On September 24th, Del City Rotary hosted a bicycle safety rodeo for children was provided from 10 a.m.-noon at South Rotary Park in OKC. A District grant funded free helmets and other safety equipment for the children, and there were free hamburgers and hotdogs for the participants, their families, and Rotarians.
The event doubled as a way for the five Rotary clubs who funded and carried out the improvement project there to celebrate how they preserved and protected the 100-year-old stone Rotary monument sign at the Park (1900 S. Westwood), as well as add four durable, stylish tables to the picnic pavilion. Those clubs were the former OKC Sunrise Rotary, Oklahoma City Downtown Rotary, West OKC Rotary, South OKC Rotary, and the Midwest City Rotary Club. Larry Hopper, who oversaw many project details, says when the land for Rotary park was donated by the Downtown Rotary Club in the early 1920s, this needed park was on the rural outskirts of town near the streetcar yard and the OKC National Stockyards. Back then, as the monument proclaims, the Rotary motto was ‘Service not Self.”
