everyone. We met in the Chaplaincy and had a cup of tea there, but, soon after we started, Paul Wardrop, Senior Vice-President, changed his job; he was another gem at that time. He did bring his successor to the meeting and when he went, Bob Archer took over.
Inner Wheel
Bob’s main priority was to get an Inner Wheel started. I was on the committee. We needed to get our wives at that time to form the Inner Wheel. In the early days, when we were first formed, the Inner Wheel was a great help. The one thing I remember was Alfred Salinger forming a committee. We had a lot of new members and, after a year, we had 28, but one died before we got the Charter. Several went to other jobs and there were a number of changes. Rev. Doug Young came to join us from the Emerson Park Congregational Church. He was very good and it was decided that help was needed at the Harold Wood hospital, with the old people and with the youth. We had lots of fund raising events, like whist drives and the like, in each other’s house to raise money for parcels and other charitable events. We used to get the names of the elderly from the doctors and parsons.
We had one member who was a food officer during rationing and he was very good. He eventually moved to Bexhill and had a bed and breakfast house, so he gave an old couple a week’s holiday every year and one of us took them down. I remember the couple I took down who told me what a lovely time they had. On the way home he was telling me about his own grand car and the things they did and this upset me quite a bit as these holidays were supposed to be for people who would not get a holiday.
The Rotary House of Fellowship
On a Sunday afternoon (the weekend of the 50th anniversary of Rotary International), I attended the opening of the Rotary House of Friendship. It had been started by the Dagenham Club and some of the other Clubs. Leslie Pinkam used to come to tell us all about it. The idea was to have a centre in London. At this time there were about 87 London Clubs. Any Rotarian visiting London could visit and have refreshments there, and rest if he had been travelling. We pushed this idea very soon after we started the Club. We had discussed it and there was quite a lot of opposition to it, but in the end we agreed to take part and over the years we made donations towards it. They had great difficulty in finding a meeting place, but at the time of the
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