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The Lotos Club
of banquets dedicated to leaders of the civilized world is probably longer in duration than any other in the United States. Commencing in 1872, the Club has since paid homage to such luminaries as Mark Twain, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ulysses S. Grant, William Howard Taft, Charles Evans Hughes, Woodrow Wilson, John I. Pershing, Enrico Caruso, John Galsworthy, Herbert Hoover, Andrew W. Mellon, George M. Cohan, Katharine Cornell, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammer- stein II, Harry S Truman, Lily Pons, Robert Penn Warren, Robert Merrill, Benny Goodman, Margaret Mead, Francis Cardinal Spellman, Linus Pauling, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Edmund Hillary, Nelson Rockefeller, Helen Hayes, Saul Bellow, John Hersey, Leonard Bernstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Arthur Miller, Frank Gehry, Renée Fleming, John Glenn, Yo-Yo Ma, Christopher Plummer, Dave Brubeck and Alan Gilbert, to name some who have been guests of honor.
The 1922 State Dinner for operatic soprano Mary Garden was the rst to honor a woman. This was followed with dinners for Laurette Taylor, Amelia Earhart, Dorothy Thompson, Helen Traubel and Dame Maggie Teyte.
The Club celebrated its Centennial in 1970 with a year-long program, including two Centennial Dinners. The rst was held in April 1970 and
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