Northwood News ♦ October 2013

52-Year Run for Social ‘Northwood Women’s Club’

By Jacquie Bokow

Their bylaws declared that their object would be “to unite women for the purpose of mutual benefit and interest in educational, civic, social, philanthropic, and moral measures for individual and community efficiency.”  The members of the Northwood Women’s Club took this goal to heart, often holding social events that raised money for charity.

According to Ginny Moats (Kerwin Road), three women — Lila Bartlett (Edgewood Avenue), Doris Gallagher (Ordway Drive), and Shirley Hamilton (Ordway Drive) — belonged to the Silver Spring Junior Women’s Club which, in the late 1950s, had a regulation that members could only belong until they turned 35 years of age.  “Those girls didn’t want to join the [Silver Spring] women’s club with all those old ladies,” said Moats, “so they decided they would start their own club.  So they got in touch with ladies in the neighborhood.”

First organized in 1959 with 14 charter members (including Moats and my own mother, Mif Cochran), the club’s long-term support of various heart groups made the members decide in 1983 to call themselves “The Club With a Heart.”  By 1990 the club had 35 active members.

At the beginning, they met at each others’ homes, then at Marvin Methodist Church, then at the rec center.  Their newsletter, the “Northwood Notes,” came out monthly from September through May, when the club met.

“We met once a month,” said Moats, “and we had speakers.  We did a lot of craft things, we could take ballroom dancing (the men came for that), and a couple of bridge groups, one with the husbands, and the other group with just ladies.  Then we always did some charitable things.  We had a card party once a year as a fund raiser.”

In the club’s early years, the members would meet in the evenings; in later years, as the women grew older, they started daytime meetings.  Once a year, in the spring, the club had a luncheon someplace special, like Argyle Country Club or Normandy Farms restaurant.

“We always had a special Christmas meeting,” said Moats.  “Good speakers, too, sometimes.”

The club finally disbanded in 2011 after 52 years.  Why did it cease to exist?  Moats attributed it to attrition.

“Everybody has died or moved away,” she said.  “We had so few people.  [Members] had moved to Leisure World, and we didn’t get any new members.  People brought in their friends there, [but] it was no longer local.  People get older and they don’t do that anymore.”

Stay-at-home parents will understand what the club did for them.

“It was a social outlet for us,” she said.   ■