Destination: Rotary

Three days, three towns, three clubs. Who knew Wisconsin could be so microcosmic?

By Geoffrey Johnson Illustrations by Jennifer Maravillas-Bell

They said there would be pyramids. I appear to have been misled.

A few days ago I was in Chicago, where Lake Michigan extended beyond the horizon and a steady stream of traffic coursed along all eight lanes of DuSable Lake Shore Drive.

But now, early on this October morning, I am the only traveler on another Lake Shore Drive — and I’m on foot. I’m in Lake Mills, Wisconsin, strolling along what might generously be called a two-lane byway. Big old houses line the road on my right, and to my left is legendary Rock Lake. I can see clear to the other side, and trust me, there are no pyramids.

Not that I was really expecting to see ponderous polyhedrons, more Aztec than Egyptian, emerging from beneath the waves. But in the not-too-distant past, stories had circulated about three or four ancient structures moored at the bottom of Rock Lake. Turns out those stories had more myth than mass. Yet when I arrived in Lake Mills this morning, the first place I headed was Rock Lake to see — or, as it turned out, not see — for myself.

Lake Mills is the second stop on my current assignment for Rotary magazine. My mission is threefold. I am to visit three different Rotary clubs and see how they operate. I’m also meant to observe the places where they’re based and assess how small-town America is faring a quarter of the way into the 21st century and whether Rotary remains a fixture of civic life there. That includes evaluating how club membership is faring today compared to 30 years ago — and learning about strategies to ensure a club’s vitality in the future. Finally, I’m meant to see the sights, for at its core, this is essentially meant to be a rapid-fire road trip.

Granted, I am spending only a day in each of those three Wisconsin towns: Black River Falls, Lake Mills, and Port Washington. Therefore, my impressions are just that: perceptive glimpses rather than prolonged examinations. My delight, however, is entirely unfeigned.

Though I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little disappointed about the pyramids.

Black River Falls

“The United States Geological Survey has formally recognized this feature
as Ni-ho-kha-wa-ne-ey-ja, ‘where the black water goes over the rocks.’”
— World Waterfall Database

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Monday morning in Black River Falls, and downtown is bustling. “The town itself reminds me of a quintessential Hallmark picture book,” says Lynn Martalock-Wensel, the president of the Rotary Club of Black River Falls, but her description, though not far off the mark, fails to capture every aspect of the place. Stolidly charming Main Street is lined with two-story rough-hewn masonry buildings housing the typical businesses you’d expect to find in a rural downtown: a hardware store, a bank, a law office, and so on. But there are also a good variety of restaurants, an art gallery, a photo gallery, and two tattoo parlors.

One thing is missing. When I ascend the high-arched bridge that spans Black River, I can see that the water level is low and that the town’s distinguishing hydrographic feature, called Ni-ho-kha-wa-ne-ey-ja by the Indigenous Ho-Chunk people, is nowhere to be seen. “We do have falls,” Martalock-Wensel assures me, “but only when the dam is open.”

That proximity to the river was both a boon — Jacob Spaulding settled here in 1839, and the town and a thriving logging industry grew up around his waterfront sawmill — and a threat. In 1911, a flood wiped out much of the town’s business district, which means that many of these old edifices lining Main Street are of relatively recent vintage. It’s unlikely Uncle Jake Spaulding, who died in 1876, would recognize many of them.

There are exceptions. Stag & Lion Pub isn’t open yet, but I knock on the window and a minute later I am greeted and welcomed in by Rod McGillivray. I’d already heard about the publican from Martalock-Wensel, who told me about “one of our Rotary members” who had taken a bar with a dubious reputation and “restored it back to its glory days.”

McGillivray shows me around the pub, explaining that the building is one of the few survivors of the flood and that the floors and ceilings date to the 1860s. “I wanted to blend elements of a traditional Scottish pub with traditional Wisconsin,” he says. “I was going for something that’s never been around here before and that you can’t get anywhere else.”

I’m reluctant to leave, but I have a lunch date elsewhere. The Rotary Club of Black River Falls meets Mondays at noon at Skyline Golf Course on the outskirts of town. When I arrive, people have already begun filling their plates at the buffet or are eating and conversing at round tables. “You get a pretty good pulse of the community in this club,” says Martalock-Wensel, who moved to town and joined Rotary four years ago. “It’s been a great way to meet a lot of people. There’s a good mixture of both the public and private.”

That’s evidenced by the people seated around the tables. Here, for instance, is Duane Waldera, the sheriff of Jackson County and the club’s designated 2027-28 president, and nearby is Brad Chown, the city administrator, clerk, and treasurer.

But as in many communities across the United States, there are fewer people gathered around the club’s tables these days. With a little more than 30 members — a 40 percent decline from 1995 — the club is looking at ways to attract younger people. “They do want to serve,” says Martalock-Wensel. “It’s just that Monday at noon doesn’t always work and going to lunch every week is not really in their budget.” So members are exploring the formation of a satellite club, an offshoot that can offer flexibility on meeting times, the chance to focus on specific interests, and other features that have successfully broadened Rotary’s appeal and reach in other places.

Much of the business portion of the meeting is devoted to a review of the club’s major fundraiser, a barbecue cook-off nine days earlier at Lunda Community Park. Michelle Clark-Forsting, who chaired the event, leads the discussion, which touches on future improvements. There’s a lively exchange as people throw out suggestions, a decidedly nonparliamentary process that proves very effective. Mark your calendars: This year’s barbecue is Saturday, 10 October.

The meeting ends at 1 p.m., but I linger to talk with David Hoffman, who has been a member of this 97-year-old club for 48 years. He regales me with tales of the golf course, his family — the four generations of Hoffman Construction are commemorated in a downtown mural — and the club. “In the 1950s,” he says, “Rotary members used to drive high school football players out to practice here at the golf course. It was just another service we provided to the community.”

I make one final circuit of the town, visiting the club-sponsored skate park and shelter in Lunda Community Park and hiking the Born Learning Trail, a joint effort between the club and the Great Rivers United Way that promotes family fun and early childhood learning. The trail was easy to find. “It’s just behind the Chamber of Commerce,” said Martalock-Wensel. “Be sure to stop in and say hello. They’re part of our membership.”

Of course they are.

Lake Mills

“Lake Mills, on the irregular shore of Rock Lake, is a city of broad lawns and shade trees. In the center of the city is a park with many trees fronting the business section.”
— Wisconsin: A Guide to the Badger State

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In the 85 years since that guidebook description appeared, it seems not much has changed in Lake Mills. Joseph Keyes, who settled here in 1837 and built the grist- and sawmill that gave the town its name, wouldn’t recognize the place. But whoever wrote that description of this Jefferson County town for the renowned Depression-era American Guide Series would have little trouble finding their way around Lake Mills today.

Case in point: I’m seated in the Daydream Believer bookshop, which is housed in a 96-year-old building that fronts that same tree-shaded Commons Park referenced in the 1941 guide. And this building is a relative newcomer. The F.B. Fargo Dairy Supply Building one block over dates to 1892.

The three Rotarians who have invited me to join them for a cup of coffee at the bookshop disabuse me of any notion that the town is stuck in the past. “We’re an in-demand community,” insists Anita Martin, president of the Rotary Club of Lake Mills. “There’s not enough housing for all the people who want to live here.”

The reason, she explains, is the town’s location on the interstate between Milwaukee and Madison, the state capital. “Sixty-five percent of [employed] people living in Jefferson County commute outside of the county for their job,” says Martin, but they prefer to make their home in a family-friendly town like Lake Mills. “We’re a small enough town, and most people know about Rotary,” adds Lake Mills native and 19-year Rotarian Amy Litscher. “And,” says Gerard Saylor, “they know what we do.”

The list of what the 71-year-old club does is extensive: blood drives, a food pantry (run by the affiliated Interact club), a park replete with ballfields, a playground, a shelter, and seasonal concession stands. Saylor is proud of the scholarships presented to local high school grads bound for college. “We award eight or nine each year for between $1,000 and $2,000,” he says. “It’s a big deal, a nice honor — and people know that the students are getting support from Rotary.”

Once again, civic leaders are well represented in the club. City Manager Drake Daily is a member, as is Tonya Olson, who runs the Lake Mills school district, and Martin served two two-year terms on the Jefferson County Board of Supervisors. Saylor, who arrived in Lake Mills and joined Rotary more than 20 years ago, is the director of the L.D. Fargo Public Library, where he’s orchestrating a $5 million expansion. Housed in an architecturally stunning 123-year-old stone building, the library, says Saylor, “is a gathering place that’s welcoming to everybody. It’s a place to learn, to study, or to just come in, sit down, and do your thing.”

Saylor has received an assist from the club in promoting and raising funds for the expansion. Club members Beth Naughton and Barb Cramer hold leading roles on the Friends of the Library board of directors, and at the Tuesday afternoon club meeting I attend, after Saylor reports that he needs a letter of support from a local civic organization to secure a particular grant, the club votes unanimously to provide that letter, which Martin volunteers to write.

Held in a former EMS building, the meeting has a different, yet no less effective, dynamic than the Black River Falls club meeting. Members eat lunch at three long communal tables, along which lots of friendly conversations unfold, yet the meeting has a more formal structure. There’s a speaker, Steve Zambo from Salty Earth Pictures — “the largest movie studio in Jefferson County,” jokes Zambo, and gets the laugh he hoped for — and a series of announcements about the latest blood drive and an upcoming vaccine clinic, among other things.

The club sponsors a flourishing Interact club, and with its own 50-plus members, ranging in age from 25 to 92, membership remains virtually right where it was 30 years ago. (In fact, it has managed to grow slightly.) That doesn’t mean the club isn’t actively seeking new members. One of its growth strategies is to connect Rotary with the next generation.

In partnership with the town’s two high schools, the club sponsors a program that invites high school students to attend meetings and talk to and with members. (The Black River Falls club sponsors a similar program.) It’s a way for club members to learn what’s going on in the high schools — and it helps introduce potential future members to the club. The four students at the meeting I attend are an impressive group of young women: a former junior reporter (at age 8) for the Chicago Bears, an equally precocious water-skier, a member of the National Honor Society, and a violinist with the Wisconsin Youth Symphony. They receive a warm welcome from the Lake Mills club and would be a welcome addition to any Rotaract or Rotary club in the future.

And for good measure, when she’s finished reading Rotary magazine each month, Anita Martin leaves her copy in a public location with a note inside letting people know how they can learn more about the Rotary Club of Lake Mills.

On my way out of Legendary Lake Mills (as the town fancies itself), I swing by Mulberry Street to see the mansions erected by the Fargo brothers — the same family that gave the town the dairy supply building and the library — as they strove to outdo one another in domestic opulence. The most magnificent, the Enoch J. Fargo house (today a bed-and-breakfast), has an ursine story to go with its turrets and gables. For years, Enoch had a bear pit, and one Halloween, some pranksters lowered a ladder into the pit. The bears climbed out, roamed the town, and, when finally apprehended, were shipped off to Milwaukee, where they became the first bears at that city’s zoo.

Even without those pyramids, “legendary” may be an apt moniker for Lake Mills after all.

Port Washington

“We will not continue to be silenced and ignored while our beautiful and pristine city is taken away from us.”
— Port Washington resident voicing opposition to a planned $15 billion data center

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To my great regret, there will be no club meeting at my third and final stop. The Rotary Club of Port Washington–Saukville holds its meetings on the first, second, and third Wednesdays of the month, and I have arrived on October’s fourth Wednesday.

As consolation I get to spend the day with one club member, and to my great delight, this particular Rotarian contains multitudes. A Milwaukee native, Gene Boyer graduated from the Jesuit-run Marquette University High School and went on to earn a degree in finance and business administration from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He spent two years as a manufacturer’s rep before having his Damascene moment. “This,” he realized, “doesn’t excite me.”

That’s when Boyer returned to the Jesuits with the intention of becoming a priest. He earned two master’s degrees — in philosophy and theology — and a PhD in educational development and spent two years working with refugees and students in Sudan and Kenya. Then, six months before his ordination, he had another revelation. “I thought,” he says, “that marriage looked pretty good.”

I meet Boyer at the home that he and his wife, Mary Schmitt Boyer, built eight years ago about a mile west of Port Washington’s lakefront. I say a quick hello to Mary — the first woman to serve as president of the Professional Basketball Writers Association, she’s off to meet with friends and former colleagues before the home opener of the Milwaukee Bucks — and then Boyer and I hop into his truck to tour Port, as locals refer to the town.

“My wife was from Milwaukee,” says Boyer, “and so when we decided on retirement” — he as associate superintendent for high schools for the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland, she as a sports reporter for Cleveland’s Plain Dealer — “we decided we’re going home to Wisconsin.”

We stop first at the Lake Michigan shoreline, where I get a history lesson and a close look at the local Rotary club’s impact on Port. I hear about the Luxembourgers who refused to fight in the Civil War because they had specifically fled their home country and settled in Wisconsin to avoid conscription. Ever the teacher, Boyer jumps forward more than a century to explain the evolution of the 180-year-old town’s lakefront, where the old fishing buildings are today giving way to high-rise condo developments.

Without leaving the lakefront, the tour then takes a decidedly Rotary turn. “If you asked any person on the street if they knew of Port Washington Rotary, they would say, Well, sure we do,” says Boyer. “Just in terms of what we do in the community, we’re well known. We’re not a secret in the community at all.”

Boyer, the Port club’s treasurer, secretary, and Rotary Foundation chair, has already provided me with a list detailing the 30-plus local institutions to which the club contributed a total of $25,000 in the 2024-25 Rotary year. Now he leads me through a waterside park that the club helped build, with a gazebo, commercial fishermen’s memorial, and a view of the 90-year-old breakwater lighthouse. Back in the truck, the Rotary tour continues as we drive along the bluff north of town to visit the beer garden and Possibility Playground, with activities for kids of all abilities in Upper Lake Park — welcoming public venues created through the collaborative effort of Port’s Rotary, Lions, and Kiwanis clubs.

From there we head inland. As we travel through open fields, Boyer points out the four large dairy farms, owned by his late uncle, where he spent parts of his boyhood summers. If things go as expected, the property will soon have electric power lines strung across it, a key component of the $15 billion data center slated to be built on 672 acres north of Port Washington.

“It’s pretty much a done deal,” says Boyer, but that hasn’t stopped vociferous opposition from Port Washington residents concerned about the potential impact on the environment and the town’s quality of life from the center, one of many cropping up around the world to power artificial intelligence and cloud computing. “There’s a rallying cry you’ll hear from some people: Keep Port Port. They’ve lived here all their lives, and they insist that we don’t need development. But development’s coming — and the city needs development. The alternative is a kind of living death.”

Though Boyer doesn’t say it explicitly, he clearly thinks that, to survive and thrive, the Rotary Club of Port Washington–Saukville must also develop, adapt, and grow. That’s why it proactively seeks new members. “We consistently tell our [40-plus] members, if you know somebody interested in joining, please get in contact with one of our board members,” Boyer says. “We will personally reach out to that person and talk about Rotary. We’ve garnered two or three new members a year that way.”

Like so many clubs, the Port club — which has seen a 41 percent decline in membership since 1995, when it had 75 members — is especially interested in attracting younger members. And once clubs have attracted less-seasoned recruits, older members must be prepared to hand over the reins. “These young kids, in their 30s and 40s,” Boyer advises, “they need to learn from their own mistakes.”

Let’s give the teacher, himself a youthful 72, the final word. Class dismissed.

Trip takeaways

“Above the large shield appears a badger, the state animal, and above the badger appears the state motto, ‘Forward.’”
— Description of the coat of arms in the 2025-2026 Wisconsin Blue Book

And with that, I bid Wisconsin goodbye, driving south along Lake Michigan’s western shoreline toward Chicago and home. By the time I reach Milwaukee, about 25 miles south of Port Washington, I’ve already started to evaluate what I encountered and wonder if what I’ve learned had any larger applications to other towns and other clubs.

Later I’d learn that, if you are going to visit one U.S. state that’s in many ways representative of the other 49, you couldn’t go wrong by choosing Wisconsin. The state ranks 20th in terms of population, 23rd in area, and 26th in median household income. In other words, smack in the middle of the pack.

Recalling my earlier caveat about perceptive glimpses rather than prolonged examinations, I’m happy to report that I came away feeling optimistic about the future of those towns I visited, hopeful for the prospects of the people who live there, and impressed by Rotary’s vitality. What’s more, my initial skepticism about organizing a road trip around visiting Rotary clubs was obliterated, and I encourage you to plan your own trip. You will see unexpected things in out-of-the-way spots, and you will meet hospitable people happy to tell you about themselves, their homes, and the things they are doing to improve their communities.

If you are going to follow my lead, remember, as you travel from town to town — be it in Manitoba or Maine, Mexico or Malaysia — be sure to attend a few Rotary meetings along the way. It’s the best way to meet people, and you will be diverted by and learn from the different club dynamics you encounter. Something to bring back to your own club, in addition to whatever other souvenirs catch your eye.

And so, for would-be travelers, community leaders, and Rotary clubs envisioning a vibrant future, one last Wisconsin-specific word of advice:

Forward.

This story originally appeared in the March 2026 issue of Rotary magazine.