“MARION WOMEN’S CLUB HOSTING
OLD-FASHIONED ICE CREAM SOCIAL JULY 19”
The Marion Women’s Club is celebrating summer as it has for more than 100 years – with an Old-Fashioned Ice Cream Social 2–4 p.m. Sunday, July 19, as part of the local America 250 “Red, White & YOU” weekend.
The Women’s Club property, located at 1126 E. Center St., will be filled with lawn games for children and adults, live music, tours, displays, community organization booths, and historic reenactors – with guests receiving a free scoop of made from-scratch ice cream from Marion’s Riverside Dairy Truck.
“We’re grateful to have been awarded a grant from Marion Community Foundation’s America 250 Committee,” said Valerie Wigton, Women’s Club president. “The grant will allow us to provide a free sweet treat to each guest.”
Local nonprofit organizations providing individual children’s hands-on activities include Altrusa Club of Marion, 100 Women Who Care, Huber Machinery Museum, and Marion Public Library.
Women’s Club-sponsored ice cream socials are nothing new. “It’s a longtime tradition we can trace as far back as 1913, when members held an ice cream social to raise money for a park at the original Harding High School,” explained Keily Cunningham, Club archivist and co-chair of the event, who is cataloguing the Club’s archives that date back to 1895. “Then in 1931, at the height of the Depression, Club members hosted an ice cream social fundraiser in response to a request by City child welfare workers to buy milk for undernourished babies here in our community.”
Similar events took place through 2009, according to research in the Club’s archives.
Historic lawn games, with instruction provided by Club members, will include egg & spoon races, croquet, badminton, hopscotch, and a “buzz saw” game in which players swing a disc in a circular accordion-like in-and-out motion to keep the buzz saw (disc) spinning indefinitely.
“We researched games that could have been played here on the historic lawn over the last century,” added Cunningham, co-chair of the Club’s History, Museum & Preservation Committee which is coordinating the community event. “Guests also can ‘meet’ Ida & Shauck Barlow (portrayed Deb Stark and Bruce Cudd), who built the Women’s Club Home back in 1903 and donated it to our Club in 1945.”
Strolling alongside the Barlows will be Marion County Historical Society members portraying numerous historical figures including President Warren G. Harding (Scott Rankin), Chief Justice William Howard Taft (Kent Halloran), Ava King Brown, wife of W. Hoover Brown, founder of Wyandot Popcorn Co. (Marianne Brammell), Suffragette Betts Mounts (Phyllis Hendrix), and LaRue-born Congressman Grant Mouser (Fred Malone), among others.
Marion Women’s Club Member Mary Ellen Withrow, 40th Treasurer of the United States, will visit with guests inside the air-conditioned Abigail Harding Lewis Auditorium, where historic quilts will also be on display.
Guests can also stroll through the first floor of the Barlow Home, as well as the recently renovated carriage house, now the Women’s History Resource Center, where the Club’s archives are safely stored. Women’s Club archival information is available by request: MarionWomensHistory@gmail.com.
To kick off the event on the front lawn at 2 p.m., the Daughters of the American Revolution-Capt. Wm. Hendricks Chapter will conduct a dedication ceremony of the Women’s Club new flagpole and United States and State of Ohio flags and singing The Star-Spangled Banner.
Live music by Marion Music Club and Marion Concert Band will entertain guests throughout the afternoon.
Although some seating will be provided beneath the century-old oak-tree canopy on the Women’s Club property, guests are encouraged to bring their own lawn chairs.
Parking is free, with additional space provided next door at AgCredit and DeWolfe Place (rear parking lot).
