Smyrna Rotary Celebrates 50 Years of Service and Fellowship

December 2013 marked the 50th Anniversary of the Smyrna Rotary Club, which it celebrated from November 2013 to January 2014. Marietta Rotary Club sponsored Smyrna Rotary 50 years ago, and Smyrna Rotary sponsored the Vinings Rotary Club over 20 years ago. The Smyrna club has 40 members representing a broad range of business and community leadership.

For 50 years, the club has performed an astonishing list of nearly 100 local, national and international projects. They have included fighting polio, making clean drinking water in the Caribbean, the Bahamas bloodmobile, Alzheimer’s research, YMCA camp scholarships, medical care in Sierra Leone, Kenya and the Ivory Coast, books to South Africa, youth leadership camps, sponsoring Smyrna Veterans Day, aid to disaster victims in Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Georgia, comfort packages for US Marines at war, bicycles for kids, Shelter Boxes to Haiti, Japan and Syria, area school and college scholarships, goodwill exchanges, adult education and literacy initiatives in Cobb County and more.

In per capita giving, Smyrna Rotary Club has been #1 in the world (out of 33,000+ Rotary Clubs), been in the top 12 globally five times and the seven times been the #1 club of the 70+ clubs in Rotary District 6900. It has also been the source of three District Governors including, most recently, Roy Strickland.

Rotary honored charter member Samuel Whitfield, his 50 years of perfect attendance and his staggering generosity and record of service to Smyrna and Cobb County. In his younger days, Sam served in the US Army, as a T-26 Pershing tanker at the tail end of the Korean War. He joined the Smyrna Rotary Club in December 1963 and was club President in 1966. His perfect attendance record meant attending over 2,500 meetings! Sam was the Club's Rotarian of the Year in 2009. He has started scholarships, been a Mason for more than 55 years, was a founder of what is now Sun Trust bank and was on the Cobb County School Board for 12 years. With donations of over $250,000 for “doing good in the world,” Sam is now a member of Rotary’s most prestigious Arch C. Klumph Society.

Also recently honored was 50-year member Jimmy Freeman, originally of Union County, Georgia. After college, he arrived in Cobb and worked at the Bell Bomber plant in 1955. He worked at various jobs (some concurrently). He eventually built a GMC Truck Dealership and the Freightliner Heavy Duty Truck dealership in Atlanta. From the early 1960s, he opened new Jaguar, Jeep and Volkswagen dealerships in metro Atlanta. And he started Fun Center to sell boats and recreational vehicles. He later opened the Atlanta Kenworth Dealership. Freeman has been involved in the organization, operation and sale of over 40 different franchises. All have been successful.

Smyrna Rotary’s ongoing one-hour Tuesday lunch meetings at Smyrna’s Brawner Hall provide an excellent forum for top-notch speakers that has included governors, senators, judges, humanitarians, authors, university presidents and more.

Smyrna Rotary is always looking for female and male community leaders. For more information about the club or membership, please email f12@nfiweb.com.