Men’s Clubs Go Way of Dinosaur : Women Bolster Membership Rolls, Put a New Spin on Goals

In the three years since the U.S. Supreme Court jimmied open the door to California’s all-male service clubs, women have torn it off the hinges, snapping up memberships and moving quickly into positions of power.

As they infiltrate the largest such clubs--the Lions, Rotary and Kiwanis--women are changing the character of the organizations, reviving previously neglected projects and dragging traditionally female concerns onto center stage. While it hasn’t always been easy for the old-timers, most members concede that women have injected spirit and revitalized dwindling membership.

In clubs once stalked by attrition, where members have been known to nod off after the flag salute and a rousing patriotic song, the women have provided an electroshock treatment of sorts. “It has,” said Larry Jenness of Laguna Niguel, a Rotarian since 1952, “revitalized us.”

A prime example of the change is found in Orange County, where 8% of Lions Club members are now women and seven clubs recently elected women presidents.

One Lions Club has female presidents lined up for the next three years. Women have taken “a big leap” in recent months, said Debbie Vanderwest of Buena Park, wife of Lions district governor Kurt Vanderwest. “They are,” she said simply, “moving up fast.”

The effects were felt immediately, as subtle as a silenced joke, as disconcerting as a single woman at a male banquet table. Eventually, members say, as women gain in numbers, they will accumulate power, deciding what gets done in their communities, across the country and around the globe.

Already, there has been a shift in projects. More time is being devoted to orphans, the homeless and battered women, members say. A Rotarian and former Parent Teacher Assn. president, Betsy Sater of Laguna Niguel, said school projects will benefit. Kiwanians who concentrate on helping youth now have “really a different outlook” when reaching out to girls, said former international President Frank di Noto of Newport Beach.

Sometimes, women say, men were blissfully unaware of pressing community needs. Laguna Niguel Lions knew nothing of the urgent demands on a nearby shelter for battered women until women members invited the director to a meeting, according to Gloria Kimmell, a club vice president.

“It was a woman’s idea, of course,” she said. “It deals with women’s issues.”

The 2-year-old Four Cities Kiwanis Club in Orange might not exist if it weren’t for Candace Dye, a 34-year-old nurse who helped form the group, envisioning it as a support system for children hospitalized at UCI Medical Center.

Like Bonnie Holmes, first female member of the Costa Mesa North Kiwanis Club, most women say they join service clubs for one reason--to give back to their community. Others admit they can gain professionally by plugging into groups that are known not only for community service and camaraderie, but also as a network of business contacts.

“Anybody that does business in the world today in a competitive industry who doesn’t think about international connections is limiting themselves,” said Maxene Johnston, who runs a Skid Row homeless shelter and is a member of the Rotary Club of Los Angeles, one of the world’s largest.

What they are not interested in, Sater said, is using membership to meet men, something wives of some club members feared three years ago.

“There was a vocal minority that said they were going to quit if the ‘girls’ were allowed to join--or their wives were going to make them quit--but none of that ever materialized,” said Bob Wood of the Newport-Balboa Rotary Club, where about 40% of the members are now women.

Added Fred Owens, a longtime member of the Costa Mesa North Kiwanis Club: “There were guys who said, ‘You get them in here and there’ll be hanky-panky, then there’ll be hell to pay.’ ”

Sater scoffed, “We’re not joining to meet men. These are businesswomen.”

There is more patronizing than womanizing behind closed doors of service club meetings, some members say. “It’s more of a, ‘Well, hello dear, you can sit next to me and I’ll show you the ropes.’ That sort of thing,” said Sherrie Laveroni, former member of the Monarch Beach Sunrise Rotary Club in South County. “It’s really kind of cute.”

When Joanne Yusi became the first woman to join the Laguna Niguel Rotary Club three years ago, most welcomed the 5-foot, 2-inch powerhouse. Only two or three members quit, she said, including the one who called her “dearie.”

“I’m a woman in business, and I don’t need to have somebody pat me on the head to let me know that I’m OK,” she said. “Maybe they were the unhappy ones. I prevailed.”

Many club members were eager to accept women before the Supreme Court heard the case in May, 1987, of how the Rotary Club of Duarte was dumped by Rotary International for going against the bylaws and admitting women. The court upheld a state law banning discrimination by any business establishment based on race, sex, religion or national origin.

The decision set off a chain reaction across the nation and has resulted in almost 80,000 women moving into the ranks of the Rotary, Lions and Kiwanis clubs worldwide. The surge translates into more money in the till and more volunteers for community service. Or, as one Rotarian put it, 22,000 more members means 44,000 more hands.

“Membership was basically flat,” said David Williams, a Kiwanis Club spokesman. “We weren’t losing any, but we were creeping along at about a (growth) rate of 1% a year.”

Regarding the women who have become Lions, spokesman Bob Kleinfelder said, “That’s 30,000 members we wouldn’t have had otherwise.”

While the Supreme Court took center stage, Mary Lou Phillips Lee, the first woman to join an Orange County service club, waited in the wings. Lee’s husband had been a member of the Anaheim Rotary Sunrise Club for 21 years before his death four years ago. A reluctant pioneer, Lee, 65, said she had no desire to “go in there and challenge a bunch of men.”

“I just thought, ‘Well, it might be a way my life could go on like it had been,’ ” the Anaheim resident said. “I think I was the right one to be the first woman in Orange County to join because I didn’t have an ax to grind.”

For Carole Bowman, the first female Laguna Niguel Lions Club member and now its president, membership also had the comfort of an old shoe. For years before the Supreme Court decision, Bowman said she attended meetings to help her boss, a bank president, remember what he promised to do at each meeting. “You know how they say, ‘OK, we’ll do this,’ and then come back to the bank and say, ‘Carole, you’ll do this.’ ”

A few miles away, Betty Pequet, a friend of both Bowman and Yusi, has taken the reins of the Monarch Beach Sunrise Rotary Club, which was chartered after the 1987 decision and where almost half the members are women. At a recent dinner, Pequet was the lone woman out of 56 district presidents. She was not intimidated, Pequet said, but she did try to blend in.

“If you’re smart, you sit back and listen unless you have something good to say,” she advised.

Some men were intimidated when women entrepreneurs began to filter into the Los Angeles Rotary Club, said member Tulley N. Brown. The men relaxed, Brown said, when they realized women had come not to compete but to contribute--and collect business contacts.

“A lot of the anxieties men had of giggly, titillating females were totally untrue,” La Crescenta resident Brown said. “These are dignified, concerned women who have caused all of us to believe we are all more people than we are men and women.”

It is not the first time in history that service club members have had to reckon with a powerful woman in their midst. When she was invited to speak at a Lions Club convention in Cedar Point, Ohio, 65 years ago, Helen Keller shaped the organization’s vision with a single speech.

Before a fraternity of faces she could not see, Keller challenged the service club, as yet unfocused, to commit to a specific goal. It should declare war on blindness, she said. She dubbed the men “knights” and called on them to “crusade against darkness.”

Keller closed her speech to a standing ovation and a move that she be named the first honorary female member. The motion had 100 seconds.

Most members say they have come to accept the changes of the past few years.

“In some clubs, you had raucous jokes and riotous parties that you don’t have today,” said Lion Clark Loomis, 77, of Laguna Niguel. “They (did) get a little bit out of hand sometimes.”

Added Lion Jim Manzi, 77, of Laguna Niguel: “Yea, we cleaned up our act a little bit, but I think on balance, we have a much more entertaining and sparkling kind of meeting (now). Of course, it was strange to a person like me, after serving 36 or 37 years with a group of guys.”

During a rowdy noontime meeting recently, men from Costa Mesa North Kiwanis Club, which will have a woman president next year, traded playful barbs with the five female members. Relieved that the men had not frightened off a female visitor, one woman pitched “happy bucks” into a collection jug. “It’s like having lunch with a bunch of kids,” she said.

Women who have come to expect acceptance in local clubs say it can be intimidating to attend other clubs while traveling. When she called a Rotary Club in Strasbourg, France, Laveroni said she was flatly rejected as a guest.

“They said they would love it if Mr. Laveroni wanted to attend. I said, ‘Well, he’s not a Rotary member. I’m the Rotary member.’ They said, ‘It’s nice of you to call, but we really aren’t receptive to your presence.’ I thought they were kidding.”

When visiting Jamaica, Yusi said her Rotary badge did little to soften members of the all-male Montego Bay Club.

“A couple of English fellows came up to me and said, ‘This is only in your country; this will never happen in our country.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s why I live where I live.’ ”

Before they gained entree, women who wanted to contribute to service clubs could become a Lioness, Rotary-Ann or Kiwanianne--auxiliary groups often filled with service club wives. After the Supreme Court decision, one Irvine Lioness club boldly rewrote its charter and became the Irvine-Tustin Evening Lions Club.

“Our club was run by very strong women, very active women,” said current President Mary Santandrea of Chino. “They didn’t want to be second-class citizens anymore.”

Not all clubs have opened their doors to women. Robert Abel of Trabuco Canyon, past president of the Coto de Caza/Trabuco Canyon Rotary Club, said it hasn’t been an issue yet for the club. “I think within the next few years, we’ll definitely--probably--have women in the club,” he said.

No women have applied.

Los Angeles Rotarian Maxene Johnston struck a cautious note in talking about the future of women in service clubs. Some women have begun to question “traditional behaviors,” such as how money is donated and how priorities are set, she said. During the transition, Johnston said, it’s wise to consider the values of both tradition and change.

“It’s really not easy to forecast it out too far,” she said. “I think people are pretty mindful and respectful of the evolutionary nature of what we’re going through.”

Tradition and change are well-represented in the Costa Mesa club, where Fred Owens and his 27-year-old daughter, Erin Zachary, are members. Owens said he always hoped his six daughters would be interested in community service. Now he’s proud that Zachary is a Kiwanian.

Growing up, Zachary remembers the Kiwanis as “always kind of my dad’s thing.” Her husband has considered joining, but Zachary said she discourages the idea.

“Friends always ask, ‘Don’t you want your husband to join?’ I say, ‘No, it’s my thing.’ ”