Courtesy Photo Members of the Alpena Rotary Club pose in front of a sign promoting the construction of the splash park at Starlite Beach in Alpena in this 2018 photo. The club is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

ALPENA — The Alpena Rotary Club is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

For the last century, the local group has stood strong in its creed to promote peace, fight to eradicate polio, and to be a leader in strengthening the community it serves.

The local chapter of Rotary began in 1922 with then-club-president Lee Richardson leading the effort to get the group organized and established.

Since then, countless projects, including adding the splash park to Starlite Beach and developing Rotary Island Mill Park, have become realities because of the rotarians.

The club more recently added new telescopes and benches to the breakwall at the Alpena harbor and did further beautification work at Rotary Mill Island Park.

There were only 22 members in Rotary that first year a century ago, but membership ballooned to about 120 in the early 1990s and stands at a little over 60 today, President Joanne Gallagher said.

Gallagher said the club and its members have run with a steady set of principles over the decades that allows for them to be effective. She said not much has changed in how Rotary operates or in its mission, and that allows consistency when conducting business and completing projects.

Gallagher said she believes the largest change for Rotary in Alpena was in 1990, when women were allowed to join. She said she and Karen Petallia, who was the executive director of the Alpena Area Chamber of Commerce at the time, were the first women to be made members locally.

“Women were not allowed to join before then; it was a men’s club,” she said. “Now, about 50% of our members are women. What it has done, it has expanded how we look at world problems, how we address them, and what we do, because men and women see things differently and that’s a good thing, because, with both perspectives, you get a fuller overall perspective of the problem and how to address it.”

Gallagher said the club is currently seeing a spike in younger members.

Eric Ferguson is one of the new guard who is eager to work with others his age and with the more experienced members to make a difference in the lives of others.

Ferguson, who has been a rotarian for about two years, said the combination of more youthful members and those who have been involved for years creates a nice balance when tackling issues.

“We have a lot of young professionals, especially for a service organization,” Ferguson said. “You look at some of the other groups in town and I would have been the only younger one. The benefit is we add a fresh perspective. The networking across generations is important. I work with people in Rotary that I would never have met if I hadn’t joined. It doesn’t matter that I’m 25 and someone else is 60. We both want to make Alpena better and work together to do that.”

Rotary International has eased the qualifications for someone to become a member, Gallagher said, so, now, it is easier for a person to join.

“You had to be a mover and a shaker and you had to be a professional and supervising people to even be considered for Rotary,” she said. “It has been softened quite a bit. Still, we’re not looking for a person who is job-hopping, we’re looking for a person with a profession or a career, who isn’t necessarily the lead in their profession.”

Gallagher said anyone interested in becoming a member of Rotary should reach out to one of the current members for more information and any candidate requires a member as a sponsor.

The club and its members don’t toot their own horn often and let their good deeds in the community speak for themselves. Ferguson said one thing he hopes the anniversary and the hoopla surrounding it does is educate people in the area on what the club added to the lives of residents and visitors.

“Right now, when you think of Rotary, you think of the island and the splash park, but there are 100 years of projects like that,” he said. “Over the next year, people are going to learn more about them and the impact they have in the Alpena community.”

The next project is expected to be announced soon.

Steve Schulwitz can be reached at 989-358-5689 at sschulwitz@thealpenanews.com. Follow him on Twitter @ss_alpenanews.com.