Friendship Is The Real Study
Morning fog veils Lake Coeur d’Alene as the women arrive in thick-tread boots, wool gloves and down jackets.
Their table is ready, round and garnished with blue cloth napkins. The Dockside knows the drill. Sixteen women, every Thursday, side orders, generous tips.
“I think they draw straws in the kitchen for the one who has to take our order,” Betty McLain says, chuckling as she pours steamy coffee from a thermal pot.
By 7:45 a.m. the table is full and an invigorating energy begins to build. Good mornings grow into reading recommendations and penny drive promotions. Photographs of agile grandchildren pass between hands.
Everyone stands as Tatin McCrea, fresh from knee replacement surgery, arrives at the helm of a metal walker.
“I’m counting on you to take care of her after I leave,” Tatin’s daughter, Carol, tells the women needlessly.
Of course they will. This group has nurtured its own since their mothers formed it 70 years ago. Compassion is their legacy.
“Everybody needs a mothers club, a place where we can be totally loved and accepted,” says Betty Cheeley, a retired teacher. She’s met with these friends for 40-some years, almost every week.
The earliest recorded minutes date the Mothers Study Club to 1930. The founders wanted to be expert mothers, so they invited psychologists and doctors to teach them about child development over afternoon dessert.
While their Peggys, Bettys and Eleanors romped together in the Fort Grounds neighborhood alleys, these women absorbed ideas on potential, brain development and nutrition.
Twenty years later, their college-educated daughters entered the club. Friendships from the womb fueled the young mothers’ need to gather.
“We did away with the study part,” says retired college professor Betty McLain, who joined in 1951. “We wanted support from each other. We focused on fun.”
And then it fizzled, after 43 years. The president left her husband and town. No one took over.
The two Bettys resuscitated the club three years later. Their friends were teachers, pharmacists, nurses, authors. But they were friends first, and made time for weekly breakfasts.
Together, they analyzed husbands, birthed books, debated politics and subtly enlightened the community.
“We’re all opinionated,” Betty Cheeley says. “We’d solve all the town’s problems if they’d just come to us.”
Together, they buried family, fed the poor and retired.
“We’re crazy. I love these people,” says retired dietitian Sally Howell, the club comic. “They’re there for you.”
Which is a lesson for other generations, Betty Cheeley says as the women head off for volunteer jobs in food banks, churches and soup kitchens.
“Young girls need to come together,” she says between goodbyes. “These are my friends. We pray for one another.”
My Funny Valentine
Forget chocolates and flowers. Wrap your arms around your sweetheart this weekend and swing to the music of Sandpoint’s Swing Street Big Band.
These 18 musicians generate more energy than Dworshak Dam. And it goes straight from their instruments to dancers’ feet. Who can stand still to Benny Goodman’s “Sing, Sing, Sing” or the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies?
Swing Street’s Valentine bash draws big crowds. Music starts at 8 p.m. Saturday in Sandpoint’s City Forum. Tickets cost $15. Call 265-5353.