PORTLAND — A bit of the city’s soul vanished early last month when officials of the Kiwanis Club of Portland disbanded after more than 100 years. The group had simply run out of members.
The formal decision to call it quits came this summer during a Zoom call necessary because of COVID-19. It was a fitting end, given that the club began during the grim 1918 flu pandemic.
In a bygone era, when the hub of all that mattered took place in the city center, the club had 350 dues-paying members who met for a weekly lunch at a downtown hotel. There, they came up with programs and raised money to benefit the city and the people who lived there.
At the end they had just 24 members.
When no one stepped forward to take over as president of the group during the Zoom call, the members voted to end the club.
“We all saw it coming,” said David Newton, 67, a 15-year-member. “The death blow was COVID.”
In the early years, the mission was to help veterans and those in need, as well as promote the city. The focus later turned to helping children.
Times changed. People worked in the suburbs and couldn’t leave the job to head into Portland to take a long lunch one day a week at the Benson Hotel. Each year, club membership dropped.
Even with the club’s closing, the international Kiwanis organization has more than 7,200 clubs around the world, including 258 in the Pacific Northwest District and 25 scattered throughout the Portland metro area. Seven members of the Portland chapter have transferred to other metro chapters.
But this club was special because it was the first.
New chapter
In 1918, the Kiwanis headquarters in Chicago sought chapters across the U.S. and attracted interest in the Pacific Northwest, Connie Shipley said, final president of the Portland chapter. Starting a chapter required 100 men willing to pay $5 each. Groups in Seattle, Tacoma and Portland sent the money and paperwork. A man from Chicago headed out by train, planning to stop first in Seattle, then Tacoma and finally in Portland.
“But the flu epidemic was so bad in Seattle that the train was diverted to Portland,” said Shipley, drawing on historical records that include photographs, speeches and notes from every meeting ever held. “He left here, went to Tacoma, got sick and took the train back to Chicago.”
A formal inaugural gala had been scheduled for January 1919 at the Benson Hotel. But the flu pandemic changed plans. Only 20 men, no guests or family members, all wearing face masks, were permitted to attend.
To make a statement, the club sent a delegate to the 1919 international conference in Alabama to lobby leaders to hold the 1920 convention in Portland, long odds for a new chapter going up against a strong proposal from a Canadian chapter.
“Our man took roses with him,” Shipley said. “He gave them to the wives of all the Kiwanis leaders. He said there were more roses in Portland, and if they wanted to see them, they should tell their husbands to vote to give Portland the convention. We won.”
Club leaders, seeing the convention as an opportunity to promote the city, placed an ad in The Oregonian saying they needed 400 drivers with cars to take visitors to the Columbia River Highway, which had just opened.
“They figured the Columbia Gorge was a perfect place to promote our area,” Shipley said. “They got 425 cars and the club paid for all the gas and a lunch for the drivers.”
The foundation of the club was to help those in need. Records show that 52 members agreed to help World War I veterans returning to Portland. Each member was matched with a veteran, feeding his family for the winter, paying rent, buying the family clothes and finding the man a job.
