All my life I have found groups to belong to, from Brownies
to Bingo.
I became a Brownie in second grade, wearing my brown,
starched uniform and my cute brown beanie and learning to recite the Brownie
promise and to make the Brownie sign. I don’t remember what we did during our
weekly meetings but we always ended by standing in a circle and singing Taps.
Later my friend’s mother organized a Girl Scout troop that
met weekly at thier house. Now we had green uniforms and hats and needed three
fingers for the Girl Scout sign. I was secretary of the troop and called
everyone on Monday evenings to remind them of our Tuesday meetings. By junior
high some girls had lost interest in scouts but a core group of about ten of us
remained. We had a wonderful Scout
leader named Anne, who invited all of us to her wedding.
Also In junior high, a group of seven girls met every
Saturday afternoon. We called ourselves
Tri-S for Seven Saturday Sisters. We played board games, played outside, went
to movies. We had fun.
In high school I belonged to a group called the Confederate
Club It was the brainchild of Don H. who loved the Old South. Can you imagine a
public school today allowing a group that paid homage to the Old South? A close-knit bunch, we had our own special
horn honk when we drove up to one another’s houses. On Friday nights we went to football games
together and afterwards rode around in Don’s station wagon. If you were the first ones to get in, you
could sit at the back with the rear door open and dangle your feet outside. That, of course, was long before seat
belts. For the spring parade we built a
float that displayed a huge mint julep.
I wore a red bathing suit and sat on the top. I needed a ladder to get up there. A Confederate flag flew from the station
wagon antenna. My sister likes to
remind me of my membership in the Confederate Club. She knows it makes me cringe, but it was
great at the time. We didn’t know any
better.
In college I pledged Sigma Delta Tau sorority, founded by
seven Cornell University students whose names we had to learn, but were easy to
remember in order because their first initials spelled out DAMGIRLs. I was the
chapter secretary my junior year. I loved my SDT friends.
.
After I graduated and got married, I joined the Emma Lazarus
chapter of Houston Hadassah. It was for
young women and at age 35, you had to join another chapter. (By the time I
reached that old age, I had left Hadassah behind and was pursuing my Master’s
in speech pathology). But in the early days of marriage, my life had revolved
around Emma Lazarus meetings and fund raisers.
One of my jobs was to be in charge of sales of Barton’s candy for
Chanukah and the candy became so popular that the manager of the apartment
complex we lived in would give me an empty apartment to store the candy shipments. Lori, by then around 3 years old, liked to
get out her toy telephone and say, “Hello, can you come to the ‘Dassah
meeting?” And yes, I served a stint as
secretary to the chapter.
During my ‘Dassah days my husband and I lived at Braesfield
apartments, 3822 North Braeswood. That
complex was demolished but in those days it was a chic place for young married
couples with children, and there were lots of us. The girls played bridge, went downtown for
lunch at Foley’s or Sakowitz on Fridays when our maids came, took our children
to the pool or for special dinners at a hamburger place in Westbury
Square. In the evenings when our
husbands were home, we’d all gather in the courtyard, talk and laugh. Eventually we bought our first homes and
moved on.
When I gave up Hadassah for speech therapy, I hung out with
other grad students and later when I worked at the Speech and Hearing
Institute, with colleagues there. At lunch we watched Jeaopardy, we went to
Texas Speech and Hearing conferences together and lobbyed the Texas legislature for licensure for
speech pathologists. After I started a
private practice, I became active in the Houston Association for Communication
Disorders and the Texas Speech and Hearing Association. One year
I was co-chair for TSHA’s Parents’ Night at the annual convention. Our job was to schedule a speaker for the
event. We tried in vain to get Anne
Glenn, wife of John Glenn. Anne was a
stutterer and we thought she’d be a big draw.
Unfortunately, she turned us down.
Later I was, of course, secretary of the Texas Speech and Hearing
Foundation and those of us on the board became close friends. We sponsored an awards dinner at the yearly
TSHA convention and the year I was in charge, I also won the door prize. I promise, the drawing was not a set-up.
Even though my life revolved around my family—husband and
three teenage children—I found time for a new interest and a new group. After
reading a book called Wishcraft: How to Get What You Really Want, I
decided I really wanted to write a romance novel. My first step was to join Romance Writers of
America. I wondered somewhat nervously about the people I would meet. . Would the members be silver-haired ladies
nostalgic about their long ago love affairs, or perhaps glamorous middle aged
women who wore silky negligees as they reclined on lounge chairs and dictated
sexy stories to their secretaries? Maybe
they would be poverty-stricken young women who sat at their kitchen tables
typing at old-fashioned typewriters in hopes of making the best seller
list. Since I fit none of those
categories, I wondered if I could possibly fit in. I found a group of average women, all of them
unpublished but hoping for sales. In
time, I joined a critique group with five other aspiring romance writers. We met every Friday night.
After I became a member of a group I never wanted to join,
The Society of the Recently Widowed, a chance purchase of a book about women
transitioning to a new stage of life, brought me to TTN, The Transition
Network. What luck! These were interesting women moving to new
stages of life. We met monthly, formed a
discussion group called Death, Dying and Dessert to discuss end of life issues,
and published an anthology titled Coping
with Transition: Men, Money, Motherhood
and Magic.
Another
speical group is the Friends of Marilyn.
When our dear friend Marilyn moved to Portland, Oregon, four of us drove her to the airport to say goodbye. Now we meet each year on July 5, Marilyn’s
birthday,, for a phone call or a Zoom meeting to catch up.
I belong to other groups as
well: a monthly group of speech
pathologists (Speech Ladies’ Lunch) a group that goes to dinner and InPrint
readins together, a group of retired speech pathologists that celebrates one
another’s birthdays, a canasta group, a bereavement group that became a lunch
group that turned into a Mah Jongg group that formed a daily Zoom group that
got us through the dark days of the pandemic.
And there’s the Bingo Bunch, about 20 Brazos Towers Residents that play
high stakes Bingo ($1.25 a card) on Saturdays nights. And, oh yes, a group of reisdents, one of
whom is a film critic, is organizing a movie group, The Brazos Towers Movie
Mob. That should be fun.
And of course, there is our
memoir group, who encourage one another to write about past experiences, hopes
and dreams, tragedies and triumphs. I
look forward to our Tuesday meeetings.
We never know what gems will emerge.
Groups
have inspired me, supported me, opened me to new ideas and experiences and
enriched my life. I’m forever grateful that I found
these friends.
