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Photo by Sarah Finnegan.
From left, New Era Study Club members Julie Stephens (2016 president), Juliet Beale (treasurer) and Mena Brock (current president) pose at the 100th anniversary celebration on April 20 at Mountain Brook Country Club.
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Photo by Sarah Finnegan.
In February 1917, a group of Birmingham-area women founded the New Era Study Club with the purpose of meeting together and broadening their learning.
More than 100 years later, the club is still going strong.
“Not that many women attended college at that time,” said President Mena Brock, “and World War I was going on at the time, so the world was kind of opening up. They just had an interest. They wanted to learn about what was going on in the world, so they formed this study club and presented papers to learn.”
Brock, whose grandmother was a founding member of the New Era Study Club,said the club has changed slightly over the years. In the original club, three papers were given at each meeting, and the group met weekly. Some popular topics in 1917 were the Russian revolt, the release of Siberianprisoners, poetry, drama and changingsocial conditions.
Today, the club meets twice a month between October and May, and one topic is presented per meeting. Their topics, however, continue to cover a wide range. A new topic is selected each year, with the centennial topic being 1917.
“We’ve done everything,” said member Yates Amason. “Lots of history, lots of art, culture, famous people.”
“Whatever strikes our fancy that year,” Brock said.
Members will alternate years of presenting and hosting, and they also have the option of finding a community member to present at the luncheon, rather than doing so themselves. In this case, they would find someone well-versed on the topic. “You try to think of what the theme is, that you were thinking about, and find a person that would be good at talking about that,” Amason said. Individuals can come from a local university or organization.
The group has 30 members, and all members must be matrons, or married women. They limit the number of members to ensure they can still fit in the parlor of someone’s home, Brock said, which allows for a closer-knit group and better chance for conversation. New members can join when a former member either dies or “goes associate,” meaning they do not have to give a paper, but can still attend meetings.
They have a wide range of ages, from 50 to 97, and the interaction of different age groups is one of the best benefits of the group, Amason said.
It allows people of different ages to interact in ways they would not outside of the group, Brock added.
“Well, you might cross paths, but it would be, ‘Oh, that’s my mother’s friend,’ but not ‘my friend,’ because we’re in this group,” Brock said.
To celebrate the group’s centennial, a seated dinner for members, their husbands and other family members was April 20. During the dinner, Brock gave a speech on the group’s founding, and design coordinator Leah Hazard helped create flower arrangements from flowers in members’ gardens.
Brock and Amason said while members of the group are older these years, with new members joining later in life due to work and family and members remaining an active part of the group longer, they expect the New Era Study Club to continue on for several years. The interest in general history and the ties members make back to their own families is still going strong, Yates said.
“You learn things about your own family and your family’s contemporaries that you didn’t even know,” she said.
