Clem Renouf
Rotary Club of Nambour, Qld.
R.I. Past President

Because this is Rotary International’s Centennial year, let us consider the world into which Rotary was born, and marvel at the miracle of its birth in such a harsh, unwelcoming environment.

Chicago at that time, according to David Forward, editor of A century of Service, was “a city of contrasts, where new-found conscience was pitted against corruption; abject poverty and ostentatious high living rubbed shoulders’’. . . “a maelstrom of commercial exploitation, social unrest, political corruption and religious fundamentalism all brought together in one giant melting pot’’.

Rudyard Kipling declared “Having seen it, I urgently desire never to see it again. It is inhabited by savages.”

What a place to plant the seeds of a new organisation with radically high ideals !

Of course, it was not then intended to be more than a local organisation – not surprising, considering the wider world into which it was born.

Most of Europe was then governed by emperors and kings. Women had not yet been granted the right to vote in Britain, although they had it in two Australian states.

In New Zealand, a much more enlightened country then, as now (for don’t they have a woman prime minister?), women already had the vote in the whole of the country.

The Wright brothers had created aviation history just two years earlier. Incredibly, there were less than 10 miles of concrete paving in the whole of the United States. In consequence, most people lived their entire lives without going more than 10 miles from home.

Today, the imperial dynasties and most of the technology of that time are on history’s junk heap. But much of the music and literature and art of that era still live, evidence surely that mankind’s ideas and inspirations are often more durable than political systems and technological devices.

Those things which have endured have been of the spirit which is why Rotary endures, for it reaches deep down inside us to tap a great spiritual resource and motivates us to reach out in turn to serve others.

How appropriate then, that ethics will be a major emphasis in Rotary for it is of the spirit, intangible, and yet profoundly influencing almost everything we do.

And how significant that one of the cornerstones of the Rotary edifice should be high ethical standards in business and the professions, the dignifying of each Rotarian’s occupation as an opportunity to serve society.

At the turn of the century, without radio, the cinema or television, people socialised by joining clubs.

But they were clubs organised for narrow special interests (sporting, religious, ethnic groups, etc.).

William B. Boyd, of the Rotary Club of Pakuranga, Auckland, New Zealand, is the official nominee for president of Rotary International in 2006-07. His formal election will take place at the 2005 R.I. Convention in Chicago this June.

His nomination was announced in early September, 2004, and confirmed by R.I. President Glenn Estess, snr., when the time allowed for the statutory appeal process had expired on December 1, 2004.

A former member and past president of the Rotary Club of Wellington South, New Zealand, Bill Boyd has served R.I. as District governor, director, treasurer, member and chair of regional and international committees, group discussion leader and moderator at the International Assembly, and R.I. presidential representative to local and international conferences. As a Rotary leader, he has conducted training seminars in New Zealand, as well as Cook Islands, Fiji and Western Samoa.

Devoting much of his time to supporting Rotary's PolioPlus program, Bill Boyd has served as a member of the PolioPlus Task Force, co-ordinator in the PolioPlus Partners program and consultant to the International PolioPlus Committee. He also chairs the management committee of Rotary Down Under.

A recipient of The Rotary Foundation's Citation for Meritorious Service and Distinguished Service Award, Bill Boyd was general manager of Gordon & Gotch (NZ), Ltd., the nation’s largest magazine distributor.

He is a trustee of New Zealand's Trees for Survival Trust and was a R.I. representative to the National Kidney Foundation and Intellectually Handicapped Society.
A former elder of the Presbyterian Church and a warranted Scout master, Bill Boyd was also a rugby referee for 31 years.