Thirty Years of Wrington Vale

WRINGTON VALE THIRTIETH ANNIVERSARY

What do you remember of the year 1974?   It was the year of two General Elections, both won by Harold Wilson’s Labour Party, which shortly led to the election of Margaret Thatcher as Leader of the Conservatives.   Jimmy Connors and Chris Evert won the Singles titles at Wimbledon.

Rotary International was involved in a period of rapid expansion.   New clubs were being formed in many parts of the world.   In Rotary GB&I, every District Governor expected to present a Charter to at least one new club during his period of office.   Most existing clubs were full to the capacity of available meeting places.   The classification rule limiting club membership to one person from each trade or profession was strictly enforced.   Many potential members, notably ex-Round Tablers who had reached the maximum age, were unable to gain immediate admission to Rotary.

In these circumstances, the Council on Legislation broke with tradition and introduced a new rule permitting more than one Rotary club to exist on the same territory.   The Governor of this District at the time was Jack Palmer, a member of the Rotary Club of Mendip and the sub-postmaster at Winscombe.   It was Jack’s privilege to present a Charter to the Rotary Club of West Woodspring, formed on the territory of the long-established Rotary Club of Weston-super-Mare.

The District Extension Officer, Phil Cleator, and his successor Bunny Smith, then turned their attention to the territory of Jack’s own club.   The Rotary Club of Mendip met at the Bath Arms, Cheddar, and had 54 members and no room for further expansion.   Its members came predominantly from Cheddar and Winscombe.   Not a single member had an address at Wrington or Churchill and preliminary soundings were made with a view to chartering a new club on the territory of the Mendip Club but recruiting particularly in the Wrington Vale area.

At length, 23 gentlemen (no ladies, of course) expressed an interest in joining a new Interim Rotary Club meeting on Wednesday evenings at the Winston Hotel, Churchill.   Two members of the Mendip club, Ken Pigot and Richard Brown, attended regularly and accepted the responsibility of nursing the interim club through its initial phase.   The club’s Charter was granted on 13^th January 1976 and was formally presented by District Governor Len Parry, from Chippenham, at a Dinner held at the Caveman Restaurant, Cheddar, on 1st March 1976.   Tickets, incidentally, were priced at £4:50, including wines, and the annual levy paid to District by each new member was 35 pence.   The equivalent figure is now £15:20.

The choice of Interim President and, subsequently, of Founder President fell upon Derek McGill, a 47-years old Chartered Surveyor who then lived at Langford.   The two vice-presidents were even younger.   They were George Berry, a local solicitor and ex-tabler, and Ivor Standen, aged 38, a heating engineer from Congresbury (or, as Ivor himself would say Coomsbury).   The secretary was David Farrar and the treasurer was Alex Kynock, two men of pleasing personality but, as it transpired, lacking ambition in Rotary terms.   The Chairman of Community Service was Graham Perry, a senior tutor at the Veterinary College at Langford; Vocational Service was the responsibility of Ken Houghton, manager of the mushroom factory at Langford, who later emigrated to Canada, and after a few weeks International Service was taken over by Alfred Small, principal of Ludlow Small, quantity surveyors in Cheddar.

1976 was the year when the country was ravaged by Dutch Elm Disease and in October of that year Wrington Vale Rotary Club undertook the task of sawing down, by their own labour, and removing 19 dead elm trees and then sawing them into logs for fuel.   824 bags of logs were filled and distributed to elderly  and other deserving recipients.   The surplus was given to local children on Guy Fawkes Night.   This was not the whole story.   Having taken the trouble to arrange sponsorship for their efforts, the club was able to donate a special tilting bed to St. Michael’s Cheshire Home at Axbridge, and a net suspension bed to St. John’s Hospital also at Axbridge.

This was an auspicious effort in the highest traditions of Rotary Service and greatly impressed those of us who were members of older Rotary clubs in the district.   For the sake of completeness, I might add that a few years later the club planted a considerable number of new trees on land at Redhill kindly provided for the purpose by Alvis Brothers and, about the same time, planted daffodil bulbs along the verges of the A38.

Up to this time I was a member and Past President of the Rotary Club of Warminster and in September 1976 I accepted the appointment of Secretary of the Meat Research Institute at Langford.   For a few weeks I commuted every day from my home in Warminster but this became impracticable and the University kindly allowed me the use of student quarters at the Vet. School on a temporary basis.   The Warminster club gave me twelve months leave of absence and I began to attend meetings at the Winston Hotel every Wednesday evening in the hope that I would eventually be invited to join.   I was thus a pathfinder for a squadron of existing Rotarians who, over the years, have been happy to transfer their allegiance to the Wrington Vale club.

February 1977, when the club was scarcely one year old, marked the Silver Jubilee of H.M. Queen Elizabeth II and the fertile mind of Graham Perry conceived the idea of a memorial path across the Mendips from the coast to the cathedral city of Wells.   Graham secured the approval of Somerset County Council and the co-operation of three other Rotary Clubs, namely Wells, Mendip and Weston-super-Mare.   The idea was that Rotarian volunteers surveyed existing footpaths between Uphill and Wells, some of which were in a state of neglect, and arranged for them to be linked together to form a continuous walk.   We then erected, again by voluntary effort, 125 signposts each bearing the Rotary insignia.   We also arranged extensive publicity in the press and elsewhere.   The West Mendip Jubilee Way is still in regular use by walkers although the term “Jubilee” is often forgotten and the contribution of Rotary and, in particular, the Wrington Vale club is rarely remembered.   I may add that from time to time members of our club have undertaken sponsored walks of the Way in order to raise funds for Polioplus and other Rotary charities.

The Vocational Service Committee forged early links with Churchill Community School, partly through the efforts of Graham Davies, one of our members who was a Governor of the school, and these took the form of a Work Observation Day, mock interviews and the like.   The school was destined in due course to provide our club with one of its presidents but that lay a long time in the future.

At the outset, the Club took the Rock of Ages as its symbol, a representation of which appears on its bannerettes.   Perhaps bearing this in mind, in 1978 members of the club undertook the task of clearing Burrington Combe of the litter that despoiled this beauty spot and some of us still remember performing this duty in pouring rain.   In recent years, of course, we have started to meet here on a weekly basis and last year we marked the centenary of Rotary by providing a public seat nearby.

In that same year of 1978, the club organised a highly successful Summer Ball in a marquee at Urchinwood Manor.   Tickets were priced at £8 each, a substantial sum at the time, and the event raised £3000 for Rotary charities which enabled us to present a special chair for the use of handicapped children at Yatton Hall.   Much credit for the success of this event must go to the chairman of the committee, Bernard Ackrill.   The ball was repeated in the following year but was marred by very wet weather and, although profitable, was less successful socially.

The International Service Committee began to turn its attention to the possibility of forging a twinning link with a Rotary club on the continent of Europe and the club’s secretary, Geoff Matthews, raised the matter with one of his business associates who was a member of the Rotary Club of Dourdan in France.   As a consequence, several Rotarians from Dourdan came over to spend a week-end with us and a formal link between the two clubs was established in 1980, appropriately during the presidential year of Alf Small, the former International Service chairman.   The link has now been in place for 25 years and its success was again celebrated with our French friends when they visited us again in the Spring.

However, the club’s most spectacular achievement internationally has been the formation of the Rotary Club of Tblisi.   This had its origins in an example of World Community service which is fit to rank with the achievements of  any Rotary club.   Our attention was called by Rotary International to the plight of a young woman in Tblisi who was suffering from a terminal thymus condition for which no treatment was available in Georgia or anywhere in the old Soviet Union.  Our member Henry Parry was in the habit of visiting Tblisi as a representative of the British Council and this may have been the reason that prompted her doctor to appeal for help from Rotary.    Henry knew that suitable treatment was available in Bristol but the girl, Anna Mikeladze, had no hope, financially or otherwise, of travelling to the United Kingdom for the purpose.

The Wrington Vale club made itself responsible for bringing Anna to the U.K., together with her mother, Maka 

and her cousin Mzia, who spoke English and acted as interpreter.   With immense generosity, Alf Small and his family were able to provide the three ladies with rent free accommodation for many weeks whilst Anna underwent her treatment in Bristol.   Rotarians and their wives helped the three ladies to adjust to the unfamiliar British way of life and tactfully, as far as possible, assisted them financially.   We were all overjoyed that Anna’s treatment was successful and she was able to return to Tblisi completely cured. To-day Anna is married with a young family.   Her cousin Mzia, incidentally, has since made a very successful career in the Georgian Diplomatic Service and sustains her contacts with our club to whom she and her family remain eternally grateful.

This case brought to the attention of people in Georgia the true values of the Rotary movement which had been suppressed in the Soviet Union during the communist years.   Henry’s principal contact, Professor Boris Lombadzi of the University of Tblisi  was made an honorary member of our club which he continued to be until his death.   A request was received for assistance in founding a new Rotary Club in Tblisi which would have been the first such club in the old Soviet Union.   There was much delay, not of our making, but in September 1997, five members of the Wrington Vale club visited Tblisi and the Rotary Club of Tblisi received its Charter on 24^th May 1998.   Wrington Vale is one of its mother clubs and our president Pat Kellaway attended the presentation ceremony and made his own gift of a president’s jewel on our behalf.

At the time of our own Charter presentation in 1976, the District Extension Officer had been Bunny Smith, of the Weymouth club, who maintained a paternal interest in the club during its early months.   Bunny became District Governor in 1981 and, by a happy co-incidence, visited us officially at our Club Assembly on a date that happened to be his birthday.   As a surprise birthday present, the club presented Bunny with a live doe rabbit which he named Harriet.   The animal served as his mascot during his year of office and became the much-loved pet of his grandson until she died of old age.

At a dinner held at the Sidcot Hotel on 6^th November 1982, it was Bunny’s privilege and pleasure to present a Charter to the Rotaract Club of Wrington Vale  which our club was pleased to sponsor for young people under the age of 27.   The club appeared to prosper for a few years but, like other Rotaract clubs, it found difficulty in recruiting members in the appropriate age group and is now in abeyance.   The story of the Inner Wheel Club of Wrington Vale is a happier one.   The club’s Charter Presentation Dinner at the Caveman Restaurant on 17^th June 1978 was marked by a brilliant speech from the Rotary Club’s president, George Berry.   The hopes that George expressed for the future of the club have been more than amply fulfilled and we cannot let this occasion pass without grateful acknowledgement of all the help that we have received from the Inner Wheel Club over all these years.

In 1978, I was elected to the office of District Editor and thus became the first member of the Wrington Vale Club to be elected to district office.   I was shortly joined on the District Executive by our founder president, Derek McGill, who became Youth Exchange Officer.   A few years later I was elected District Secretary and my friend Alf Small was kind enough to agree to become Assistant Secretary.   My service as District Secretary was not, in my own opinion, particularly successful.   Nevertheless, I was invited to stand for office as District Governor-Nominee but, after talking it over with my wife Margaret, I declined.   Had I decided otherwise, the Wrington Vale club might now be able to claim four members who have stood for office as District Governor, and lost!

Wrington Vale did not have to wait much longer to provide its first District Governor.   In 1988, Derek McGill was elected to that important office and the club under the inspirational leadership of its young president, John Alvis, organised a highly successful District Conference at Bournemouth.   This was the achievement of  a hard-working committee of which I was privileged to be Chairman.   I have reason to think that the club did even better at Plymouth in 1999 when Alf Small was District Governor and John Alvis was himself Chairman of the Conference Committee.   It was a great disappointment to me personally that I was confined to a hospital bed and was unable to give any support to Alf and John and the rest of the club at this time.   It was apparent, I have to say, that they did not need it.

Since then the Club’s involvement in District organisation has been continued by Alan Fornear, who served for three years as an Assistant Governor, and by Brian Kirkup who is the current Chairman of the District Youth Services Committee.

When the new Children’s Hospital opened in Bristol in 2001 much of the equipment from the old Children’s Hospital in St.Michael’s Hill became surplus to requirement and the hospital authorities were persuaded to donate it to the hospital in Tblisi where it was very much needed.   The Rotary Club of Wrington Vale, with International Alf. very much to the fore, and with the aid of very special friends, made the arrangements to deliver the equipment to Georgia where the Rotary Club of Tblisi took matters in hand.

On another occasion the members of the club raised a worthwhile sum for BIBIC (the British Institute of Brain Damaged Children) by undertaking a sponsored slim.   The success of this endeavour encouraged us to try a more ambitious effort on behalf of the Frenchay Hospital Brain Laser Appeal.   The entire club assembled one Sunday morning on the weighbridge at Alvis Brothers and one month later, similarly dressed, weighed out again.   The certified gross loss was described as the normal weight of George Berry wringing wet through.   In view of all his work for international service, it would be unkind to name the one Rotarian who failed to lose any weight at all.

In the year 2000, the club reached the nadir of its fortunes when a misguided attempt was made to force the issue of admitting women to membership of the club.   The subject led to a bitter division and the loss of three highly-valued members through resignation.   The irony is that, six years on, no woman has yet been elected to membership of the club.   No female candidate has been rejected and no one appears to be in any way worse off.

When remembering those who have served this club during the past thirty years, I ask you to give a moment’s thought to those friends who have been called to higher service.   Terry Evans,  John Gosling,  Brian Helps,  Ed Mugford,  John Potter,  Mike Waters,  Keith Smith,  Geoff Davis,  Gerald Virgo,  John Chamberlain,  Steve Craig,  Mike Haswell, Alan Thomas..   It was a pleasure to know them.   May they all rest in peace.

The Rotary world of to-day is much different from the world of thirty years ago.   Community service has become unfashionable and some Rotary clubs that once had waiting lists are struggling to survive.   The Wrington Vale Club is managing to buck the trend and is continuing to find new members of a high calibre.   This year we celebrated our thirtieth birthday.   We also celebrated a centenary of sorts by installing our 100^th member.   The future of our club lies not in aggressively seeking women members, nor in aggressively seeking to keep them out.   The future lies in continuing to bring in suitable candidates, the sex of whom is irrelevant.

I wish Robin a happy and successful year as our new president, and I wish him as I wish all of you, many years of enjoyable and loyal Rotary service in all its aspects.   May you continue to enrich your lives by following the precept of Service Above Self and may I remind you once more that he profits most who serves best.