Congratulations! Presidential Citation

      District Conference: Among other festivities, we celebrated 20 years of Women in Rotary. Our speaker, Sylvia Whitlock, was the first woman president (and first African-American woman!) of a Rotary club. When the Duarte Club first accepted women as members in 1977, their charter was revoked, because Rotary had a strict rule against admitting women, so she actually joined the XRotary Club of Duarte. The year she became president an attorney in the Arcadia club decided to help them sue RI.  In the meantime other clubs had also started admitting women, in spite of the International Convention vote of just 34 to 1160 or so on the issue of whether or not to allow women.  They won in California, after appeals, and when RI took the battle to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1986, the club not only won, but the ruling then applied to all US service / business clubs!  We, and Rotary, are the richer because of it. 

      But we had to laugh when Ms. Whitlock also shared with us how she met a Rotarian, and his wife, who had voted at that RI Convention.  He told her proudly he was one of the 34 who voted for including women, and his wife harrumphed that she didn't think women should be included then, and she didn't think so today