Gary Nolte
Nancy Edmonds Hanson
1921 was an auspicious year for gathering Moorhead businessmen to serve their city. Just two weeks after Moorhead Kiwanis was founded (as retold in last week’s Extra), the Moorhead Rotary Club was chartered – the 970th unit of what would become Rotary International, now with over 46,000 local chapters in 166 nations around the world. It was the world’s first organization of its kind.
In the 101 years since its founding (sponsored by Fargo Rotary), the Moorhead chapter has played a part in countless projects to benefit the citizens of Moorhead, the metro area, the region and – yes – the world.
“Rotary is all about service,” says Gary Nolte, a 34-year veteran and past president who has gone on to serve District 5580 (clubs in Minnesota, North Dakota, and parts of Ontario and Wisconsin) and the organization at large. “That’s why I’m still here. From volunteering for local causes to four international service missions, it’s a way I can give back.
“You’ve got to get out of your box. You’ve got to do something for others. That’s the spirit of Rotary – ‘service above self.’” At the same time, he adds, it builds fellowship with men and women you wouldn’t meet in your normal day-to-day world. “I can run into someone in a Rotary shirt in the airport in Port au Prince, ask him what project he’s involved with – instant friendship. We’re all in this together.”
Like other organizations, the Moorhead club’s convivial Tuesday meetings were put on hold for well over a year by the COVID-19 pandemic. During those months they soldiered on via the internet, using Zoom to approximate the easy fellowship they’d shared in 100 years of noon meetings. Since last fall, they’ve staged hybrid meetings, with most lunching together but others joining in online – a practice that’s likely to be permanent.
That delayed but didn’t deter their centennial observance, which took place last May. Nor did it displace the determination to do something of lasting significance to mark the occasion. Among the club’s anniversary projects: a gift of $10,000 worth of books focusing on cultural understanding to libraries in Moorhead’s four elementary schools and Horizons Junior High, and a substantial grant to complete a water project in rural Tajikistan. Their gifts were matched by Rotary District 5580.
Nolte recalls why he joined the long-thriving group back in 1988: “My boss said he was retiring, and we wanted to keep a stockbroker in the club.” For much of its history, membership was classified – that is, one stockbroker, one dentist, one college professor, one funeral director. That rigid system has softened over the years, he notes.
So has the 75-year-long prohibition on female members, officially revised by the international organization only in 1989 after a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. Moorhead’s club was one of the first to add a woman, Glenna Lemke, an administrator at St. Ansgar Hospital; then-president John Holtan joked that district administrators may have okayed her because they assumed her first name was a typographical error for a male.
Since then, women have taken on prominent roles here in Moorhead, including the club presidency and beyond. Past president Kay Parries is slated to take the reins of the district’s governing body in 2024.
The club’s financial support has helped underwrite many F-M nonprofits, from human services to the arts. One of the club’s most familiar projects is its presentation of personal dictionaries to every 3rd grade student in Moorhead and other Clay County towns, now awarding the books to its second generation.
Moorhead originated the Recital With a Cause, an annual showcase of the area’s top young musicians that is now cosponsored by the F-M Rotary Foundation and Fargo’s four Rotary units. In the past 10 years, it has generated more than $100,000 for Rotary International’s pace-setting Polio Plus campaign, which has nearly eliminated polio worldwide. It has also offered more than $30,000 in support to the F-M Symphony Orchestra and F-M Youth Symphony.
Other five-club projects include the Natural Playground soon to be built in Memorial Park downtown, as well as the Miracle Field for children of all abilities and the Universal Playground. They sponsor an annual picnic for all international students and have funded Project English, computer-based English studies for new Americans.
Like other local service clubs, Moorhead Rotary’s roster has waxed and waned. From the original two dozen members to a high of more than 100 in the 1970s, it has reflected the tenor of the times, today with about four dozen active members. Headed by President Dave Sederquist of Xcel Energy, the club continues to support a wide range of youth- and international-oriented projects, from the annual Rotary Youth Leadership Awards and international student exchanges to Polio Plus, now in the 35th year of its campaign to eradicate polio. Nolte, who has headed the district’s polio eradication push since the end of his term as governor in 1996, is currently touring clubs to keep the mission at the forefront of their efforts.
He attributes today’s middling membership numbers to changes in the business world, as well as the organization’s pressing need to recruit a new generation of members. “The business support just isn’t there like it once was,” he concedes. “Yet you still need that network of contacts and relationships.
“Joining Rotary opens the door to being with people you’d never meet otherwise … that you’d never have the opportunity to know. It gives you that feeling of a broad community – all the folks who are working together to make this place, and this world, better.”
For more information on the Moorhead Rotary Club, search “Moorhead Rotary” on Facebook or go to www.moorheadrotary.org.
