Six-decade Rotarian

Andrew Edwards

After six decades of volunteer work, Newport Beach’s Earl Fusselman

still takes time to help out.

Fusselman, 87, is a longtime member of the Rotary Club -- he

joined the organization in 1944 after his discharge from the Army --

and is also a volunteer with the Newport Beach Police Department.

“What can you say about a guy like that?” Rotarian Frank F. Mead

III said. “He just keeps going forever.”

Fusselman served in the Army for four years and rose to the rank

of captain. During World War II, he was stationed stateside and

worked in the quartermasters corps, training units that would be sent

overseas.

He left the service after he contracted a grave illness from a rat

bite at a base near Phoenix, Fusselman said.

He recalled that he was so sick that Army officials told his

family members that there would not be enough time for them to visit

him at the hospital.

The grim prognosis was off the mark, however, and Fusselman

bounced back. After discharge, he started his own dry-cleaning

operation in Bell, where a neighboring businessman introduced him to

the Rotary Club.

“I just got out of the Army, and I was in the dry-cleaning

business, and a man from the hardware store down the block invited me

to join the Rotary Club,” Fusselman said.

As a Rotarian, Fusselman’s community- service projects have aided

the Meals on Wheels and hospice care programs, Mead said. Fusselman

has also traveled abroad to help start Rotary Clubs.

“It took me around the world,” Fusselman said. “I’ve visited 15 to

20 clubs outside the United States, and I’ve gotten to meet some

wonderful people.”

In the late 1940s, Fusselman journeyed to Cuba to encounter

Rotarians in Havana. At the meeting, Fusselman was impressed by the

lengths they went to in order to make sure everyone could understand

each other.

“I’ll never forget that,” he said. “They had a microphone and an

interpreter for every language that was there.”

Fusselman came to Newport Beach in 1965 and joined the

Newport-Balboa Rotary Club, where he was a member for 15 years before

switching to the Newport Irvine branch. In 1999, he was part of the

first class to graduate from the Newport Beach Police Department

Citizens’ Police Academy.

He now helps police by checking on vacationers’ homes, ticketing

drivers who park in handicapped parking spaces and helping out any

way he can, Sgt. Steve Shulman said.

“Anything that he does, he does with great enthusiasm,” Shulman

said.