The History of
Whitchurch Rotary Club
1938 - 2008

Visitors Welcome

We meet in the Dodington Lodge Hotel every 1st & 3rd Tuesday evening at 6:30pm for Dinner, every 2nd and 4th Tuesday at 12:45pm for lunch, and if there's a 5th Tuesday, we meet at 7:00am for Breakfast. Visitors are welcome.

Presidents of Whitchurch Rotary Club

PRESIDENT 1950/51
William Arthur 'Billy' PALIN

was born in Oswestry in 1897 and was apprenticed as a grocer to the Oswestry Co-operative Society. He enlisted in the KSLI in 1915 and fought on the Western Front in France, being wounded twice. After the 1918 Armistice he served in the Army of Occupation in Germany where he bought his first violin, until demobilisation at Prees Heath in 1919. He returned to Oswestry and his old job until in 1921 he met and married a Whitchurch girl, Dora Hayward, opening a small grocery shop in Highgate. In the early 1930's he moved to more central premises at 36 Green End- recently occupied by Past Presdt. Peter Wagstaffe with his motor-cycle business.
The Palin family was very musical and Billy as a young man organised and conducted a children's choir as well as playing violin and singing in local choirs. In Whitchurch he joined the Operatic Society's orchestra under Mr TC Duggan, succeeding him as conductor in 1928. He also took the baton for the Male Voice choir in the 1920s and later formed a Ladies Choir which attained a perfect score of 100% in a National Music Festival in London in 1934. He was proud to be introduced to Sir Edward German on his last visit to Whitchurch. After the outbreak of the second world war in 1939 the Ladies and Male Voice Choir combined to form the Choral Union which gave many concerts around the region during the war years.
Joined Rotary 8 June 1943. Died 27 August 1952, aged 55 years. His wife President of the Inner Wheel 1949/50.