Once-burgeoning Tall Club is running short on membership

Long a refuge for tall people tired of standing out in public, the Tall Club of Orange County is now short on enrollment, members say, because of technology’s ability to connect those with like characteristics and a decrease in discrimination.

It wasn’t always this way.

The Fountain Valley-based club once attracted members from all over the county and, in the 1980s and ’90s, was the second-largest tall club in the country with 300 to 400 members, said longtime member Kathleen Johnson of Huntington Beach.

Fountain Valley resident Shirleen Murphy, who currently leads the group, said there are only about 15 active members.

The local club is a piece of a large international network of tall clubs that have provided members with years of memories and lasting relationships.

The history

Tall clubs owe their existence to Kae Sumner Einfeldt, who at 6 feet 3 founded the first club in 1938 after publishing an article in the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine detailing the trials of being tall.

At the time, she’d been working as a cartoonist for Walt Disney Studios and was ironically drawing dwarfs for “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”

Several people contacted Einfeldt after reading the piece. They all gathered at her home for what would be the first tall club meeting.

That single Los Angeles group swelled into the formation of multiple groups worldwide and Tall Club International, the parent organization that collects dues from each club. (Einfeldt died in 1996 at the age of 80).

There are about 50 tall club chapters in the United States and Canada, according to the TCI website.

Tall clubs require women to be at least 5 feet 10 and men to be at least 6 feet 2.

In the past, there was a stigma associated with height, especially for women, so the clubs acted as refuges, Murphy said.

“For the first time, I could be with a group of people where I wasn’t the tallest woman in the room,” said Murphy, who is just over 6 feet.

For many, the clubs are also seen as a way for singles to meet potential partners, said former member Lee Love, who lives in Huntington Beach.

The group organized a variety of events like dances, parties and beach volleyball, Love said.

Love said her grandparents met at a dance. Members talk of multiple marriages among the ranks.

Clubs hold beauty pageants, and the winners represent their local chapters annually at an international convention. Love and Murphy were both crowned Miss Tall OC.

Today there are no pageants or dances in Orange County because the club has dramatically scaled back.

The only vestigial remnant of the group is its seldom-active Facebook page.

The decline of a local chapter

When Murphy joined in 2006, there were about 70 members. Even then, the club was considered to be much smaller than in its heyday.

It’s dwindled to 15 members, and the group hasn’t met in over a year, Murphy said.

Since Murphy became the leader of the club a few years after joining , she’s been fighting to keep the club alive.

Murphy and Johnson said a lack of interest from younger adults explains the decline in membership.

Technology, and its filters for everything, easily connects people with certain characteristics. Murphy and Johnson believe Match.com and eHarmony provide an easier avenue for singles to meet.

Murphy met her husband on an online dating site.

And society has moved away from height-induced prejudices, they both said.

“It was very odd to be tall, especially for a woman,” Johnson said.

Murphy said other tall clubs have been able to maintain solid memberships. She hasn’t had any luck trying to attract younger members.

On the group’s Facebook page, former members commiserate over their inability to get their kids involved.

“Neither of our adult children are interested in tall clubs,” one post reads. “I urged them to look into it but neither did. So many wonderful times, relationships and marriages. I hope it does not die off.”

But the club isn’t finished yet, and its leader isn’t about to give up.

“I am not going to let the club die,” Murphy said. “It was so important to me, I just can’t do that. I will keep trying.”

benjamin.brazil@latimes.com

Twitter:@benbrazilpilot