by Daniel Hathaway
A hundred years ago, Cleveland businessman, civic leader and accomplished flutist Arch C. Klumph founded the Rotary Foundation of Rotary International, with a vision of “Doing Good in the World.” Rotarians from around the world will flock to Cleveland next weekend to celebrate the centenary of Klumph’s dream with a special concert by The Cleveland Orchestra on Sunday, October 23 at 3:00 pm in Severance Hall, followed by a Centennial Celebration Dinner that will see new members inducted into the Arch Klumph Society.
“This is a huge celebration, and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Michael Johns of Rotary International said in a telephone conversation. “The Rotary Foundation is celebrating a hundred years of service to the community and to the world. We’re delighted to be partnering with The Cleveland Orchestra to bring this celebration to Cleveland, where Arch Klumpf was a member of the Cleveland Rotary Club.”
The Rotary Foundation and its partners, now joined by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative nearly three decades ago. Since then, the number of cases of polio has decreased from 350,000 a year to just 26 as of mid-September 2016. The Centennial Class of Inductees includes polio survivors, parents whose children have been touched by the disease, and those who have importantly contributed to Rotary’s efforts to eradicate polio from the planet. The late Frank H. and Nancy L. Porter, two Clevelanders who will be honored posthumously, have contributed some $500,000 through the Cleveland Foundation to inoculate 750,000 children worldwide.
That initiative was a huge undertaking, reflecting the extent to which the Foundation has grown in impact since its beginning. “Its very first project was a comfort station on the Loop in Chicago,” Johns said. “Small beginnings, but from that have come huge things, like the world-wide immunization against polio. Rotary stepped up in 1988 and promised the children of the world that their children would be polio-free. That’s a great thing to celebrate.”
Asked what the Rotary Foundation might take on next after its polio campaign, Johns replied, “We don’t know. Rotary has been very reluctant to say, because until that disease is completely eradicated, we’ve got to maintain our focus on polio. But the other issues we’re most interested in at this point are sustainable communities around the world, maternal and child care, and water. A third of the population of our world still doesn’t have access to potable water — so we’re working on all of those things, and will continue to do so.”
The Cleveland Orchestra performance, led by associate conductor Brett Mitchell, will incorporate two pieces the Orchestra played in 1939 at the Rotary International Convention at Public Hall. Emmanuel Charbrier’s España and Franz Liszt’s Les Préludes will join John Williams’s Celebrate Discovery!, Claude Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Leonora Overture No. 3 on Sunday’s program, which is open to the public as well as to Rotarians. Special video segments will highlight the history of Rotary.
Arch Klumpf, who will no doubt be listening to the concert from an even more heavenly venue than Severance Hall (he died in 1951), played flute for a number of years with the Cleveland Philharmonic. In 1912, along with Adella Prentiss Hughes and others, he helped reorganize the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra into the immediate forerunner of The Cleveland Orchestra.
Klumpf once told a reporter that he would happily trade his business success for a career in music. “My heart is in music and my head is in business. I wish my heart could have controlled my life.” Nevertheless, he successfully served as president of the Cuyahoga Lumber Company beginning in 1989, taking over sole ownership in 1912, and founded the Security Savings & Loan Company in 1916, holding the office of president for three and a half decades.
Tickets for the concert can be ordered here.
Published on ClevelandClassical.com October 20, 2016.
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