Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.

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Dan Casey

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If you've spent any time on the Lick Run Greenway lately, or in Washington Park, you have benefited from efforts by the Kiwanis Club of Roanoke.

Scores of college and trade school students have benefited, too, in the form of Kiwanis scholarships that help them further their education.

So have children at Westside Elementary School, Hurt Park Elementary School and the West End Center, seniors at the Adult Care Center of Roanoke Valley, and many, many others.

This month marks the club's 90th anniversary, and with it comes a long and storied record of civic accomplishment.

The Kiwanis Club of Roanoke is not only the oldest Kiwanis group in the Roanoke Valley (there are three others); it is also one of the oldest Kiwanis clubs in the world.

With 163 members, it's also among the 25 largest Kiwanis chapters anywhere. That says a lot, because there are about 8,000 chapters in 70 countries.

I learned most of the above during a brief conversation Friday with Ken Briggs, a local businessman who is the club's 91st president.

Assuming the organization's helm "is the best job in the world," he told me, and he sounded very proud. Kiwanians are "the most agreeable people, who are successful and come together to make the community better."

According to information gathered by Ellen Brown, a local historian, the Kiwanis Club of Roanoke came together on the cusp of the Roaring Twenties.

That happened in November 1919, about the time the city approved establishing its first public library, in Elmwood Park.

Right about that time, a stranger visited Roanoke. His name was E.F. Westcolt, and he was a national organizer of a quickly spreading, 5-year-old civic movement known as the Kiwanis Club.

Chapters back then were sprouting at the rate of about one every 10 days, and already 181 had formed.

"He must have made an effective pitch," Brown writes.

It didn't take long for a group of businessmen to come together and elect Charles McNulty, a local lawyer and member of the Roanoke City Council, as the club's first president.

The Kiwanis Club of Roanoke's charter was approved on Jan. 28, 1920, and it became club No. 182.

Women couldn't be Kiwanians back then. That changed in 1987, after a vote by Kiwanis International. (The first black member had joined the local chapter at least a decade earlier.)

Today, notes past President John Montgomery, the Kiwanis Club of Roanoke has about 40 women in its ranks. That's not bad considering that the average Kiwanis chapter has 37 members total. Three of those women have presided over the Roanoke organization.

The club is best known for its annual pancake breakfast and auction at the Roanoke Civic Center, which raises about $40,000 each spring and funds much of the club's civic work and service projects.

I don't have room to do justice to all of those projects in this space, but they are organized into four general areas.

One is parks, recreation and the environment -- hence the club's work with the greenway and the semiannual Roanoke River cleanup.

Another is service to seniors. Among other things, that includes money donated to Meals on Wheels and scores of hours that Kiwanians put into delivering that food.

The third is youth. The club has "adopted" two elementary schools and supports leadership clubs at secondary schools. It also conducts an annual fishing day for underprivileged children.

And then there are the annual scholarships, which will total $15,000 for college and technical students this year, Briggs said.

The club also meets every Wednesday for lunch at a downtown banquet hall on Jefferson Street. To local and state politicians -- and pretty much every other kind of influence peddler you can imagine -- it is a must-stop.

The club will celebrate its birthday and decades of service with a big ball on Jan. 28 at the Hotel Roanoke.

We should all pause for a moment today and celebrate them, because they make a real difference in this community.

Happy birthday, Kiwanians.