The Rotary Balita no. 765 (February 23, 1855)

Paul P. Harris was the founder of Rotary. He was born in Racine, Wisconsin, on April 19, 1868, and when he was three years old he was taken to Wallingford, Vermont, to live with his paternal grandparent. The Black River Academy at Ludlow, Vermont and Vermont Academy at Saxtons River prepared him for his studies at the University of Vermont, Princeton University and the University of Iowa. Following his graduation from the law school of the University of Iowa in 1891, he determined to spend the next five years in seeing the world and in coming to know his fellow men before settling down to practice law in Chicago. He worked as a reporter on newspapers in San Francisco and Denver, was a teacher in a Los Angeles business college, worked on a California fruit farm and in a raisin-packing factory, was an actor in a Denver stock company and a cowboy on a Colorado ranch. Then he went to the southern part of the United States where he picked oranges in Louisiana and traveled extensively as a salesman for a marble and granite concern. He made two trips to England working on cattle boats and later traveled to Europe to visit the granite regions of Scotland and the marble regions of Ireland, Belgium and Italy for his company.