Women in Rotary, 25 years now

Last Month marked the 25th anniversary of the US Supreme Court ruling that admitted women to membership in Rotary and other previously “all male” service organizations.

This event is of special interest to me and other Charter members of the Rotary Club of Scott Valley. In District 5110, there is a club, the name I don’t recall at the moment that claims to have the first female member in the District. That fact may be true but most don’t know that the then Provisional Rotary Club of Scott Valley actually "tried" first.  In the naturally rebellious spirit that was inherent in our locale at the time, we attempted to obtain a Charter with a female member on our roster in 1986. We had heard of the controversy originating in Duarte, CA (some say Poway had a similar challenge) and thought the prohibition of women was preposterous.

Our Charter president, Gary Mortenson, a polio survivor, was a controversial owner/editor/publisher of our local newspaper “The Pioneer Press”. He was not one to avoid issues and his paper was known to disclose and challenge the local “powers that be” weekly. I think I was the president of the local Chamber of Commerce at the time or at least active, and member Patricia “Pat” Graham, was interested in joining our Rotary Club which had a preponderance of chamber members involved already, obviously including yours truly. So we didn’t see anything on the membership application indicating gender and thought that perhaps this was perfect since “Pat” could be either sex. Somewhat like “don’t ask, don’t tell” if you get my drift.  I think we overlooked the constitution though..

A short note on history; in 1983 the Rotary Club of Duarte filed a lawsuit against RI for prohibiting women from membership and lost.  Subsequently on appeal, The CA Superior Court ruled in favor or RI.  That decision was appealed to the US {jcomments on}Supreme Court which overruled the previous decision(s) on May 4, 1987.  It wasn’t until the Council On Legislation (COL) meeting in Nov 1989 that RI passed the resolution to allow women members.  I’m not sure of the exact date that we applied for our charter but it was before the US Supreme Court decision in May, 1987 I think.   We were initially chartered on August 27th, 1987.  This was a busy summer with a lot of fires locally and most were busy earning a little extra income so details seem to be lost.  Meanwhile as I recall, someone “ratted” on us and disclosed to RI the fact that “Pat” was a nefarious female attempting to infect the ranks of this all male organization and that would not yet be tolerated.  I have a few suspicions on who that could have been but our sponsor the Rotary Club of Yreka is not among the suspects.  Anyway, I don’t recall the exact details but our Charter was withdrawn until such time that we would purge the offending member from our list.  (I wonder if we have the documentation stored somewhere… ed.)    Anyway, we opted for the challenge and had our planned Charter Night Party on September 19, 1987.  PDG Sam Hughes, who had signed our application and DG David Bussard were there with a bunch of other dignitaries the likes of which had never been seen in Scott Valley previously.   One person in town wearing a tie (other than the Bank president) generally caused a stir and here we had a whole Dinner House full!  So we had our Charter Night with our charter in limbo.

We re-applied and received our “official” Charter on Feb 22, 1988 making Pat Graham the second female Rotary member in the District but still probably the first female Charter member! The fact remains though that we embraced women in Rotary from our inception; a point of pride for our club and me since I was a strong supporter and not all of our members were in agreement.

Continue below for some other interesting details from that period of time.