BUENA PARK : Though 103, Group Still Lights City

The Buena Park Women’s Club, the oldest civic organization in the city, recently celebrated its 103rd birthday.

A member of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, the group lays claim to such milestones as getting the first city street lights installed and being the oldest women’s club in the state.

The club, now with 24 members, has spent countless hours over the years holding garage sales, baking cupcakes and making teddy bears to give to the needy. The charity has touched everyone from veterans to the handicapped to poor schoolchildren. And the group’s contributions are seemingly endless, community members say.

“It has been a very busy, busy club,” said Donna Bagley, club historian, while relaxing in the clubhouse’s sitting room. “It is all worthwhile for the simple reason we do things for the community.”

It started in 1889 when seven women gathered at a local home to do some sewing for a family who had been burned out of their home. Minutes were kept and bylaws created that are still a part of the group’s charter statement today.

One of the charter’s goals was “to render assistance to those in need, to promote sociability and good fellowship among members and the community in general.”

In fact, people taking a simple tour around town today can’t help but run into some of the group’s contributions.

Club members are credited with bringing light poles to Buena Park streets and paying the $1 a month in electric bills; talking their brothers and husbands into starting the volunteer fire department; starting the Girls Club, Parks System and Library District, and even leading the 1952 petition drive to make Buena Park a city.

Historian Bagley, who herself went door to door to gather petition signatures, said the club helped lead the cityhood drive not out of choice but necessity. “Fullerton would have annexed us and we would have been on the wrong side of the tracks,” she says with a laugh.

At a recent meeting, club members were still hard at work, but this time the talk centered on helping themselves. In the club’s adobe building with its hardwood floors and delicate French doors, club president Virginia Tobias informed members of the damage done to their clubhouse by termites and the other repairs now needed--at a cost of about $8,000.

Doing what they do best, the members decided to hold a luncheon next month to raise the money. Before the meeting ended, however, they also agreed to bake and deliver cupcakes to a local nursing home.

The women say it isn’t what they give that keeps them coming back, but what they get in return. “I love it. It is a part of my life,” said Helen Gagne of Fullerton, who joined in 1969. “The women in the club are my friends.”