Mission & History of the RMHUC
The RMHUC has a long history of promoting community through educational, social, and volunteer activities that advance the mutual welfare of Harvard alumni and the University.
The RMHUC's mission is to engage and connect Harvard alumni from across Colorado and Wyoming, and to host educational, social, and volunteer activities to create a community where personal connections, service contributions, and life-long learning come together to benefit our members and our society. Among other activities, the Club organizes numerous speaker and volunteer events and conducts over 500 interviews of applicants to the College each year.
The Club was established on February 11, 1886 at a meeting of alumni in the Albany Hotel in Denver (1720 Stout Street, where the Johns Manville Plaza currently sits.) The following day, the Denver Tribune-Republican published an article about the creation of the Club. The Harvard Crimson also published an article about it the following week.
The RMHUC has preserved other details of its history as well. An article from an 1890 issue of The Harvard Crimson writes of the Club's fifth annual banquet. And here is a menu from the eleventh annual banquet at the Brown Palace Hotel in 1896.
The Club was legally incorporated in Colorado as a "corporation not for pecuniary profit" on March 18, 1916, by Willard Lewis Fales, Joseph D. Hitch, Lawrence Lewis, Ralph S. Pitts, and Ralph E. Boothby. In order to take advantage of the Colorado Nonprofit Corporation Act of 1973, the Articles of Incorporation were amended and restated in 1980. An amendment in June 1983 changed the name to "The Rocky Mountain Harvard University Club."
If you like playing "historical detective," we'd love your help in researching and filling in more details of the Club's history. Just reach out and let us know!
Additional History of the formation of the Club History