Cape West Rotary Club reflects on its first 50 years

The Cape West Rotary Club is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and members say it's an opportunity to reflect on the good that's been done during that span while looking forward to the next 50 years.

J. Derieck Hodges, a financial planner at Anchor Pointe Wealth Management in Cape Girardeau and past president of the club, said, "We're all out there just trying to do something."

Hodges served as the emcee at a dinner Friday at the Show Me Center to mark the group's half-century milestone.

During his remarks, he summarized some of the club's major accomplishments, such as giving more than $1 million to Southeast Missouri State University for scholarships over the past 20 years and growing an annual radio auction into a targeted fundraiser for projects in the area.

Some of those projects have included giving money and "sweat equity" to build new kennels at the Humane Society and buying a bus for Hope House Children's Home in Jackson.

Other beneficiaries have included the Amen Center in Delta, which needed a new roof for its homeless housing and rehabilitation program, and donating to the not-for-profit Mississippi Valley Therapeutic Horsemanship program in Oak Ridge, among others in the local area and overseas.

"MVTH does a great job helping kids with disabilities or wounded warriors gain more strength and mobility," Hodges said earlier in the day Friday.

The Rotary motto of "Service Above Self" is at the root of these types of activities.

Joe Pujol, current club president and professor and chair of the Department of Health, Human Performance and Recreation at Southeast, said the club was formed by the Cape Girardeau Rotary Club because it recognized the need for expanding membership citywide.

Because territories were a bigger issue when the Cape West club formed in 1966, members could be recruited only from certain areas. So the original club retained the right to accept members from the entire city, but the Cape West club could not take members from businesses east of Pacific Street.

Instead of this becoming a competitive issue, Hodges and Pujol said, the two entities carved their own niches and have cooperated fully over the decades.

The first order of business for the Cape West club was founding the radio auction, where businesses donated certain items and listeners of KZIM-AM could bid on them.

Then, in the past six or eight years, that seminal event has become a vehicle for targeting specific needs.

"We try to give to a lot of organizations, but we want to make a major impact on one," Pujol said.

Ray Klingingsmith, past president of Rotary International who served as the dinner's keynote speaker Friday evening, marveled at how the group has grown from its 23 original members to about 75 today.

"The Cape Girardeau club had vision in starting this club, and look at it now," he said.

ljones@semissourian.com

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