Rotary Clubs Honor Raisa Gorbachev

With McDonald’s in Moscow, can more bastions of capitalism be far behind? Rotary District 526, which includes 39 clubs between Los Angeles and Mammoth Lakes, evidently hopes not.

Representatives of the district’s Rotarians, at a recent meeting in a Tarzana church, contributed $1,000 to an international scholarship fund in the name of Raisa Gorbachev.

In return for this donation that she did not actually make, Rotary will bestow on Mrs. Gorbachev the honorary title of Paul Harris Fellow. (Paul Harris founded the service club in 1905.)

A Paul Harris fellowship pin, medallion and certificate “on very nice hard paper” will be forwarded this week from Rotary’s Evanston, Ill., headquarters to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C., said John A. Weyl, past president of the La Canada Flintridge Rotary Club and District 526 chairman of Rotary scholarships.

Weyl admitted Thursday that Raisa Gorbachev was the second choice. The group originally planned to honor her husband, Mikhail, he said, then discovered that other Rotarians had beaten them to the punch.

He said the district wanted to donate scholarship funds in a Gorbachev’s name because it would generate fund-raising publicity. “Plus the fact that, as you know, Mr. Gorbachev has been named Man of the Decade, and we’re living in some extraordinary times right now.”

The money goes into a fund for college students for study abroad--but not in the Soviet Union because that country has no Rotary Club.

However, Weyl said, negotiations are under way to charter a club in the Soviet Union.

Will the Gorbachev fellowships help the cause?

“It won’t hurt, let’s put it that way,” said Weyl. “I think we’re going to have Rotary in Russia maybe by the end of this year, maybe sooner than that.”