Club History, Part Two

Rotary members were influential in getting things done with the alleys, sewers, and streets of Howell.  The depression held things up for a while, but they did complete quite a bit.

At Christmas time in 1930, John Page asked the new music teacher, Keene O. Stollsteimer, to bring the Madrigal Club he had formed at the school to sing Christmas carols to the club.  Many wives were invited, too.  The second floor of the 1st National Bank, where we held our meetings, was filled and a wonderful time was had by all.  So, every year since, for the past 74 years the group has been invited back.

The first inter-city meeting was held in Owosso with seven clubs attending in 1934.  Most all of our club members attended, as did members of clubs from Owosso, Flint, Centerline and others attending.

In 1936, a group from Brighton was invited to attend a meeting and on the 22nd of June 1936, the Brighton Rotary Club was started.

About this time the weekly newsletter The Question Mark was started.  Handled by several editors, it settled down to Bert Woodhams doing the job each week for many years. In 1939, a new newsletter appeared called The Mushroom. It was edited by Cal Gatesman and sometimes offered a different point of view.  So we had two papers a week for a while until the Mushroom died out.  Later The Question Mark became The Howeller.  Les Merrit and others handled The Howeller at times, but Bert was the mainstay until his death.  Recently his son, Fred Woodhams has done a fine job with humor to make it fun.&nbs