Bartlesville Rotary Club
Bartlesville, Oklahoma

Recognition of the Rotary Club’s long heritage of community service is obvious to anyone who drives the streets of Bartlesville. Landmarks such as the Bill Creel Chamber of Commerce Building, the Richard Kane Elementary School, the Bill Doenges Memorial Stadium, and the Price Tower are named for Rotarians. Familiar streets in the area such as Frank Phillips, Adams and Hensley Boulevards, Price Road, and Keeler and Don Tyler Avenues all recognize former Rotarians.  

The Bartlesville Rotary Club was chartered with 25 members  in 1915, only 10 years after the first club had been established by Paul Harris in Chicago in 1905. At the time, there were 189 Rotary Clubs, but most of them were in large cities with populations over 50,000. By contrast, Bartlesville’s population at the time was about 14,000.

Some of the early members of the club included physicians, lawyers, bankers, ice plant operators, a hotel manager, a music store owner, a clothier, a zinc plant manager, a meat market owner, drug store owners, and executives of the many local oil companies including Phillips Petroleum. The editor of The Morning Enterprise, Noble Welty, along with the previous owner of the newspaper, Thomas Latta, were instrumental in getting the club started, although Welty relocated before the club was chartered.

From the very start, Bartlesville Rotarians took seriously their responsibility to support both the international Rotary organization and to seek opportunities for local service. Rotarians were active in backing the construction of a junior high school, improvement of county roads, procurement of a site for a new federal building, and construction of a new hospital. They also worked for better community recreational facilities and for projects to help stimulate the local economy such as the location of a U.S. Bureau of Mines laboratory in Bartlesville.

As the years passed, the Bartlesville club and its members became active in virtually every effort to improve the quality of education and enhance opportunities for youth.  The club’s support of youth and education dates back to 1920, when the club helped pass a one-third salary increase for Bartlesville teachers.  

Today, the club continues to recognize outstanding high school students by hosting two students at every meeting. The students, who are selected by Bartlesville High School faculty and staff, attend club meetings for one month each and provide updates about school activities as well as their personal education and career goals. At the end of each school year, the club awards college scholarships to two of these high-achievers.