Photograph courtesy of the Los Gatos History Club
Club officers in 1923 were (from left) Miss Emily Cohen, Mrs. Mary Gilbert, Miss Elizabeth Smith, Mrs. Seymour Roberts and Mrs. James Mason.
By Mary Ann Cook
The Los Gatos History Club celebrates its centennial this year and will start the New Year with an Open House on Jan. 22 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Clubhouse at 123 Los Gatos Blvd. Everyone is invited to help commemorate the town's oldest continuing club for women.
In recent years, the club has served the community more as a setting--the clubhouse is rented out for weddings, banquets and musical events--than as an enclave for the study of history and literature, as its founders intended.
But current president Jo Ann Stacy, herself a history buff, is set to initiate a turnaround in mission, a rededication to history, starting this year. She's already got the wheels turning with the reinstatement of the History Section of the club, which had been dormant for a number of years.
This year she expects that group to thrive again, to meet monthly, and to help plan future programs for the club. The history of Los Gatos and the history of the History Club are inextricably linked, one following the other and vice versa through the vagaries and changes of the past 100 years.
The History Club has been particularly in evidence where schools are concerned. Its members pushed for the bonds to make Los Gatos High School and the grade school on University Avenue (now Old Town Shopping Center) a reality. They were responsible for the lawn at the old grade school and were involved in the architectural plans for the high school.
The club annually gives a $1,000 scholarship to a Los Gatos High School senior. Need is the chief criterion, and disabled students are often chosen; the recipient can be male or female. Money from the History Club is also given each year to the music and drama departments of the high school, as well as to A Place for Teens.
Other recipients of the club's philanthropic spirit are Hospice of the Valley, CityTeam Ministries, Second Harvest Food Bank, Live Oak Day Care Center, and Next Door: Solutions to Domestic Violence. The Photographic Guild, the Art Docents and the Los Gatos Museum Association, too, are enriched by the club's generosity and successful fundraising projects.
The History Club is responsible for planting the tree in front of the post office (1923), the official town tree whose lighting ushers in the December holidays. This year its president threw the switch to light the tree.
And the History Club was chosen to lead the Christmas Parade in 1996, the first time an organization rather than an individual was chosen. Club members Marcella Starry, Mildred Foreman and Evelyn Lasley rode in Nicholas Muhlhauser's '55 Bentley to lead the parade. Thelma Rhinelander, 97, was named the official Christmas Parade Marshal, but health problems prevented her from participating. Other club members walked behind the Bentley.
A fitting walk, because the club itself originated with a walk. It seems several Los Gatos women met on their way to the library and began to talk about their interest in history and current events and how they wished they knew more about those subjects. It was decided then and there to start a club with that very purpose.
They met in each other's homes at first. There were six founding members, mainly doctor's wives. Elizabeth Urquhart is credited with being the founder, first hostess and first president of the club. A familiar name, Louise Van Meter, was one of the original half-dozen. The others were Nettie Gober, May Ellis, Emily Cohen and Mary McMurtry.
In the earliest years of the club's existence, members were assigned to study one country per year. Other subjects studied in the early years included literature, music, foreign affairs and politics, along with history.
A clubhouse was eventually built as the group grew. Land was purchased in 1907 and the building completed in 1908. Thanks to a generous loan from Miss Mills of $3,000 (without interest and with unrestricted payback time) members were able to finance the clubhouse through their own efforts, without depending on the financial aid of husbands, fathers or other family members. Club dues were $1 annually in the earliest years.
Throughout 1908, there was a great deal of discussion about whether rails or posts should be the preferred method of tying up horses in front of the clubhouse. The Mills loan was paid back by 1917 by dint of careful spending and fundraising efforts.
Club members could be considered early suffragettes, Stacy points out. Verbal battles raged beginning in 1910 about whether or not women should have the right to vote. Evidently, not all members were so enlightened as to be in favor of women's suffrage.
The present clubhouse dates from 1959, when the new building was completed. Alice Walker Berryman was president then, and she recalls it as a "big undertaking. Not only did the club have to go through all the planning procedure beforehand and the myriad of details of construction, there was also furniture to be purchased and landscaping to put in. It was quite a year for the club."
Recently both the sound and the lighting systems in the clubhouse have been updated. The club also owns the Victorian-style house in back of the clubhouse, which is rented out as a residence and is another source of income for the club's philanthropies. A smaller house is part of their property, too, and club caretaker Toby Barker lives in that one.
Besides education, another major focus for the club was supporting the war effort during World Wars I and II: The Los Gatos History Club served as an arm of the Red Cross during those years. Bandages were wrapped, and boxes of clothing and foodstuffs were sent to the Los Gatos boys serving overseas.
The day after Pearl Harbor, troops from the Coast Artillery took up stations in Los Gatos for fear of a Japanese invasion coming through the pass from Santa Cruz, reports Roberta Blake. Artillery with the ability to fire as far as Santa Cruz were lined up along University Avenue. They were howitzers, perhaps, Blake says.
Some 2,500 artillery men were sent here, to a town of perhaps 1,500 in those days. The History Club was used as a center for the men to congregate, write letters, and just hang out, much as USO operations sprang up elsewhere later. Coffee and cookies were continually supplied by the club.
Blake remembers those days vividly because she was 13 and her mother, Erna Heid, was president of the History Club then, from 1941 to 1943. When the Christmas meal was prepared for the troops at the History Club, a handful of women and their daughters were invited, too, and Blake and her mother were part of that event.
Though nary a shot was ever fired, the troops remained until late April. Blake remembers that History Club members hosted artillery men at their dinner tables on a regular basis. With the town's population suddenly swollen nearly double during those months, there were plenty of accommodations to be made by both civilians and military, and the History Club was at the forefront.
Although Blake is one of the most recent members of the club, she has considerable historical linkage. Her aunt, Helenita Binder, was also president. Binder served twice, from 1937 to 1939 and again from 1964 to 1965.
When Jean Libante was a schoolgirl, the club was virtually the only game in town.
"When I was in high school [in the '40s], it was the hub of everything," says Libante, who was president of the club from 1972 to 1973. "I can remember many happy times there. I think as a resource it has served the community wonderfully."
Today it's a different story. There are many more options for women now, and social clubs don't necessarily top their interest lists, as Berryman points out. Though the club's total membership is 111, a considerable number of those women are associate (inactive) members. Active members have to donate a prescribed amount of time to committee work, which is not that easily accomplished when so many travel far and often.
Back in the days when working outside the home was a rarity for women, especially women of means, there was a waiting list of several dozen for entry into the prestigious club.
True, potential members still have to be recommended for membership by a current club member. But membership fees are a reasonable $25 a year, and one doesn't have to be a Los Gatos resident to belong. Usually, just letting a member know you want to join will help elicit an invitation to join the club, Stacy says.
But late November brought seven new members into the Los Gatos History Club fold--an encouraging sign, Stacy believes, since membership chairmen in women's clubs throughout the country have an uphill recruitment battle these days.
Club president Stacy can certainly empathize. She didn't join the club until 1992, several years after she retired. She taught American history at Pioneer High School for 25 years. She also taught at Willow Glen High, Peter Burnett Middle School in San Jose and Branciforte Junior High in Santa Cruz, all three-year stints. And she taught drama some of those years.
In addition, she helped run Adorable Flowers, her family's floral business in Willow Glen, and went to night school. After she retired, the idea of joining the club became appealing. She met Rosalie Lincoln, now deceased, who issued an invitation to join, and she found that club member so infectious she couldn't resist.
Stacy's first efforts in the club were outside--in the garden. She and past president Fran Alfson planned and landscaped the Secret Garden, a small plot off the parking lot that had heretofore been overgrown. It's a treat for viewing now through the clubhouse northeast corner window, Stacy reports.
Renovations in landscaping the clubhouse grounds front and back have also been undertaken during her club tenure. "He who will, can" is the club motto, and Stacy seems to herself embody that saying.
"I love to create, to see results. I'm able to see people's gifts and strengths," Stacy says about her efforts to reinvigorate the club and to make the study of history once more a vital component.
"We don't always realize the talents right before us." She cites as an example Adrienne Avery, whose musicianship recently came to light. Avery will play the piano at the Centennial Open House on Jan. 22.
Other events on the program: Louise Van Meter children and the Los Gatos High School glee club will both perform. Alfson will describe the club's involvement with local schools throughout the years, and Stacy will give a historical glimpse of the club.
The mayor will offer a presentation to the club, members will be dressed in turn-of-the-century costumes, and centerpieces will be reminiscent of those used in pre-electricity days, heavy on the candelabra and flowers.
Besides Stacy and Alfson, other board members are Joanne Brice, rental chairwoman; Louise Segraves, treasurer; Marion Hegeman, second vice president; Betty Ulrich, first vice president; Gwen Davis, recording secretary; Evviva Schwaderer, auditor; Audrey Jones, photographer/historian; Mary Parish, corresponding secretary; Jean Krcik, publicity; Sara Morabito, newsletter; Joan Brown, ways and means; Mildred Smith, house chairwoman; Lillian Harley, Marian Kraii, Marcella Vandenburg and Adrienne Avery.
All of whom are there to ensure that the Los Gatos History Club continue contributing to the community with as much dedication, hard work and enthusiasm in its next 100 years as it has throughout its first 100.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, January 15, 1997.
©1997 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved .