Leeds Ruritan
Fellowship, Goodwill, and Community Service for Leeds Parish.
About
Leeds Ruritan is a membership based club focused on fellowship, goodwill, and community service. Leeds Ruritan has been around since 1949. We serve the Markham, Hume, and Orlean, VA communities through trash pickup, the Hume Park, and Hume Day. We also serve young people through the gift of college scholarships.
LEEDS RURITAN
Ruritan National has nearly 30,000 members throughout the United States that work to improve more than 1,100 local communities. Since the organization’s beginning in 1928, Ruritan Clubs have served America with Fellowship, Goodwill, and Community Service. Ruritan is a civic organization made up of local clubs in urban areas, small towns and rural communities. Ruritan’s purpose is to make America’s communities better places in which to live and work through community service. The slogan of Ruritan is “Fellowship, Goodwill and Community Service.” Club membership represents a cross-section of the community in which the club serves, and is not restrictive with regard to occupation, social position, or any other specific criteria. Unlike most civic service organizations, Ruritan rarely has national programs. Rather, each club surveys its own community as to the needs of that community and then works to meet some of those needs.
WHAT IS A RURITAN?
The first Ruritan Club was chartered May 21, 1928, in Holland, Virginia. Since that first club, Ruritan has grown throughout the United States of America, and in doing so, has become "America’s Leading Community Service Organization." Tom Downing of Suffolk, Virginia, and Jack Gwaltney of Holland, Virginia, are known as the co-founders of Ruritan. Gwaltney and Downing recognized the need for an organization where community leaders could meet and discuss ways to make their community a better place in which to live.
The name "Ruritan" was suggested by Daisy Nurney, a reporter for the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot newspaper, and the club’s charter members unanimously adopted "Ruritan" as the organization’s name. The word is a combination of the Latin words for open country "ruri" and small town "tan," interpreted as pertaining to rural and small town life.