardwalk was built in Kendrick Woods and playground equipment has been purchased and installed for the Metropolitan Park District.  Rotary has assisted in neighborhood development in the Southside of Lima by initiating the garden plot program and supporting a medical doctor in the neighborhood.  Many Rotarians assist with the annual Salvation Army kettle drive each Christmas Season.  The Lima Rotary Club was also instrumental in the development and building of the Rotary River Walk which runs through the city of Lima.

The world’s first service club, the Rotary Club of Chicago, Illinois, USA, was formed on 23 February 1905 by Paul P. Harris, an attorney who wished to recapture in a professional club the same friendly spirit he had felt in the small towns of his youth. The name “Rotary” derived from the early practice of rotating meetings among members’ offices.

Rotary’s popularity spread throughout the United States in the decade that followed; clubs were chartered from San Francisco to New York. By 1921, Rotary clubs had been formed on six continents, and the organization adopted the name Rotary International a year later.

As Rotary grew, its mission expanded beyond serving the professional and social interests of club members. Rotarians began pooling their resources and contributing their talents to help serve communities in need. The organization’s dedication to this ideal is best expressed in its principal motto: Service Above Self. Rotary also later embraced a code of ethics, called The 4-Way Test, that has been translated into hundreds of languages.

During and after World War II, Rotarians became increasingly involved in promoting international understanding. In 1945, 49 Rotary members served in 29 delegations to the United Nations Charter Conference. Rotary still actively participates in UN conferences by sending observers to major meetings and promoting the United Nations in Rotary publications. Rotary International’s relationship with the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) dates back to a 1943 London Rotary conference that promoted international cultural and educational exchanges. Attended by ministers of education and observers from around the world, and chaired by a past president of RI, the conference was an impetus to the establishment of UNESCO in 1946.

An endowment fund, set up by Rotarians in 1917 “for doing good in the world,” became a not-for-profit corporation known as The Rotary International Foundation in 1928. Upon the death of Paul Harris in 1947, an outpouring of Rotarian donations made in his honor, totaling US$2 million, launched the Foundation’s first program — graduate fellowships, now called Ambassadorial Scholarships. Today, contributions to The Rotary Foundation total more than US$80 million annually and support a wide range of humanitarian grants and educational programs that enable Rotarians to bring hope and promote international understanding throughout the world.

In 1985, Rotary made a historic commitment to immunize all of the world’s children against polio. Working in partnership with nongovernmental organizations and national governments thorough its PolioPlus program, Rotary is the largest private-sector contributor to the global polio eradication campaign. Rotarians have mobilized hundreds of thousands of PolioPlus volunteers and have immunized more than one billion children worldwide. By the 2005 target date for certification of a polio-free world, the membership of Rotary had contributed half a billion dollars to the cause.

As it approached the dawn of the 21st century, Rotary worked to meet the changing needs of society, expanding its service effort to address such pressing issues as environmental degradation, illiteracy, world hunger, and children at risk. The organization admitted women for the first time (worldwide) in 1989 and claims more than 145,000 women in its ranks today. Following the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Rotary clubs were formed or re-established throughout Central and Eastern Europe. Today, 1.2 million Rotarians belong to some 31,000 Rotary clubs in 166 countries.