by Garth Meyer
In 1948, the Rotary Club of Redondo Beach employed a family of guinea pigs to ensure attendance.
Its members divided into teams, and each week the person on the designated team with the lowest attendance record was given custody of the animals.
A report soon followed that the guinea pigs had a permanent residence, as the club roster reached consistent, 100% attendance.
In 1950, the Redondo Rotary’s five-man bowling team had won 18 trophies from a 12-team Rotary league. In 1964, the club gave weekly two-minute broadcasts of their news and information on KAPP Radio, the time donated. In 1987, it inducted its first female member.
In 2024, they are celebrating their 100th anniversary.
A commemorative event was held Nov. 9 at Seaside Lagoon. Community awards were presented to Ericka Gonzalez of the Redondo Beach Police Department, for “Service Above Self”, for her work with the RBPD Domestic Violence Victims Advocacy Program; Allen Sanford, BeachLife Festival co-founder, “People of Action”; and Gay Swaine, “Trailblazer,” Rotary International, Redondo’s first female member.
Local Rotarians today participate in and sponsor such items as Meals on Wheels, Warriors Food Pantry at El Camino College, Thanksgiving dinners at Salvation Army, and mentoring and judging Project ECHO – High School Entrepreneurs Contest.
The Redondo Beach group was founded in 1924, with 15 charter members. They met on Thursdays at noon in the old Elks Club House (before the Elks Lodge was built). A man named C. Ernest Perkins was its first president.
Annual dues were $36. Today they are $400.
Rotary works in the 1950s included pairing with the Chamber of Commerce on the bygone “Neptune Days” festival, making a contribution to the newly-formed South Bay YMCA, and putting $1,500 toward the purchase of a 49-passenger Salvation Army bus. The Redondo group enlisted its first Sister Club in 1964, in Brazil. Their current sister club is La Paz, Mexico.
Actions for La Paz over the decades include bringing school supplies/uniforms and medical supplies, helping with light infrastructure projects and, one time in the ‘90s, a Redondo group located and bought a retired fire engine and drove it down to donate.
In 1975, the local city club consolidated with the Rotary Club of Riviera Village. A year later, membership in the Redondo-Riviera Rotary Club totaled 87 men.
The group inducted its first woman when member Rob Swaine sponsored his wife, Gay, who then served as an “Additional-Active Member” classified under “Marketing.”
Several Rotarians resigned.
In 1998, after a new club was formed in North Redondo, it was brought into the Redondo-Riviera group to make one club, orchestrated by its president, future Redondo Beach mayor Steve Aspel.
Changes
Today the Redondo Rotary has 65 members. President John Barnett has been a member for five years.
The group meets – still weekly – at the new Riviera Mexican Cantina, in its banquet room along the water with its 75-inch TV/monitor/projector. Meetings were previously held at R10.
“More space, and a better view,” Barnett said of the new accommodations.
Last week, the club took in a presentation from a man from Mediators Beyond Borders International, which Rotary Intl. sponsors.
90 percent of local Rotary fundraising goes to its projects – both local and international – with 80% of that 90% applied here, said Barnett, a retired salesman for Hewlett-Packard. This year’s annual fundraiser, a western murder-mystery in April at R10, brought in $115,000.
The longest-serving, almost-member of the club is Conrad Siegel. Former Mayor Aspel is the next longest.
Siegel has attended club meetings in Redondo Beach for more than 30 years, but he goes back another 27 years with the Harrisburg, Penn., club.
A semi-retired actuary, he has a namesake business in Harrisburg with 130 employees. Spending half of his time here and half in Pennsylvania in recent decades, he and his wife now live full-time at the Portofino.
“Rotary’s a marvelous organization,” he said. “It does work all over the world for people who need help, and they fund themselves.”
Nancy Langdon is the current president-elect in Redondo Beach. A former Rotary youth exchange student as a teenager to Germany – “when every kid looked like they were in The Cure” – she now heads the Rotary’s regional youth exchange program.
“Rotary, as we say, is an ordinary way to be part of extraordinary things,” she said.
Langdon works in business plans in her career.
Additional local Rotary support goes to “Vision to Learn,” which gives free eye exams and glasses to kids, and to help fund Rotary international work, such as building wells and literacy programs. Rotary has 46,000 clubs worldwide, in more than 200 countries.
The local club’s official 100th anniversary is Dec. 14.
“What Rotary really is is a multiplier. If you have an idea, you can make a lot happen. Somebody knows somebody…,” Langdon said. “It’s a community service organization as strong as its members and the enthusiasm of its members.” ER
