The Winamac Kiwanis Club celebrated its 100th anniversary Monday evening, Dec. 6 – on the exact date it received its charter a century earlier. Among the special guests present at the centennial banquet was Indiana Kiwanis Governor Taka Ogata (shown speaking here).

An official from Kiwanis headquarters in Chicago visited Winamac in October 1921 to see about organizing the club. He later confessed to the newly-chartered club’s president, newspaperman Ned Gorrell, that he had “expected his trip to Winamac to turn out to be little more than a wild goose chase.” But, Gorrell noted of the visitor, “he reckoned not on the latent energy here that only awaited tapping.”

The club was founded three years after the armistice of the Great War (World War I). A devastating worldwide pandemic, the Spanish Flu, had just drawn to a close. It was the dawn of the Roaring 20s, but the beginning of Prohibition. The stock market crash was eight years away, to be followed by The Great Depression.

From the very beginning, the Winamac Kiwanis Club undertook projects with the welfare of the community and its families as its highest priority. Many of the projects the club sponsors today have origins dating back to the club’s founding 100 years ago - and the legacy continues.

Most Winamac residents have memories of Kiwanis Club activities, from pancake breakfasts on the courthouse square, to Halloween costume contests, snow cones at the county fair, Kids Day at the Park, and sponsorship of visiting circuses. Kiwanis members have taken an active interest in community projects, especially those benefiting children. The club has long sponsored the Winamac Boy Scout Troop. For years the club sponsored the Winamac Farmers Market Festival, and continues to organize the annual 4-H Fair Parade. It sponsors a yearly high school scholarship. For decades members have taken underprivileged children Christmas shopping for new clothing.

In its earliest years, the club supported efforts of the new town park association to improve the newly acquired park property, including proposals to build the Memorial Swinging Bridge and the stone entrance to the town park.

Indiana Kiwanis has had a relationship with Riley Children’s Hospital for over 100 years, and the Winamac Kiwanis have held countless events to raise funds for the hospital.

The Centennial Celebration

The Dec. 6 Centennial Celebration was dedicated to those who were responsible for organizing the club, and to those who have carried out its objectives for the past 100 years.

Michael Shurn, who has served as a club president and district Kiwanis lieutenant governor, served as master of ceremonies at the banquet which was held at Celebration Station in Winamac. Among the special guests present were Indiana Kiwanis Governor Taka Ogata, Arrowhead District Lt. Gov. Judd Rousch, and representatives from Monticello and Logansport Kiwanis Clubs. Speakers, who shared their reminiscences of the club were members David Budd and Paul Gilsinger, along with Ted Hayes, a longtime friend of the Winamac club. Banquet committee members were Mike Shurn, Leroy Kinnaman, Karen Fritz, Paul Gilsinger, Scott Roudebush, and MacKenzie Ledley.

The club, which elects a new president every year, has been served by 100 club presidents – a veritable list of community leaders over the past 10 decades. (A binder with photos and brief biographies of the presidents is being updated and will soon return to the local history section of the Pulaski County Public Library.)

Current club officers are president Father Leroy Kinnaman, president-elect Kelly Gaumer, secretary Rick Grisel, treasurer Gregg Malott, and immediate past president Kelsie Zellers. Board members are Kim Hanson, Dr. Robert Klitzman and Jeff Richwine. The club has over 50 members.

Kiwanis founded in 1915

Kiwanis was founded in Detroit in January 1915. It is an international organization of local clubs who are interested in community service. The organization has over 550,000 members worldwide, including the membership of its youth organizations.

The name Kiwanis derives from an American Indian word. Kiwanis chose the motto We Build in 1920. It remained in use until 2005, when members voted to change the motto to Serving the Children of the World.

All people are welcome to participate in the Kiwanis movement of improving communities for children. In 1987, women were invited to join. In 2008, delegates approved a resolution that calls for Kiwanis clubs to celebrate and foster inclusiveness.

‘No wild goose chase’

Edmund C. “Ned” Gorrell, a founder and first president of the Winamac Kiwanis Club, was a long-time, highly visible fixture in the Winamac community.

A 77-year veteran of the newspaper business, Gorrell was active in journalism from his early years. Raised in Winamac, Gorrell became editor of the Pulaski County Democrat (later Journal) in 1925, succeeding his father, Joseph J. Gorrell, who bought the Democrat in 1891. Gorrell was a charter member and former officer of the Hoosier State Press Association, and was also a member of the Indiana Democratic Editorial Association. He was inducted into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame in 1968 by the Sigma Delta Chi Society of Professional Journalists.

Gorrell, who liked to refer to himself as a “Country Editor,” was also a popular speaker and story-teller, according to his daughter, Janet Gorrell Meyer (who was among the first women inducted into Winamac Kiwanis). At the December 1921 banquet to accept the club’s charter, Gorrell noted that “headquarters” was “just a little fearful of clubs in these smaller towns; (they)’re afraid that they’ll get to lagging in pep after a year or two.”

Gorrell’s response? “Let’s here highly resolve that, as far as Winamac is concerned, their fears at headquarters are unfounded!”

This jug of Winamac Artesian Well water was given to guests 100 years ago at the charter celebration of the Winamac Kiwanis Club on Dec. 6, 1921.