What’s Up? with Merlene

If you are looking for a women’s club with members who are concerned with shopping trips, beauty tips, and parties, the Suburban Woman’s Club of Lexington, Inc., is not for you.
“These are people who roll up their sleeves and get to work,” said Joanna Walsh, first vice president in charge of membership.
When I called Wednesday looking for members who would talk to me about the club’s 50th anniversary celebration, I couldn’t find a soul. I left phone messages and e-mails all over town.

Members of the Suburban Woman

Come to find out, a group of the women had traveled to a member’s home in Richmond to make tote bags and bracelets for the 17 women veterans at the Thomson-Hood Veterans Center in Wilmore.
Typical.
In the half century since it became a charter member of the Kentucky Federation of Women’s Clubs and the National Federation of Women’s Clubs, the Suburban club has won national recognition for its initiatives.
Each president has selected a major community project to push for.
One such project was Ask Us, Inc., an informational referral service club members started in Lexington in 1974. That project won national recognition for the club.
Another was Milk Maid, which featured club members volunteering to pick up pumped breast milk and deliver it to the University of Kentucky and Central Baptist hospitals.
And currently, in addition to the handmade gifts for the women veterans, members of the group visit local schools to teach students about the Great Seal of the United States.
The latter is a favorite project of former council woman Ann Ross, who is one of the founding members of the Suburban Woman’s Club. “We talk about how it was designed and why it was created,” she said. “It requires a lot of study.”
Ross joined the group when it was a few women who met once a month to play cards and eat dessert, she said. Once a year the women would hold a fund-raiser and give the money to charity.
But Ross said she and other members wanted more. They wanted to be affiliated with the Kentucky Federation of Women’s Clubs and with the National Federation of Women’s Clubs.
With help from members of the Metropolitan Women’s Club, they were chartered with the state, Ross said. Only the Lexington Women’s Club, Metropolitan and Suburban have that distinction in Lexington, she said. In 1966, they achieved a national charter.
When Virginia Baldwin joined and became president in 1971, the annual tour of horse farms began as a huge undertaking but great fund-raiser for the group, Ross said. All told, the club has probably given back nearly a million dollars to the community, she said.
The money raised has funded projects that affect the lives of women and families, Walsh said.
Some of the beneficiaries of that help, former members, and past presidents have been invited to attend a celebration of the club’s 50 years of community involvement on Nov. 4.
I may have been a beneficiary of the club’s $1,000 scholarship for non-traditional female students at the University of Kentucky. I received one for that amount in 1980 when I returned to UK at age 29.
The club’s scholarship was aimed at helping women age 25 and older who were full-time undergraduate students. I fit that description, but I don’t recall the name of the scholarship I received.
Clubs that continue to be viable in an era in which women are returning to school and holding down full-time jobs while maintaining a family are getting scarce, Ross said, especially in these trying economic times.
“A lot of women don’t join clubs any more,” she said. “They are abandoning community organizations like this.”
Walsh joined a couple of years ago after taking a horse farm tour and sitting in on a few meetings, she said.
“I was struck by the quality of the tours,” Walsh said, “and also by the women who were doing all this work in their free time and that they were so knowledgeable.”
She said she also liked that the meetings were set with agendas, parliamentary procedures and reports. The women got things done.
The 50-year celebration was suggested right when the women already had full plates, but they nonetheless have wholeheartedly helped out, Walsh said.
Helping is what they are all about.
If you would like more information about the Suburban Woman’s Club, call Walsh at (859) 296-4299.