‘Heart and soul’: Kiwanis Club of La Jolla celebrates centennial year

The word “Kiwanis” can have several meanings. According to one interpretation, it means “We make noise.” Others say it means “We have a good time” or “We share our talents.”

The Kiwanis Club of La Jolla is celebrating its 100th anniversary of taking all those interpretations and putting them into practice.

The club, chartered in 1925, has followed the early mission of Kiwanis International by engaging in small community projects as well as large fundraisers, with proceeds distributed as grants.

The motto of Kiwanis International is “We build,” and its objectives are to “give primacy to the human and spiritual, rather than to the material values of life; to encourage daily living of the Golden Rule in all human relationships; to promote the adoption and application of higher social and business professional standards; to develop by precept and example more intelligent, aggressive and serviceable citizenship; and provide … a practical means to form enduring friendships to render altruistic service; build better communities” and more.

Since the beginning, said longtime Kiwanian Glen Rasmussen, “we go out and actually do the work and hold events for the community and then give the money back. There is no overhead in everything we do, and that sold me.”

Early days

When the local club was founded, the population of La Jolla was 3,000 and its two principal means of transportation were water and rail, according to the club’s historical records. Automobiles were still a luxury, and travel by air was for “the bold and venturesome.”

Kiwanis International was 10 years old in 1925, and some of its members recently had arrived in La Jolla and started recruiting others with the hope of chartering a local club.

Among them was Samuel Gillispie, who with his wife, Ada, went on to found Gillispie School. Samuel was the first president of the Kiwanis Club of La Jolla.

Early on, Gillispie School was a care facility that offered hot meals and early learning to needy children during the Depression, according to the school.

“We owned a property on Girard Avenue that served as a thrift store. [The proceeds] went to support [the care facility],” Rasmussen said.

Eventually the building was sold and the proceeds went toward the purchase of a nearby building that became Gillispie School in 1933. At the time, the board of directors was made up exclusively of Kiwanians.

At the same time, the club focused on other service projects in the community.

“They did a lot of one-offs,” said current member Wendy Matalon. “They bought a vehicle for a children’s hospital … and then they did a lot of fun stuff.”

Among the efforts were planting Torrey pine trees; sponsoring a diabetes clinic, foreign students studying in the United States and a 4H club; holding a fishing trip for children and more.

One of the club’s claims to fame is its assistance in forming La Jolla Playhouse in the 1940s.

“Kiwanis Club of La Jolla, in addition to its other community activities, began the sponsorship … of a group of actors and actresses from Hollywood under the name of La Jolla Playhouse Inc.,” according to the club’s historical records. “[The] purpose of the project was to establish a permanent theater in La Jolla.”

That meant handling the advertising and administrative work and arranging for productions at other venues as a proof of concept.

“That’s probably one of the biggest accomplishments we had,” Matalon said. “The founders who wanted to start it came to us because they didn’t know what to do.”

Among them were Dorothy McGuire, Gregory Peck and Mel Ferrer.

La Jolla Playhouse opened in 1947.

Signature events

By the 1960s, the local Kiwanis Club had taken on the annual pancake breakfast, one of its signature events. In the ’60s, though, the breakfasts were held in the parking lot of a bank on Girard Avenue, with music provided by club members and power provided by nearby churches and businesses.

The event doubled as a fundraiser.

Another signature event, what is now the La Jolla Half Marathon and La Jolla Shores 5K, was originally run by the La Jolla Town Council in San Diego’s Balboa Park. The Kiwanis Club took over its management in the 1980s.

At that time, the 5K was considered “a stride” around La Jolla Cove. The half marathon evolved over time. Kiwanians went door to door to alert residents of the impending street closures and get runners to sign up.

“We discovered that to do it right, it takes longer and longer to plan,” Rasmussen said. “The bigger you want to get it, the more work it is, so we depended on leadership. There was always a leader.”

He credited Kiwanians such as Doug Bradley, Jerry Gotleib and Bart Calame, who ran it for several years. In recent years, the event has been run by a committee.

Some of the earliest half marathons raised around $40,000. The 2024 La Jolla Half Marathon raised a record $350,000. Race proceeds go to the La Jolla Kiwanis Foundation to be given to schools and nonprofit organizations in the form of grants.

Also in the ’80s, the club had “Apple Days” in which it would order apples from Washington state and sell them as a fundraiser.

It also participated in a campaign to have the Olympic torch come through La Jolla ahead of the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. Kiwanians stood along La Jolla Boulevard with lighted candles.

By the 1990s, the Kiwanis Club of La Jolla had taken on management of the Junior Olympics. That effort started with La Jolla’s public schools and soon expanded to include all La Jolla schools.

Bradley estimates 20,000 children have participated in the Junior Olympics.

Fundraising efforts

“We have our stalwart community events … and then we have our fundraising events that bring in enough money for us to give a ton of money away,” Matalon said. “It wasn’t always like that. They would just decide to [do a service project] and either raise money to do it or people would donate money to do it.”

At the turn of this century, the club migrated toward events that raise money, Matalon said. “Now we are a grant machine. We give away hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, just in grant money.”

Each year, the club says, the foundation distributes about $500,000 through grants to more than 70 charitable organizations throughout San Diego and beyond.

To help keep that going, the club took on leadership roles in the La Jolla Cove Swim in 2020 and La Jolla Concerts by the Sea in 2022.

The future

Matalon joked that “our club keeps getting smaller, but we take on more projects.”

Indeed, membership has dwindled in recent years. When Matalon was president decades ago, there were 114 members. Now there are 65.

Club participants say an important recent effort has been attracting and retaining members.

“What’s really cool about the club is the relationships you build over time,” Bradley said. “I moved here 25 years ago, so I’ve been with the club for 25 years. It’s really nice. We see each other have kids, see the kids grow up. We’ve seen weddings and funerals. We have seen a lot of great speakers at meetings,” including a contortionist and a chicken mascot.

“Decades ago,” Calame said, “these clubs used to be so much more integrated into the business community and networking … and it used to be much more of the heart and soul of a community to have vibrant membership in clubs like this.”

Now, he said, there is much more competition for people’s time, and the places people go to socialize have changed.

“Our puzzle is to figure out how to get people to re-engage,” said Calame, the club’s current president. “You are going to discover along the way how rich an experience that is. So our question mark is how we engage the 20-, 30- and 40-year-olds.”

To help with that, La Jolla High School has had a Key Club since 1950 and UC San Diego has had a Circle K club since 1977.

“I’ve talked to a couple of kids that think you have to retire before you can join our club, and that’s not true,” Calame said. “We need young leadership that wants to learn how to be civically connected to the community and help dig those holes and plant those trees. We are supposed to be nurturing our souls with something connecting us to nature and community … and I think we need that even as adults.”

Centennial celebration

Details are being finalized for the Kiwanis Club of La Jolla’s centennial celebration, but it is expected to happen by October.

To find out more about the club or its 100th-anniversary celebration, visit kiwanisclublajolla.org.