History

Birdville Rotary Club

In late 2025, North Richland Hills Mayor Jack McCarty met with a group of community leaders, including Assistant Area Governor Tito Rodriguez, Jack Bradshaw, the CEO of the North Tarrant Chamber, Greg Gideon, Financial Advisor with Edward Jones, Sean McGaughey, Mortgage Broker with Edge Home Finance, and many others to consider creating a new Rotary club that would serve the North Tarrant County area. NRH was the largest city in the area that didn't have a rotary club. It was decided to name the club Birdville in honor of the original county seat that shared its name. The club includes members from North Richland Hills, Richland Hills, Haltom City, Watauga, and the surrounding areas.

The group had it's initial interest meetings starting in March of 2026 and by May, the group had grown and they were able to officially charter the Rotary Club of Birdville with Rotary International on May 22, 2026.

Charter Members of the Birdville Rotary Club are as follows:

  • Asst. Chief Melissa Andrews
  • Ms. Tracy Archer
  • Dr. Skip Baskerville
  • Mr. Phil Beckman
  • Mayor Curtis Bergthold
  • Mr. Matt Blake
  • Mr. Jack Bradshaw
  • Dr. Elizabeth Clark
  • Mrs. Audra Collins
  • Mrs. Cecille Delaney
  • Mr. Kelvin Deupree
  • Mr. Bryan Downer
  • Mrs. Nansii Downer
  • Mr. Kris Drees
  • Mrs. Stephanie Duke
  • Mr. Troy Dunn
  • Ms. Debbie Elam
  • Mrs. Dana Gage
  • Mr. Greg Gideon*
  • Mr. Darrell Griffin
  • Mr. Jared Hanhart
  • Mrs. Kristie Hanhart
  • Mrs. Paulette Hartman
  • Mrs. MarLu Hiller
  • Mrs. Sue Isbell
  • Ms. Amy King
  • Ms. Rene Lackey
  • Mr. Dave Lambson
  • Mr. David Lowe
  • Mrs. Christina Mailloux
  • Mayor Jack McCarty
  • Mr. Sean McGaughey
  • Mayor Art Minor
  • Mr. Russ Mitchell
  • Mr. Frankie Moeller
  • Mrs. Shelley Montgomery
  • Mrs. Megan Overman
  • Mr. Chad Page
  • Ms. Michelle Petrie
  • Mr. Tito Rodriguez
  • Dr. Gayle Stinson
  • Chief Stan Tinney
  • Ms. Kathryn Vowels
  • Mr. Jack Webb

Bold names = currently active members

* = Served as President

The Birdville Rotary Club has been a major benefactor for charitable and community causes since its founding. Today, Birdville Rotary continues to be a generous contributor to humanitarian and other worthwhile causes in the area, as well as nationally and internationally. Rotarians are involved in leadership roles in many local organizations including the North Tarrant Chamber of Commerce, serving on City Council for one of our local cities, Birdville ISD and the Birdville ISD Board of Trustees.

“WHATEVER ROTARY MAY MEAN TO US, TO THE WORLD IT WILL BE KNOWN BY THE RESULTS IT ACHIEVES.”

— PAUL P. HARRIS

Our 1.2 million-member organization started with the vision of one man—Paul P. Harris. The Chicago attorney formed one of the world’s first service organizations, the Rotary Club of Chicago, on 23 February 1905 as a place where professionals with diverse backgrounds could exchange ideas and form meaningful, lifelong friendships. Rotary’s name came from the group’s early practice of rotating meetings among the offices of each member.

 

OUR ONGOING COMMITMENT

Rotarians have not only been present for major events in history—we’ve been a part of them. From the beginning, three key traits have remained strong throughout Rotary:
 
We’re truly international. Only 16 years after being founded, Rotary had clubs on six continents. Today we’re working together from around the globe both digitally and in-person to solve some of our world’s most challenging problems.
We persevere in tough times. During WWII, Rotary clubs in Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Japan were forced to disband. Despite the risks, many continued to meet informally and following the war’s end, Rotary members joined together to rebuild their clubs and their countries.
 
Our commitment to service is ongoing. 
 
Rotary International, a founding partner of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), has helped reduce global polio cases by 99.9% since 1988. We began our fight against polio in 1979 with a project to immunize 6 million children in the Philippines. By 2026, only two countries remain polio-endemic for wild poliovirus: Afghanistan and Pakistan that reported less than 50 cases in 2025 — down from an estimated 350,000 cases annually in 125 countries when the initiative began in 1988.

NOTABLE ROTARIANS

Rotarians are your neighbors, your community leaders and some of the world’s greatest history-makers: 
  • Jimmy Carter, U.S. president
  • Gerald R. Ford, U.S. president
  • Warren G. Harding, U.S. president
  • John F. Kennedy, U.S. president
  • Ronald Reagan, U.S. president
  • Franklin D. Roosevelt, U.S. president
  • Woodrow Wilson, U.S. president
  • John Glenn, U.S. senator and American astronaut
  • Richard Lugar, U.S. senator
  • Jean Sibelius, Finnish composer
  • Dr. Charles H. Mayo, co-founder of Mayo Clinic
  • Guglielmo Marconi, Italian inventor of the wireless radio and Nobel laureate
  • Thomas Mann, German novelist and Nobel laureate
  • Friedrich Bergius, German chemist and Nobel laureate
  • Admiral Richard E. Byrd, American explorer
  • Jan Masaryk, foreign minister of Czechoslovakia
  • Jorge Mario Bergoglio, aka Pope Francis
  • H.E. Soleiman Frangieh, president of Lebanon
  • Neil Armstrong, American astronaut
  • Frank Borman, American astronaut
  • Edgar A. Guest, American poet and journalist
  • Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart
  • James Cash Penney, founder of JC Penney Co.
  • Carlos Romulo, UN General Assembly president
  • Sigmund Sternberg, English businessman and philanthropist
  • Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of England
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