1977 Newton Rotary

1977 Newton Rotary

I want to talk about NEWTON ROTARY in 1977, today… Some of you will remember it well.

1^st A Little Profile:

The Club was in it’s 54^th year; Officers Included: Bob Fisher, Pres;  Bill Houghton VP;   Warren  Welsh Sec.  and    the Newsletter was edited by George Kaiser. Back then, it was actually printed and mailed to members, each week.

This is a copy of the format, for some of the  new members.  … You will notice that the back side listed all the members including their spouses, phone numbers and home addresses.

In fact, there was a feature, then, that I think we should revive. Each week we featured THE ROTARIAN OF THE WEEK. Each member contributed a short bio of them selves and it was included in the Newtarian, that week. This was an excellent way for members to get to know each other and develop a stronger bond. I don’t know when it was discontinued, but we should start it again.

The bio, in this edition -12/28/77- was Harold Carstens. I’ve only been in the community, full time, for about 5 years so I didn’t know Harold and found it most interesting.

First, he was the Editor Emeritus, of the NEWTARIAN. He was born in Ft Lee in 1925 and lived in Bergen County until he moved to Sussex County in 1973. He lived in Fredon and died in 2009

He enjoyed his British Morgan Sports Car and was a member of several sports car clubs as well as the Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church, in Sparta, and several other church affiliations. He was president of this Club in 1986-87

He was the President and founder of Carstens Publications, now based in Fredon. The firm publishes many famous hobby magazines and other books and they are sold internationally.

The Club was in the 1977 INFLIGHT  district publication, that year. The article profiled the Club, listing officers and other information. We met at the Newtonian Inn, then, and lunch was $3.50. We had 87 members.

The club was an active supporter of the Rotary Foundation and was then at     5500 %  Today, we are at 10,000%

We’ll have to get George Morville to explain what it means.

The club had an active Sergeant at arms (Fred Loede) who sent a card to each member that missed a meeting.

The article went on to list several of our best accomplishments … as of 1977

·       Organized the 1^st local boy scout troop

·       Our charter member, Tom Murray, donated $100,000 as initial seed money for the hospital… which opened in 1932

·       Memorial Park was established with considerable aid from our member Norman Drake

·       The town swimming pool was constructed with support from Harry Jones

·       We sponsored a tractor, in Equador to assist farmers, there, in modern farming methods

The article has several pictures that may be remembered by many of you.

ALSO , a footnote about printed and mailed editions of the NEWTARIAN ……

As of 11/3/76 the Trustees voted to renew mailing the issues to members.