But most of the current 14 members retain the ties to agriculture that were the common bond of the 14 original Foothills Club farm wives back in 1918.
“There are days when some of us will still come in with our hair messed up or manure on our boots,” Shirley Eye says. “But we still get here.”
Well, there was one time, ages ago, when a blizzard kept everyone home.
“But that was back before there was four-wheel drive,” Eye says. “Blizzards don't stop us now.”
On Saturday, the women will celebrate the 90th anniversary of that first meeting - held on Sept. 7, 1918 - with a tea.
Some things have changed since 1918. Married women, for instance, seldom go by their husbands' full names anymore, like they did when Mrs. Bert Lish founded the St. Ignatius Foothills Country Club for farm wives who lived in the shadow of the Mission Mountains.
The club's name originated before there was ever a golf course in Montana. When “country club” came to imply something else, the “country” was dropped from the service and social organization's title.
And, Eye admits, “now it's more social than service.”
That's because the average age of club members today is 75 (the oldest, Edna Wheeler, turns 98 on Oct. 15) and there's a limit to how much community work they can do.
Still, the club helps to send St. Ignatius High School's delegate to Girls State each year and contributes to projects at the Senior Center where they meet.
But some things haven't changed. They recite the club's creed, a prayer by Mary Queen of Scots, and the Pledge of Allegiance at every meeting.
And they play cards - a game called “500” - that has been a staple at every meeting since 1918.
“It's sort of a combination of pinochle and bridge,” says Foothills member Peg Johnson, and it was considered the most popular trick-taking card game of its day.
Bridge supplanted it in the 1920s, but the women of the Foothills Club have stood by 500 for nine decades.
Indeed, it served as something of a litmus test for potential new members.
Club members would teach the complicated game to prospective newcomers who didn't know the rules, and then they would be invited to three meetings.
At the third meeting, after everyone had a chance to see how the newcomer acted, reacted and interacted during the previous card games, the nominee would be asked to leave the room.
The ladies then voted on whether to let them in.
Eye, a member for 27 years, says she was told long ago that, of the 155 women who have belonged to the Foothills Club over the past 90 years, there was only one the membership got wrong.
“When she died - or no, I think they said she moved - everyone went, ‘Whew, we won't have to put up with her anymore,' ” Eye says. “But they never betrayed her, they never said who she was.”
The Foothills women did away with the card-playing rite of passage - though not the card game itself - 20 years ago when she joined, Johnson says.
“Someone at my first meeting said, ‘For heaven's sake, let's just vote her in,' and they did,” Johnson says.
In its heyday, the Foothills Club had 50 members and owned its own clubhouse, called the Equity House, which the club let the community use for everything from high school dances to wedding and funeral receptions.
“We put on big dinners and dances, and helped anyone who needed assistance,” says Wheeler, who joined the club in 1937 and has been a member for 71 years.
The sale of Equity House, which later burned, decades ago allowed the club to invest in certificates of deposit that have helped the women continue to help the community without a rash of bazaars and bake sales.
The social side of the Foothills Club goes beyond card games.
Every three or four months, members put on a special event. On Oct. 1, for instance, there's the annual Harvest Supper, which has gone on “since time began,” Eye says, and family and friends are invited to a feast prepared by the women.
There's a Christmas party, and a June event for husbands only that, Karen Krantz says with a laugh, draws few husbands nowadays.
“Originally they did it to give the husbands a chance to visit,” Johnson says. “It used to be rainy in June, and they were usually able to come.”
But weather patterns have changed, and the husbands are often hard at work in the fields. The women still hold the event, though.
And with every meeting comes lunch. The 14 members pair up in groups of two and take turns providing the meal. This week's menu was lasagna, green beans with bacon, pistachio salad, cottage cheese, homemade rolls with huckleberry jam, lemon meringue pie, plus coffee and punch.
“Don't print that or our husbands will see it,” Johnson says.
“We just open a can of soup or chili for our husbands for lunch,” Eye explains.
For decades, the club's bylaws had two requirements of members.
“You had to be a farmer's wife,” Johnson says, “and you had to live east of the highway.”
The women have no idea why a farmer's wife on the west side of what is now U.S. Highway 93 couldn't join, but they say the rule was strictly enforced. One former member, Wilma “Toots” Brooks McCollum, who died last year at 98, was ineligible for membership for years until she moved from one side of 93 to the other.
Today, President Joan Krantz says, members are more concerned with seeing the club continue into its second century. You don't have to be a farmer's wife, and you don't have to live on one side of Highway 93 - you don't have to even live in the country - to join.
You just have to be someone who enjoys getting together twice a month for a great lunch and some spirited games of 500.
But you still have to be a woman.
Reporter Vince Devlin can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or at vdevlin@missoulian.com.
Celebration
The St. Ignatius Foothills Club's 90th anniversary celebration is Saturday. The public is invited to a tea at the St. Ignatius Senior Citizen Center from 1 to 4 p.m.
Then and now
The original 14 members of the St. Ignatius Foothills Club, back in the day when married women were identified by their husbands' full names:
- Mrs. Joe Allard
- Mrs. Oscar Box
- Mrs. Theo Cunningham
- Mrs. P.E. Delaney
- Mrs. Ben Detert
- Mrs. Jeff Frazier
- Mrs. Andy Johnson
- Mrs. George Lindsay
- Mrs. Bert Lish
- Mrs. Joe Newton
- Mrs. Will Phillips
- Mrs. Louis Posivio (Johnson)
- Mrs. J.G. Phillips
- Mrs. George Spooner
The current 14 members:
- Esther Bick
- Mary Bick
- Shirley Eye
- Peg Johnson
- Kay Kelly
- Joan Krantz
- Karen Krantz
- Lila Faye Krantz
- Ruth Krantz
- Verna Krantz
- Gerry McVey
- Inez Pounds
- Dorothy Roseleip
- Edna Wheeler
The club creed
The Foothills Club creed, written by Mary Stuart, aka. Mary Queen of Scots, has been recited by members at the start of every meeting for 90 years:
Keep us, O God, from pettiness, let us be large in thought, in word, in deed.
Let us be done with fault-finding, and leave off self-seeking.
May we put away pretense and meet each other face-to-face, without self-pity and without prejudice.
May we never be hasty in judgment, and always generous.
Let us take time for all things, make us grow calm, serene, gentle.
Teach us to put into action our better impulses, straight-forward and unafraid.
Grant that we may realize that it is the little things of life that create differences; that in the big things of life we are one.
And may we strive to touch and to know the great common women's heart of us all.
And, O Lord, let us not forget to be kind.
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Jerry Roseleip wrote on Sep 12, 2008 7:19 PM: