Fairfield Rotary Club to celebrate 100th anniversary

FAIRFIELD – The Fairfield Rotary Club will celebrate its 100th Anniversary with a fundraiser on Saturday, Oct. 15.

The event will start at 5:30 p.m. at the Fairfield Golf & Country Club. Rotarian John Loin said 2022 is actually the club’s 102nd anniversary, since it was founded in 1920, but the pandemic made it impossible to celebrate the century anniversary that year.

He said the club hopes to raise a few thousand dollars Saturday, to replace some of the money it pledged to the Little Achievers Center, a child care center now under construction near Jefferson County Health Center.

“We put up $5,000 from our funds, and Rotary’s community grants matched it for $5,000, so in all we gave $10,000 to the child care center,” he said.

Saturday’s keynote speaker will be Charlie Witmack, a world adventurer, humanitarian and the only person to do the World Triathlon. That refers to swimming the English Channel, biking 8,000 miles across Europe and Asia, and climbing Mt. Everest. Loin said it took Witmack a few attempts to complete that feat. He had to suffer through getting hit by a car while biking in Kazakhstan, getting pulled out of the English Channel because his body temperature had dipped too low, and suffering oxygen deprivation while ascending Mt. Everest.

Loin remarked that Rotary will continue its usual programs, such as hosting the Christmas Eve Parade every year, and sponsoring four $2,000 scholarships for graduating high school students. In addition to those, it recently added another program, sponsoring a student in Guatemala to go through junior high and high school.

“In Guatemala, you have to pay for education after sixth grade, so most kids drop out,” Loin said. “We’re sponsoring a girl in seventh grade, and our Interact Club is going to write letters to her. It’s a very modest sum for us to pledge to help someone, and when you see how effective the program is, it’s amazing.”