Weston Kiwanis Completes 50 Years of Service

Kiwanis International chartered the Kiwanis Club of Weston on November 30, 1974. As we complete our first 50 years of service to the children of Weston, the region, the world, and other populations in our area, Kiwaniscope takes this opportunity to share our early history with its readers, as told by the club’s founder.

By Warren P. Joblin

The genesis of the Kiwanis Club of Weston, Connecticut, was in 1974. The club’s founder, Warren P. Joblin, was a Kiwanis Club of Westport-Weston member. He was elected Lieutenant Governor of Division 1 of the New England District. At the time, Weston had no men’s civic club, and he felt Weston needed a men’s organization for civic and social action. Weston was primarily a bedroom town with no substantial commercial or professional activity, and it was traditionally the membership base for a Kiwanis Club. With few potential members present in the town during lunch or dinner, the regular meeting times for Kiwanis Clubs, he decided to build the Club as a Saturday morning breakfast club. It is believed that Weston Kiwanis was the first club in Kiwanis International to have its regular meetings on Saturday morning for breakfast.

The Westport-Weston Kiwanis Club initially opposed the idea of a Kiwanis Club in Weston. However, on November 5, 1974, at the urging of the Lieutenant Governor, the Club’s President, John Bradshaw, appointed a New Club Building Committee of members Harry Freedman, Fran Pastorelli, and Edward Heirtzler to work with the Lieutenant Governor to build a new club in Weston. The [Kiwanis New England and Bermuda District] Lieutenant Governor published a notice in the Weston Forum announcing a meeting to form a new club in the Parish Hall of St. Francis Church on Saturday, November 23, 1974. Meanwhile, he asked many of his neighbors and friends to join the new club. The organizational meeting was held on November 30, 1974, with 27 members joining Kiwanis. Officers were elected in the next week, with John Perkins as the club’s first president, and the club moved its meeting place to Norfield Congregational Church parish hall.

Club membership grew quickly. When the club held its charter night on Saturday, March 1, 1975, at Cobbs Mill Inn, its membership reached 60. One of the first official acts of the club was to assume sponsorship of the Weston High School Key Club, which had been founded several years earlier by Mr. Joblin. The club’s initial fundraising events were the sale of discount merchant booklets to support the construction of the Leavitt Pavilion and the pancake breakfasts held initially on Palm Sunday. For many years, the club managed the Weston Little League Snack Shack as its principal fundraising activity.

The club’s great success can be attributed to the quality of its membership. New members continually add vitality to the Club, which averaged ten new members yearly in the first decade of the 21st Century. In 2009, Kiwanis Magazine recognized the club as one of the premier Kiwanis clubs in the world.