For the children
The Butler Rotary Club PM has a tradition of supporting children and youth while providing opportunities for them to succeed as healthy individuals in their chosen vocations.
Today the club continues its efforts to reach children from all walks of life in the region and around the world by funding literacy campaigns, providing dictionaries to students, working to eradicate polio, mentoring youth and awarding scholarships.
“(For the Dictionary Program) Rotarians would go into the classroom and work with the students to learn how to use the dictionary they received,” said Leslie Osche, Butler Rotary president and Butler County commissioners chairwoman. “It was a great way to introduce students and teachers to Rotary.”
In the 1920s, the club responded to a request to help at-risk children and youth.Judge Aaron Reiber of Butler County Common Pleas Court asked the group to work with boys in the court system who were assigned to the club instead of traditional probation officers, according to Osche. Reiber retired from the bench in 1923.At the time, according to a report from the U.S. Justice Department, the court system was beginning to recognize that juveniles needed to be treated as children and not as adults. This led to treatment plans instead of incarceration for delinquents.Groups such as Butler Rotary were asked to oversee and mentor at-risk boys and juveniles who would otherwise be institutionalized.The Butler Rotary also assisted the Carpenter Fund for the education of children and sent 21 boys to the YMCA Rotary camp in the 1920s.In the post-World War II years, Clyde S. Shumaker, then district attorney and later a judge of Butler County Common Pleas Court, asked the Butler Rotary to resume the mentoring program with juvenile boys.Shumaker and Ken Christy, a hair stylist and former Rotary district governor, originated the Rotary Juvenile Guidance Clinic.The club kept the mentoring program continuing throughout the decades.Bill DiCuccio Sr., who owned and operated DiCuccio's Barber Shop on West Jefferson Street for more than 50 years, spearheaded and chaired this program until the early 1990s.
Butler Rotary and Rotary International were formed during the early 1900s polio epidemic.“Rotary International has a history of focusing on children with polio and working to eradicate it from the world,” said Jim Ferguson, a 22-year Rotary member and club treasurer.In January of 1923, the Butler and Pittsburgh clubs organized the Pennsylvania Society for Crippled Children. James E. Marshall Sr., a Butler attorney, was selected the secretary of the state group, according to his obituary in the Butler Eagle in 1970.This would be the start of a 100-year focus for the Butler Rotary family on children and their well-being. Marshall then spearheaded the Butler Rotary's plan.On May 10, 1923, according to a 1927 Butler Eagle article, the club held a client clinic with Dr. David Silver, a Pittsburgh orthopedic surgeon. Silver was in charge of the D.T. Watson Home for Crippled Children at Leetsdale, Pa., until 1944, and was consulting the orthopedic surgeon at the Children's Hospital, Pittsburgh Hospital and the Industrial Home for Crippled Children.Rotarians picked up children from all over the community and brought them to the clinic in a community building on the Diamond, Osche said.On that day, 219 children were examined with 71% being victims of polio.Under Dr. Silver's direction, Rotarians took children to Pittsburgh hospitals to be fitted for braces and equipment to help them become ambulatory.According to the Eagle article, the Butler Rotary club was the first one in the state to undertake this work systematically in 1923. More than 100 centers followed the plan and, by 1927, about 10,000 children were examined for polio and more than half that many were treated.
The Crippled Children's Account was established by Butler Rotary around 1939.Fundraisers, such as “Motion Picture night at the Capitol Theater,” were held, Osche said.“Down to the Sea in Ships,” a photo play, was shown for 10 days in the Capitol Theater, which today is part of the Brick House building on Main Street. Admission was 55 cents, according to an advertisement which ran in the Butler Eagle on May 5, 1923.In the late 1940s, the club organized a clinic on the third floor of the courthouse for the treatment of cerebral palsy cases and speech defects.In 1950, arrangements were made with Dr. Burton Chance, an authority on cerebral palsy, to observe and advise. He came to Butler four times per year to hold clinics and advised what to do with each child.In 1955, the Butler County Society for Crippled Children was organized and established a clinic at West End School.The club donated $8,000 to the new organization led by Guy Harriger, who became superintendent of the then-Butler Area Joint Schools from 1956 until he retired in 1973 from the Butler Area School District. He died in 2003. The Harriger Educational Services building is named after him.During the 32 years the club carried on this work, from 1923 to 1955, it expended almost $100,000 in operations and clinics. More than 2,200 county children were examined and treated.Now after 98 years of support, nearly 10,000 children have been helped with more than $300,000 expended.In 1985, Rotary International launched PolioPlus, a 20-year commitment to eradicate polio. This initiative would drive a renewed wave of support for eradicating polio.Butler County Rotary Clubs have collectively raised $500,000 for Polio Plus since 1985.“In 1987, there were 350,000 cases of polio in the world,” Ferguson said. “Today, active cases are in the double digits. Polio Plus helped vaccinate 3 billion children in 22 different countries.”
Out of the Butler Rotary's Crippled Children group evolved the Easter Seal Society for Crippled Children and Adults. That organization today is known as Lifesteps.“Lifesteps celebrates the Rotary as its 'Founding Fathers,' and their continued strong history of Service Above Self,” Lifesteps said in a news release. “Today, we say thank you for being the roots of Lifesteps.“Thank you for helping individuals and families in our community.”Following a presentation on children in need by Edgar “Daddy” Allen, the founder of the National Easter Seals' organization, 26 Rotaries from Western Pennsylvania voted to form the Pennsylvania Easter Seal Society.The local Easter Seal Society became Lifesteps on Sept. 1, 1994, according to an article in the Butler Eagle that year.In 2021, the Butler club marked 62 years of hosting the Election Day Pancake Festival to benefit Lifesteps.According to his family, Rotarian Bill DiCuccio Sr. was chairman of the annual event and the best ticket seller for the Election Day Rotary Pancake Festival.The Butler Rotary also has hosted an annual Christmas Party for Lifesteps' children for decades.“Through the Butler Rotary's support, each year thousands of children, adults and seniors with special needs are receiving needed services,” the Lifesteps's news release said.
The Mentor Junior Rotarians initiative began in 1938. Today this program sponsors young people in the Rotary Youth Leadership Academy at Westminster College each year.During the COVID-19 pandemic, the club turned its support to Leadership Butler County, the youth leadership program of the Butler County Chamber of Commerce.Rotary also supports the Rotary Outstanding Vocational Awards. It sponsors and sends students from the Butler County Area Vocational-Technical School to intensive vocational leadership training each year.With the death of Rotarian Bob Mikan of Mikan Motor Co. earlier this year, the Mikan family joined with the club to help support vocational scholarships and awards programs.The club has also supported Stand Tall, a drug program in area schools.Rotarian Dave Tack Sr., the founder of David H. Tack and co-founder of DHT Construction, was one of the founders in Butler County of the Stand Tall Program. Tack was on the board of directors from its beginning and served as treasurer. He died in 2016.The club funds scholarships for seniors at both Butler and Knoch high schools. This year they awarded four scholarships to seniors at both schools.
For the last several years, the Rotary Club of Butler presented dictionaries to third graders in Butler County Schools, public and private.This project is in support of a larger organization called the Dictionary Project. Its goal is to reach every third-grade student in the United States with dictionaries each year.The Butler club reaches thousands of students each year with this project.Albert Campbell “Al” McGrath, who worked in management at AK Steel for 42 years and who died this year, was the leader of this effort. Memorial donations made in Al's name will ensure Butler Rotary can continue with the project.“Thank-you notes from students will be displayed at the Butler Rotary Dinner,” Osche said. The Butler PM Rotary website, http://butlerrotary.org, will feature the students' thank-you notes in the future.
