Rotary club is 65

BOB YANGER

Anderson’s oldest and first service club marked its 65th year Wednesday, Nov. 18, and all without a single structure fire, arrest or nuisance complaint.

From some of the stories recounted by past presidents of the Anderson Rotary Club, chartered on Sept. 13, 1944, the very calmness and polite decorum of the dinner meeting, held at the Frontier Senior Center, just may be a first, noted club President Mike Lynch.

The nearly 50-member club has long enjoyed its well-deserved reputation for high-octane antics, said Frank R. “Bob” Yanger, who presided over the club from July 1964 through June 1965. Yanger also served on Anderson’s first city council when the city was incorporated on Jan. 16, 1956.

“We’ve always been mavericks,” Yanger said, noting that the Red Bluff Rotary Club during the mid-1960s had a very straight-laced tradition.

Naturally, presidents of the diametrically opposed clubs held a contest to see which club could maintain its “perfect attendance” record the longest.

Nearing 13 weeks, members of the Anderson club used the makeup skills of mortician Andy Anderson to create the illusion of a horribly traumatic automobile accident victim, whom they promptly hauled to the Red Bluff Rotary Club meeting to show the lengths their members would go to preserve the club’s reputation.

“I don’t think anyone from Red Bluff could eat anything that noon,” Yanger said.

“I think we were thrown out of more places during my tenure as president,” bragged Frank Robertson, who was in the middle of his 13-year tenure as superintendent of the Anderson Union High School District when he took over the helm of Anderson’s Rotary Club from 1977-78.

“Those were good times,” Robertson noted, adding that club members not only partied hearty, but they accomplished some good work for the community as well.

“It was during my presidency that John Sharrah designed the gazebo at Anderson River Park and the club members built it,” Robertson said.

“My legacy was the ever-popular limerick of the week,” noted William R. Moore, president of Anderson Rotary Club from 1980-81. “I think we tried it for about two weeks.”

Shasta County Supervisor Glenn Hawes, who served as Anderson Rotary Club’s president in 1981-82, started members reminiscing about some of the wild antics that take place each summer when the current president is demoted and a new one takes over.

“I remember really, really well my demotion. They brought in a huge milk goat and stood it up on a bale of hay. Nobody could milk like I could. I think I squirted every member in attendance,” Hawes said.

Sharrah, who led the club from 1985-86, reminded club members of meetings at the Anderson Hotel, a large landmark structure in its day that was near the north end of town along the railroad tracks.

“When I first joined the club, we met at the old Anderson Hotel. We used to have fights with the biscuits. When the hotel burned down one night following one of our meetings, we moved the club (meetings) over to the Silver Star, a Chinese restaurant. But they threw us out after just a few weeks. We finally ended up at the Koffee Korner.”

Keith Severson said, “Being president of Anderson Rotary was one of the great challenges of my life.” But as the club’s long-standing bartender, the first time someone stole the fabled bell from President Severson during his 2001-02 term, he simply announced that the ice would be missing henceforce from the beer cooler at the next meeting.

“The bell came back and I never had any trouble with the bell going missing after that,” Severson said.

Stories of the bell are part of the club’s colorful legend and its many disappearances dominated whatever remained of the evening’s conversation until emcee Mike Lynch noted with some chagrin that the bell had indeed gone missing during the meeting.

“My bell’s already been stolen, so I guess I’m well on my way in upholding tradition,” Lynch said.

With membership capped unofficially at 50 members, Anderson Rotary Club also manages to get some good things accomplished, Lynch reminded the crowd.

Each year, club members put on a series of public events like the Crab Feed on Jan. 9, 2010, that draws more than 800 people at $35 each.

Last calendar year, the club raised $144,000 and this year it is on track — despite the poor economy — to raise $132,000, club treasurer Norma Comnick noted.

After deducting expenses, the club returned more than $26,000 in scholarships for high school seniors at Anderson and West Valley high schools last spring, built a lighted monument sign welcoming folks to town near the rebuilt Koffee Korner, now known as Vittles Restaurant, and erected a large boulder with attached plaque honoring John Sharrah for his efforts in establishing Anderson River Park while working as one of the city’s early Public Works Directors from 1965-68, among other projects.

“I can’t tell you how proud I am to be a part of the Anderson community by being a part of this club,” noted attorney Randy Harr, who served as club president in 2007-08.