Club History

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Chartered on April 28, 1977, the Rotary Club of Rohnert Park - Cotati has served the communities of Rohnert Park and Cotati for over thirty years.  Contributions to both of the communities have been numerous and include several Xericape landscaping projects, park benches and picnic tables, kitchen fixtures for the Boys & Girls club, dictionaries for local schools, computer labs for community and senior centers, and neighborhood beautification projects.  Additionally, Rohnert Park-Cotati Rotarians have been involved internationally, assisting with Polio Plus, Rotoplast, Festival of Brotherhood, and Adopt-A-Village projects.

 

Our New Club Banner 2010 forward Depicting the Rotary Wheel as the sun rising over Sonoma Mountain, symbolizing that we are a "sunrise" club.  The community is in the foreground, with the Sonoma State University Clock Tower and the Green Music Center, vineyards in the foothills and a redwood tree to the right	Our Old Club Banner 19?? - 2010 Depicting the "Friendly City" sign of Rohnert Park and the hexagon "Hub" of Cotati The Dove was added to signify Rotary's emphasis on World Peace Research indicates that this is not our club's original banner, but it is unknown when it was changed or what our original banner looked like.

This is intended to be a dynamic page, with information continuously added as facts, stories, and legends are collected from current and past Rotarians.  Please check back often.

Club Beginnings, as chronicled by charter president Robert Tellander:

"...We had our first meeting at the Gold Coin Restaurant (College View Dr and Southwest Blvd.) as a luncheon club.  One of the Wong brothers (who owned the Gold Coin) joined the club also, but when they went out of business we moved to three different places.  The Mexican Restaurant on Commerce Blvd @ Old Redwood Hwy (currently Mi Pueblito Restaurant) built by club member Vern Avila (architect) and when they went under we moved back to the old site of the Gold Coin which was then called McChesney's, an excellent fish restaurant, and when it went under we moved into the new Greek Restaurant at the intersection of Redwood Highway and Gravenstein Highway (currently Star Restaurant) also built by Vern Avila.  We left there when Past President Jerry, (Gerald Kohler) Chief of Police Cotati, wanted to move upscale to the then Red Lion Hotel and we stayed put while the hotel changed names to the Doubletree Hotel.  Spiro, the Greek (I can't remember his last name.) was not pleased and quit the club.  We had our Charter Night at the Green Mill Restaurant on Old Redwood Highway in Penngrove.

 The first Project the club did was to create a proper sign to Identify "Rancho Cotate High School and to dress up the bleak facade with a row of young Redwood Trees.  That worked so well, that the city asked us to help plant the redwood trees along the RP Parkway and we threw in the concrete benches along the route with our names and Rotary seal embossed in them.  Mine is located at the intersection of Rohnert Park Expressway and Country Club Drive.

 I technically served one and one-half terms as your Charter President because we were chartered mid-year.  Four of my officers dropped out the first year because of career and personal conflicts so I ended up being interim everything until we could replace them.  Since no one but I, Roger Sanderson, Harold Alexander, and Mort Johnson had been Rotarians, we spent a lot of time explaining Rotary to the members.  My impression after attending meetings twenty-five years hence was that the idea got through.   My 25th Anniversary piece to club had a lot of this information in it.  Maybe I have an electronic copy of that.  I'll look.

Note how volatile life was in the early days of Rohnert Park.  Jobs, businesses and homes were all on the margin.  Businesses failed because the market would not sustain them.  Ray Deitz, our second president, never wanted the job and refused to serve at the end of my term. Fortunately, others persuaded him to follow through so I could get back to teaching, and my life.  But he resigned and left after his last meeting.  We were not a status club but a service club and that required time and effort, not necessarily money.  I gave .25 cent fines at the beginning…”

This was the club's first Community Service project:  We planted the redwood trees in front of the high school and Vern Avila designed and club members built the "Rancho Cotate High School" sign in front of them.

The three in the back row to the far right are all Rotarians, but we cannot remember their names.  The others are:  Left to Right:  Back row:  Bob Tellander (charter club president), Mort Johnson.  First Row:  Joop Comrij and Ray Dietz.

(Picture courtesy of the Rohnert Park Historical Society, Tim Danesi)

The Rotary of Rohnert Park-Cotati is very young in comparison to other Sonoma County clubs, many of which were chartered in the 1920's and Rotary International, which was founded in 1905.

Rotary's beginnings are as follows:

On the evening of 23 February 1905, attorney Paul Harris invited three friends to a meeting. They were Silvester Schiele, a coal dealer; Hiram Shorey, a merchant tailor; and Gustavus Loehr, a mining engineer. Schiele and Harris, after dinner together, met with the two others in Loehr's business office in Room 711 of the Unity Building in downtown Chicago on Dearborn Avenue. Thus, the Rotary movement was born and soon the Rotary Club of Chicago was formed.

Rotary Wheel 1906, 1910, 1913, and 1926 (courtesy RGHF)

Click Here for more Rotary history, as collected and presented by the Rotary Global History Fellowship.