Our History
 
The first Rotary Club was organized in Chicago by a young lawyer named Paul P. Harris, and held its first meeting on February 23, 1905, with four business and professional men in attendance. The meeting was held in the Unity Building at 12 Dearborn Street, in the office of Gus Loehr, a mining engineer. In addition to Paul and Gus, the group consisted of Hiram Shorey, a merchant tailor and Silvester Schiele, a coal dealer. The men were trying to capture that sense of fellowship they had in the small towns from which they had originated. Soon they developed the higher purpose of service to others.
 The men met in rotation at each other’s places of business, hence the name Rotary. To make the club a representative cross section of the business and professional community, only one representative of each business or profession was admitted. This was the beginning of the classification principle of membership.
 The second Rotary Club is the Rotary Club of San Francisco.  By 1910, there were 16 Rotary Clubs and a couple of years later, the movement spread overseas. In 1922, the organization was officially named Rotary International. Today there are over 32,000 clubs with over 1,200,000 members in 200 countries.
 
Rotary Club of Ala Moana was founded by William Wong , Maurice (Sully) J. Sullivan and Euton Wong, who became our first three presidents.  Sully(1976-77), Bill Wong(1979-80), and Past President Neil Sutherland (1983-84) also served as our district governors. Our club was chartered on July 13, 1972 at the Ala Moana Hotel. We have four sister clubs, Abiko 6-6-1974, Feng Yuan 2-18-1970, and Hiroshima Jounan 12-6, 2001 and in 2015 Osaka Southwest.