Dumfries Rotary Club Centenary Lunch

Dumfries Rotary Club President introduces Keynote Lunch Speaker Dame Barbara Kelly 

President Douglas, Club Secretary Fraser Sanderson and Club member Douglas Kerr represented our Club at the Centenary Lunch hosted by Dumfries Rotary Club on Friday 5 November 2021. Dumfries Rotary Club is “Mother Club” to Dalbeattie Rotary Club and to two other Rotary Clubs in the Stewartry, Castle Douglas and Kirkcudbright, which had also sent representatives. 

The Lunch marking the centenary of the founding of the Club in 1921 was hosted by Club President, John Glover. The Keynote Speaker was Dame Barbara Kelly, President of Peter Pan Moat Brae Trust and Chair of the Galloway National Park Association, the aim of which is to see Galloway established as Scotland’s third National Park.  

Dame Barbara, an octogenarian, highlighted the outstanding contribution of Dumfries Rotary Club to the life of the town and its townspeople over one hundred years in following the aim of Rotary International of “service above self.”  Drawing on local press reporting from 1921, she shared press reports of town life in those far off days, including reports on activities of the then recently formed Dumfries Rotary Club. She commented that prevalent issues facing the townspeople of the 1920’s remained largely the same today. 

Dame Barbara said that she was particularly pleased that representatives of Dalbeattie Rotary Club were among the company, as Dalbeattie was the town of her birth, it being understood that her late father was for some time Headmaster of Dalbeattie Primary School.