Surrey Toastmasters Club 2590

Dr. Ralph C. Smedley Founder of Toastmasters

Condensed from Toastmasters International site

Toastmasters originated in Orange County 75 years ago.

Toastmasters was the brainchild of a Midwesterner named Ralph C. Smedley. In 1903, after graduating from Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois, Smedley took a job as director of education for the local Young Men's Christian Association. Realizing that the older boys who visited the YMCA needed training in communication, he began a public speaking club.

Smedley called his group, "The Toastmasters Club" because the activities resembled a banquet with toasts and after-dinner speakers. Smedley's club blossomed, but soon he was promoted to general secretary of the YMCA and transferred to Freeport, Illinois. After his departure, the Bloomington club died.

In the following years, Smedley organized other Toastmasters clubs wherever he was transferred. Subsequent clubs in Rock Island and San Jose, California, suffered the same fate.

Once more he organized a Toastmasters club, holding the first meeting in the Santa Ana YMCA basement on October 22, 1924. In Southern California's optimistic climate, the concept caught on. Smedley was quick to help them organize their own Toastmasters clubs. The new clubs were united in a federation designed to coordinate their activities and ensure uniform methods.

In 1932, the federation was incorporated as Toastmasters International, following the establishment of a club in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada. Districts were created later, as the number of clubs increased.

Somehow Smedley managed to find time to spread the gospel about Toastmasters, serving as its executive secretary and editor of The Toastmaster magazine, while also maintaining his busy YMCA schedule..

By 1941, Smedley realized that Toastmasters needed his full-time attention. He resigned from the YMCA and opened a 12-by-16-foot office in a downtown Santa Ana bank, with a desk, typewriter, telephone and second-hand address machine. He hired a secretary to handle the correspondence while he wrote materials for the club's use.

Toastmasters continued to grow. The single-room office expanded to four, and past international president Ted Blanding took over the position of executive secretary, while Smedley became educational director and concentrated on learning processes and materials.

Smedley was involved in the educational program of Toastmasters International until shortly before his death in 1965 at the age of 87.