Rotary Club in 1947 — New members sing

Musical selections were a regular part of the program at Glens Falls Rotary Club meetings in early decades of the club.

On Feb. 6,1947, it was six incoming new members that joined their voices in an unspecified “musical selection,” with Rotarian Maurice Whitney accompanying on The Queensbury Hotel piano.

The new members were: Dr. Palmer K. Colson, a dentist; Rev. Charles K’ Kennedy, pastor Church of the Messiah Episcopal; William J. Hughes; A.R. Gray, chemist at Imperial Color Works; J. Edward Harney, owner Achenbach Jewelers; and Leonard J. Moynihan.

“Frank M. Smalley, three-time president of the club, gave the welcoming address to the new members, pointing out that they have been chosen as ‘ambassadors from your chosen professions to the Rotary Club,’ but they are expected also to serve ‘coming and going,’ carrying Rotary back to their respective occupations,” The Post-Star reported on Feb. 7.

“The speaker remarked that there are two laws which are regarded as almost unchangeable, the first being the law of averages, and the second the law of compensation, but continued by asserting that Rotarians can break the second law in that the more they give Rotary the more that they can take out of it.”

Smalley, a Glens Falls Insurance Co. executive, was the Glens Falls Rotary Club’s first president in 1922.

Twenty-five years later, 11 of 25 charter members were still in the club, he said.

Click here to read my most recent previous Rotary Club history post.