Members of the Sharpsburg-Aspinwall Rotary Club have worked for a century — mostly behind the scenes — to make the Lower Valley a better place.

From donations of playground equipment, Free Little Libraries, dictionaries for elementary students and medical supplies, Rotary members are quiet philanthropists who seek to benefit the community. They also send help around the globe.

“We’re a small, dedicated group who take on far more than we should,” said Don Friedman, a North Side resident who owned a Sharpsburg business for years.

Friedman joins fellow longtime Rotarian John Arch each Wednesday to dole out hot lunches from the Meals on Wheels kitchen at St. Edward Church in Blawnox. The pair pack the car with spaghetti, sandwiches, snacks and pastries before delivering to residents along “Route 5,” chatting and checking in on the recipients.

“We absolutely depend on them,” said Meals on Wheels cook Susan Glendenning. “In this era, where people come and go and make commitments and don’t show, they’ve been great partners for a long time.”

Rotary International is a humanitarian service organization with 1.4 million members.

It operates on a mission of Service Above Self. The Sharpsburg-Aspinwall club has demonstrated the motto throughout the years, with projects that touch the local neighborhoods and beyond.

A sampling of outreach over the years includes:

• A monument placed in Kennedy Park in Sharpsburg to mark the USA bicentennial and Sharpsburg’s 10th anniversary. It was erected by former Rotary Club member Thomas Eichner, who owned a gravestone service, for the Rotary’s 50th year.

• The club installed a shelter at Camp Guyasuta in the 1960s. It was destroyed by fire, but a bronze plaque remains mounted on a rock at the 175-acre grounds.

• $10,000 raised to purchase the welcome desk at Sharpsburg Community Library.

• Thousands of dictionaries donated to third graders in the Fox Chapel Area School District, Blessed Trinity, Fox Chapel Country Day School and Christ the Divine Teacher Catholic Academy to “remind children that the ability to use books and reference materials is vital.”

• A truck full of medical equipment shipped to the impoverished nation of Georgia, formerly part of the Soviet Union, to help people who lack access to basic medical items such as crutches, wheelchairs and walkers.

• A freezer, several slow cookers and loads of shelf-stable food purchased for the Youth Empowerment Project (YEP) of Sharpsburg, a program of Volunteers of America, along Main Street. The group operates a free after-school program and summer enrichment camp for children 5 to 18. Etna and Millvale children also attend the programs.

Members have hosted bingo at the VA hospital in O’Hara, sponsored youth athletic teams and contributed to Rotary International’s global project to abolish polio. Clubs around the world have raised several billion toward the effort.

The Sharpsburg-Aspinwall group, which meets at noon Thursdays at the Fox Chapel Yacht Club, is open to new members. Like most service organizations, Rotary saw record numbers of people join in the mid-1900s before volunteerism started to decline.

When Arch joined 35 years ago, there were 50 members. There’s about 10 now.

Still, it’s a solid group, he said, one that enjoys the camaraderie and lively events such as the relatively new Funnel Cake Fridays at Kennedy Park.

Members like Bill Crooks of O’Hara take turns behind the sizzling fryer to turn out sweet confections which draw lines of hungry people. The event takes place each summer as a fundraiser, but it has worked to drive awareness of the club as a community-builder.

Rotary’s penchant for making powdered sugar-covered pastries started years ago when Sharpsburg hosted its annual Guyasuta Days festival.

Crooks, a longtime Rotary member, turns out at least 80 cakes at each event and said it was twice that amount during the popular Guyasuta Days.

“They go out as fast as we can make them,” Arch said.

The group has earned such notoriety that they are hired out — members manned the fryers for a University of Pittsburgh Halloween fundraiser last fall.

“We make a nice impact,” member Eric Gazica said. “I enjoy it because it’s local.”

Admittedly, he said service clubs are a dying phenomenon.

“Not that many people are interested,” he said.

But the Rotary remains passionate. Members are working to install benches in Kennedy Park for the borough’s 150th anniversary.

“That’s how we operate,” Gazica said. “We want to do nice things to benefit the people.”

Arch said friendships have sustained the group over the years and members’ dedication has made a genuine difference in life across the Lower Valley.

“It’s been wonderful,” Arch said. “What a nice milestone.”

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