In 1931, Keokuk Rotarian W.J. Fulton attended the first Rotary International Convention outside North America, at Vienna, Austria. There, he and other delegates grew concerned about rising nationalism which leads to war. Returning home, he sent letters to 496 Rotary clubs in sixty-five countries, inviting them to symbolically smoke a peace pipe in the tradition of his city’s namesake, Chief Keokuk. Letters received back from those clubs have been remarkably preserved and are published in a 332- page book, The Keokuk-Peace-Letters. Members of those clubs were invited to a Peace Letters reception at the Hamburg RI Convention.
Eighty-eight years later, Fulton’s bridge-building spirit is being revived. Dr. Dan Shanit, Jerusalem Rotarian, has asked Tony Conn and Yogi Reppmann to build a bridge to the Arab/Palestinian Rotary Club in East Jerusalem. Conn and Reppmann have accepted the invitation.