"We're spreading out the celebration this year, because our specific birth date is somewhat up in the air," said Rotary Club of Westerville anniversary chairman Kirk Lawson. "April 6 is the day that Rotary International in Chicago physically signed the paper acknowledging us in 1959.

"We didn't have a charter day and didn't receive our charter until May 4 of that year, but our regular meeting is on the seventh, and that's when we'll celebrate our charter day," he said.

Rotary clubs bring together business and professional leaders to provide humanitarian service, encourage high ethical standards in all vocations and help build goodwill and peace in the world, according to Rotary International. Members usually meet weekly for breakfast, lunch or dinner -- gatherings that function as social events as well as opportunities to organize work on their service goals.

Lawson is a past president of the Rotary Club of Westerville. He said he has been telling stories about the club for years.

"It's kind of fun to be a part of a club that's been around for 50 years," he said. "I've been writing down and telling our history stories for the club members, and we narrate those at Otterbein College."

According to Lawson's history, the Rotary Club of Westerville was created in cooperation with the city of Westerville and Church of the Messiah, in the "Rotary Uptown Mini-Park" at the southeast corner of State and Home streets.

What was an inconvenience for other central Ohio Rotary clubs worked in Westerville's favor, Lawson said -- the fact that Rotarian membership is based on meeting attendance of 80 percent combined with the difficulty of travel in the 1950s.

"The way Rotary works, for a club to exist, another club has to give up some of its territory," Lawson said. "Back in 1958, Columbus (Rotary) basically had all of Franklin County as their territory. There were no other clubs. If you can't make the meeting at your own club, you can do a makeup meeting at any other club. There are some that would tell you that Columbus reluctantly gave up some of their territory to us as an alternate club for their members."

Westerville's Rotary has been busy in the last 50 years, he added. The club annually holds a fish fry at Otterbein College and conducts the annual Phil Brown Holiday Basketball Tournament on campus. The Rotary Club is the sole producer of Westerville's annual Independence Day celebration, provides scholarships and awards to local students and community leaders and for the last decade has supported a remote mountain school in Ibarra, Ecuador, by sending students uniforms, shoes, textbooks, school supplies and paying for building and access road improvements.

"It amazes me that a few well-intentioned people in Westerville have the ability to impact lives all over the world," Lawson said. "But the relevance for us isn't the last 50 years. It's the next 50."

The Rotary Club of Westerville will celebrate its 50th anniversary at its regular noon meeting on May 7 at the Medallion Country Club, 5000 Club Drive. Lawson said the meeting will include presentations by local and state officials. He said the club will be presented with a new official charter.