Watch: Rotary Club of Boksburg Lake celebrates 40th anniversary
It was a joyous evening for members of the Rotary Club of Boksburg Lake as they celebrated their 40th birthday in style on October 2.
Other Rotary Club members joined in the festivities.
The locals used the opportunity to reminisce about the good times they have shared together and some of the life-changing efforts they have shown to communities.
Charter member and past president Nicky Savvides shared the history of the club with fellow Rotarians.
He said the Rotary Club Boksburg was chartered in 1938 and on October 5, 1977, it gave birth to the Rotary Club Boksburg Lake.
“In 1976 Rotary clubs mostly had their meetings during lunch times but that all changed when one of their members, Harold Resnick, who owned Parkdene Pharmacy, had to be present in the pharmacy at all times during which the pharmacy was open.
“So the idea of forming an evening meeting Rotary Club in the area was born. A club extension officer, Rotarian Mike O’Donnell of the Boksburg Rotary Club, was asked to start the new club to be called the Rotary Club of Boksburg Lake.
“Soon it was found that many businessmen would find an evening meeting more convenient for their business activities than a lunchtime meeting. The new club had to meet for a minimum of three months with at least 20 members at each meeting before it could apply for a charter to become recognised by Rotary International as an official Rotary Club,” he said.
Savvides said the most memorable and largest fund-raiser that the Rotary Club of Boksburg Lake undertook was Boksburg 82, the brainchild of the then president Eugene Cloete.
He shared that they got the permission from the Boksburg City Council to use their parking garage under the building to run an exhibition show for one week, with a restaurant and bar from the Monday to the Friday.
“It was an enormous task but eventually we sold all sixty lots and it went off very well. We did a number of travelling dinners among our Rotarians where we would go to two or three homes for starters, then another two or three homes for dinner and land up at one home for pudding and coffee.
“The Rotarians hosting the starters would move with everybody to the dinner and then everybody would go to the last venues,” Savvides said.
Meanwhile, Savvides said one of the most memorable joint Rotaract and Rotary functions they held was when the Rotaract Club invited the Rotary Club for a picnic to a secret venue.
“We had to meet in time to go to the venue so that we got there before sunset. We travelled in a convoy to the Brixton Tower and stopped there for a sundowner.
“Our club also had a wonderful rapport with our Round Table clubs. We supported one another’s fund-raising functions and the one that I will never forget was going to the Round Tabler’s melodrama where Pat Fitzsimmons recited the story of Little Miss Hooding Ride,” he said.
Rotarians also remembered their fellow Rotarians who have passed.
Gary Leca and Angelique Harilaou from Little Neros Restaurant received a vocational excellence award for their support to Rotary.
Savvides has been president of RC Boksburg Lake twice, in 1985/6 and 2016/7 while his wife Joy was president of the Rotary Anns Club of Boksburg Lake during her husband’s first term.
Now, the current club president is Martin Stokes and his wife Linda Stokes is the president of the Rotary Anns Club of Boksburg Lake.
