Nobody was more surprised to hear about the death of the Warren Barrington Rotary Club than its current president, Mark Smiley.

Smiley — a Bristol business owner and Warren resident who took over as president of the local chapter of the international community service organization that claims more than 1.4 million members in over 46,000 chapters worldwide — was prompted to respond to a post that appeared on Facebook lamenting the coming and going of the weekend that for years has hosted the Warren Quahog and Arts Festivals at Burr’s Hill Park; with no such festival taking place.

“The combined events have died a slow death. Covid stopped it cold. Post Covid, it couldn't gain any traction for one simple reason — lack of volunteers. Rotary, the main force behind the event, has ceased to exist. Their dwindling membership all retired, and their charter was closed,” the post, authored by local photographer and a consistent staple of the Arts Festival, Butch Lombardi, read. “So there you have it, a summer tradition that may never happen again.”

“I am the current President (as of July 1st) of the Warren Barrington Rotary and we are still in existence,” Smiley replied. “COVID took a lot of wind out of our sails, but we are building back.”

A call for more volunteers, and a fresh recruitment drive
Reached in an interview last week, Smiley said that there’s no denying that the Warren Barrington Rotary has faced tough times in recent years stemming from a lack of membership. Combined with the one-two punch of the pandemic, events like the Quahog Festival became simply too much to pull off.

“Covid really took the wind out of the sails for our Rotary Club,” he said. “Our Club had been aging without a lot of new blood in it, and when Covid came along that was the end of recruitment altogether. So three of the guys who had been longterm members decided it was over, and that was after two basically abysmal performances for the Warren Quahog Festival.”

Those past two festivals included a year where the Rotary had to scrap the Quahog part of the festival altogether, opting to bring in a variety of food trucks instead. The next year heavy rains washed out the event entirely, causing nearly all the food truck vendors to back out. It marked a low point for the organization, which had at this point only four consistent members, according to Smiley.

“A lot of people had comments like, ‘They’re weren’t even quahogs at the Qhahog Festival.’ And it’s true, but there’s only so much four people are going to get done. We did what we could. Those other members decided this was it and they were going to retire.”

But when Smiley started looking into possibly joining the Bristol Rotary Club and accepting the doomed fate of the local chapter, he said he was approached by leadership from the Rotary’s regional district, who insisted on trying to save it. They helped with a fresh recruitment drive, which has led to the group having 8 members. Tim Pray, who has been a leader in the Rotary for many years, agreed to stay on for another year to help with the renewed effort — which includes a goal of eventually amassing the volunteers to start back up a proper Warren Quahog and Arts Festival.

It’s a noble goal, but one Smiley admits is still very much in question, as he said it requires a strong group of 30 to 35 volunteers to adequately plan and pull off that event.

“Everybody is new and we’re trying to get our feet underneath us, appointing officers and that sort of thing,” Smiley said. “Our goal is possibly by next summer to have enough people to be able to pull off a real Quahog Festival. I don’t know if that’s going to be able to happen. There’s going to have to be some more recruiting. In the past, the Rotary needed to have a strength of about 30 to 35 volunteers to work that thing. Obviously we’re a long ways from doing that.”

Starting small, but hoping for the best
Smiley mentioned the Rotary’s most recent community effort: getting 250-some-odd boxes of cereal donated to St. Mary of the Bay’s Food Pantry to be donated to the Bristol Warren School District to support kids who rely on free/reduced lunch and breakfast during the summer months, when those programs aren’t available.

“That’s the kind of thing we’re just getting started to see whether people will step up to the plate,” he said. “We’re trying to build a team of real volunteers who are willing to do real work…It’s a building process and it’s just not going to happen overnight.”

With dues at just $150 a year, and bi-weekly meetings on the first and third Tuesdays of the month (currently being held at the East Bay Chamber of Commerce headquarters at 16 Cutler St. in Warren), Smiley said that he is hopeful that more people will step up to rejuvenate the Rotary from both communities.

“I’ve always had that part of me that needs to give back to my community, and this is a way of doing that,” he said.

To learn more about the Rotary, visit their Facebook page, or call Mark Smiley at 401-741-7813.