THE MAN BEHIND THE MOVEMENT.

Paul’s mother, Cornelia Bryan, was born in Racine, Wisconsin. Her father was the city’s second mayor. Cornelia married George H. Harris in 1864 and the couple stayed in Racine. Their second child born on 19 April 1868 was named Paul Percy Harris.
George’s business in Racine miserably failed. In 1871 he moved back to his village Wallingford, Vermont with three-year-old Paul and eldest daughter Cecil leaving behind Cornelia and their newly born daughter Nina May. Paul’s Wallingford home and his grandparents had immense influence on his life. It was here he learnt that integrity, frugality, tolerance, and friendship are the core values. Paul learnt work ethic and the need for tolerance from his grandfather Howard Harris. Paul wrote of his grandmother, ‘It is said that fine goods come wrapped in small packages, and grandmother was certainly fine goods.’

Having seen the failure of his only son Howard, Harris was determined not to let the grandson Paul be influenced by George. He sent the teenage Paul to Black River Academy in Ludlow, Vermont, but Paul’s penchant for pranks was not welcomed there and he had to leave. Then Paul was sent to Vermont Military Academy. But he was wrongly accused of misconduct and expelled. However the university later apologized and conferred an honorary Ph.D. on him in 1933. Then Paul joined prestigious Princeton University in New Jersey. While at Princeton he lost his beloved grandfather in 1889. He completed the course and moved to Wallingford.
His life suddenly had no direction. He took the job of sweeping floors and cleaning furnaces in Sheldon Marble Company. But his grandmother urged him to pursue his dream of studying law. In a few days his beloved grandmother also passed away. Paul decided to study law. He joined University of Iowa in Des Moines and clerked for a local law firm in the first year. He earned his law degree in June 1891.
The next five years were full of adventure and had the most exciting and transforming impact on Paul Harris. Paul travelled extensively over United States and twice made trips to England. He sustained himself by doing any job available. He worked as a newspaper reporter for the Chronicle in San Francisco, picked fruit as a day laborer in California, held a teaching post at Los Angeles Business College, joined cattle ship as crewman and worked in Colorado as an actor, a newspaper reporter and also a cowboy in the range. He witnessed the World Fair in Chicago and survied the storm of the century in New Orleans, both in 1893. Halfway through his five-year adventure he joined his friend George Clark selling marble and granite in Jacksonville. The job involved wide travel. He covered the southern states, the Bahamas, Cuba and Europe from Scotland to Italy.
In these five years, he had experienced many miseries of life and learnt to survive based only on his own resources. He had seen strangers perform extraordinary acts of kindness and others cheat and steal. In the midst of evil he had found goodness. He had gained vision and a better understanding of his fellow man.
Paul Harries returned to Chicago in February 1896. He rented a small office and obtained his license to practice law in Illinois. Paul gradually built up a practice representing victims of fraud, bankruptcy and embezzlement. He was active in the Chicago Association of Commerce and the bar association. Despite professional progress he felt lonesome and the city continued to be big but barren for him. At that time Chicago had plunged into a recession and was a maelstrom of social unrest, exploitation, corruption and religious fundamentalism. Rudyard Kipling wrote about the city; ‘I have struck a city - a real city -and they call it Chicago. The other places don’t count. Having seen it, I urgently desire never to see it again. It is inhabited by savages’.
He kept on his office wall a plague quoting Emerson: ‘He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare’. But Paul sadly admitted, ‘I had neither the thousand nor the one’. Once a friend called Bob Frank had invited Paul to dinner at his home in the Rangers Park neighbourhood. After meal they had a walk and strolled past several shops. In contrast to the rudeness and indifference typical of merchants Paul noticed how these store owners greeted Frank with a smile, a handshake. At the grocery, the soda fountain, the newsstand, the proprietors and Bob Frank greeted one another by their first names. It was obvious they exchanged business with each other because of a genuine mutual trust and friendliness. It was in 1900. Paul Began to believe that strangers could be united in commerce and friendship.
It was the 23rd February 1905, a significant date in the history of Rotary. The Chicago newspapers led with headlines announcing President Theodore Roosevelt’s initiative to bring peace between Russia and Japan. After dinner, Paul and Silvester, a coal dealer walked over to Gus’s office on the seventh floor of the Unity Building at 127, Dearborn Street. Gus was waiting with his friend Hiram Shorey, a merchant tailor he had invited to the meeting. Loehr did not have a conference room. They pulled up chairs and sat around the desk in his office. Then Paul Harris shared with them his sense of emptiness at having no true friends in the city and his indignation at the do-eat-dog business attitudes. He proposed they form a club which he described as “a very simple plan of mutual cooperation and informal friendship such as all of us had once known in our villages.” The baby was born. Silvester Schiele hosted the third meeting of the group at his coal-yard office on 23 March 1905. The club was given the name Rotary on suggestion by Paul after a long discussion. There were 15 men present. Paul dedicated the rest of his life to propagation of the Rotary revolution all over the world.
Paul was also prominent in other civic and professional work, he served as the first Chairman of the Board of the National Easter Seal of managers of the Chicago Bar Association and its representatives at the International Congress of Law at Hauge and a committee Member of the American Bar Association. He received the Silver Buffalo Award from the Boy scouts of America for distinguished service to youth and was decorated by the government of Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, France and Peru.
Romance had never ranked high in Paul’s life. But a few months prior to the first Rotary Convention in 1910, at age 42, he had joined a Saturday afternoon hike organized by the Chicago Prairie Club. As he climbed over a barbed-wire fence, Paul ripped his Harris-tweed jacket, an accident that was noticed by another hiker, a young Scottish woman named Jean Thomson. Second of July 1910 was the memorable day on which Paul and Jean were married. It was a curious coincidence that in the same year, Rotary became an International movement. Rotarians in many countries recall Jean’s pleasant manners and graceful speech. Paul & Jean were not blessed with children but they showered love on all and have been loved by many Rotarian families throughout the world. Jean and Paul were married for 37 years and she lived another 16 years after his death. She died in November 1963.
It was the 27th January, 1947. An announcement spread over the globe: Paul Harris died today stop am notifying all governors and regional officers of death and Paul’s specific request to omit flowers and instead make contributions to Rotary Foundation for Paul Harris Memorial stop Funeral Thursday Stop Phil Lovejoy. The world mourned. Yet he lives and continues to inspire. His spirit lives on as Rotary.