by Max Marbut
Staff Writer
The townspeople of Wallingford, Vermont did not expect much from Paul P. Harris. He was not like his grandfather Howard. He was more like his father George. “That Paul Harris,” as he was sarcastically known around town, had already been expelled from Black River Academy and the University of Vermont.
Paul strived to prove them all wrong. After a long and rocky road, he received his law degree in 1891. Typically, a new law graduate would find a job and practice law. Paul Harris, with no money in hand, executed a planned five-year diversion to explore the United States and Europe. Paul made a promise to himself that after five years he would move to Chicago and practice law no matter what happened.
During the diversion, fate nearly claimed his life. But as luck would have it he was traveling with Henry Clay Pulliam who nicknamed Paul “The Wonder Boy.” Paul met George W. Clark, an undertaker, in Jacksonville, Florida. George had other plans for Paul. He would do anything to keep him away from Chicago and convince him to start his life in Jacksonville as his business partner, as his confidant and especially as his friend. Paul was determined to move and start his new career in Chicago. George had determination too. If Paul was unwilling to stay for friendship, money, power or more travel maybe “the love of Grace” would keep him in Jacksonville.
That’s an excerpt from “That Paul Harris” a biography of the founder of Rotary International authored by Joseph Miller, a member of the Rotary Club of South Jacksonville.
Miller said he was inspired to do the research and then write the book after listening to speakers at meetings tell the story behind the man who started Rotary International every year in February in honor of Founding Month or in April to recognize Paul Harris Month.
“Everybody always told the official Rotary story about the successful attorney who founded the club,” said Miller. “I wanted to make it more interesting and find out more about Paul Harris.”
That was eight years ago and what has transpired since Miller describes as “a journey of discovery.”
Particularly interesting is that after graduating from law school at the University of Iowa, Harris didn’t immediately begin practicing. Instead he decided to take a five-year hiatus and set off, Miller said, with $2 in his pocket on a mission to “see the world.”
Visiting every destination Harris is known to have visited in his travels in the United States as well as Venice, Italy, Miller was able to track down and uncover a wealth of information about the man and some of it was quite surprising. One notable artifact was a letter Harris wrote to his alma mater after the university contacted him 20 years after he graduated in 1891 for a life and career update.
“It was dated Dec. 21, 1909,” said Miller. “Harris was practicing law and was a resident in one of the nicer hotels in Chicago. What surprised me was that he wrote back that he had nothing of interest to relate. One of the lines in the letter reads, ‘I sincerely respect your perseverance in following up on the derelicts of the class.’ And this was more than four years after he founded Rotary.”
He also studied a collection of letters Harris wrote to Grace Mann, a girl he courted for a time in Jacksonville, and the letters she wrote in reply. The correspondence was first discovered in 1988 by a member of the Rotary Club of Jacksonville and the collection has since been donated to the Rotary Archives, Miller said.
In addition to a published work more than 300 pages long with 170 archival photographs, writing the biography gave Miller a much deeper understanding of who Paul Harris was and why he started the club that today has more than 1.2 million members around the world.
“He was an amazing individual and also very modest. In his will he declared that he didn’t want Rotary to preserve any of the places he lived or anything like that. It’s as if he gave birth to the club and just wanted it to fly,” said Miller.
356-2466