About Us

George Landau was feeling a bit lonely in the early 1970s. His family was new to Tiburon, and he was a stay-at-home dad who didn’t know anyone, so he was craving adult company. Frequently, the local newspaper, The Ebbtide, ran profiles of people he found interesting, so he started inviting them to lunch at his house, and little by little, the network grew into a kind of salon for businessmen. One day in 1977, lawyer Joe Giacomini and retired educator Wally Hall, whom he didn’t know and hadn’t invited, showed up and announced they wanted to start a Rotary club. Everyone had heard about Rotary, but nobody was a Rotarian, and “When Wally and Joe gave us the nitty-gritty and asked if we were interested, we asked, ‘When do we start?’” Landau recalls. And that was the beginning of the Rotary Club of Tiburon-Belvedere.

The first meeting was at the Tiburon Lodge on June 27, 1977, and “All the people from my salon showed up,” said Landau. “We had our first meeting. We were all considered charter members. We were committed to the program.” The Rotary Club of Mill Valley was the club’s sponsor, and the late Giacomini had been a member of the Rotary Club in Fortuna, and so “We unanimously made him president,” said Landau. The late Hall was primarily interested in Rotary’s mission, and he went on to have perfect attendance for 50 years. Landau who had traveled to many parts of the world on business became international chair, and he arranged home-stays for exchange students and hosted Rotarians visiting from other countries on Group Study Exchanges. “It has been a very good experience, beyond having tea and showing people Tiburon and Belvedere,” he said.

The club’s first project was buying a used van for Elizabeth Terwilliger, the late naturalist and environmental educator, so she could transport the materials she used for her wildlife presentations. The club’s largest project in the early years was building the access ramp to Elephant Rock on the Tiburon shoreline, and it did it twice, because the water washed away the first one. The late Hank Bruce, an architect who was a charter member, designed the first bus shelter in downtown Tiburon, and the club also provided scholarships for low-income children to attend Angel Island Day Camp.

Over the years, the club’s mission has been constant—to make the world a better place, both at home and abroad—and that’s what drew Linda Emberson, who is a past President, to Rotary. “I joined Rotary, because I wanted an easy way to volunteer and give back to my community,” she said. What makes it even more compelling is Rotary’s commitment to the worldwide eradication of polio. “I am old enough to remember lining up to take oral vaccine when I was in grammar school. I have seen people afflicted by this entirely preventable disease,” she said, observing that her donations will help Rotary reach its goal in her lifetime. “It doesn’t get more meaningful than that,” she said.

The Rotary Club of Tiburon-Belvedere celebrates its 48th anniversary on June 27, 2025, and as it approaches the half-century mark, the good work will continue. Fresh faces bring new ideas, and change is a given, but the intent is always the same: Rotary’s motto, Service Above Self.

Marin Independent Journal, Rotary Clubs of Marin, July 2017