Valley View Women’s Club, clubhouse share decades of celebrations
Nicole Tavenner
Friends and family gather to celebrate the 90-year anniversary of Valley View Women’s Club in the 75-year-old clubhouse.
Nicole Tavenner
Ninety years of memorabilia prompts neighbors to share nostalgic stories.
Nicole Tavenner
K.C. and the Valley Cats provide dance music at the Valley View Clubhouse Saturday night.
Nicole Tavenner
For 75 years, the Valley View Clubhouse has provided a meeting place for social events.
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Hey savvy news reader! Thanks for choosing local.
You are now reading
1 of 3 free articles.
On a curvy road in Valley View is the 75-year old Valley View clubhouse, surrounded by big cottonwoods, pastures full of cows and blue sky.
In that clubhouse, the Valley View community has celebrated and mourned, holding baby showers, dances, funerals, Easter egg hunts, weddings, school plays, potluck dinners, teas, Christmas programs and pitchfork fondues.
On Saturday night, Nov. 8, the Valley View Women’s Club commemorated its 90 years of existence and the 75th birthday of the clubhouse with a potluck dinner and a dance with KC and the Valley Cats playing.
Both the club and the clubhouse are big pieces of life in Valley View for Donna Bailey Benson, who has been a member of the women’s club for about 35 years.
“It’s been a part of my family — family reunions, weddings. Two kids got married there. Another child got married at the golf course, and then we had the reception there,” Benson said. “Baby showers, funerals, you name it, we’ve had it there.”
As well as many other Valley View residents, both sets of Benson’s grandparents, George and Flora Bailey and George and Nora Kelly, helped raised funds to construct the building.
So did Amelia and Ralph Gipe and Ralph’s parents, R.A. and Sophia Gipe.
Amelia moved to Valley View in 1941 to teach school. She taught a year, but she also met and fell in love with Ralph Gipe, the clerk for the school district, married him and moved a quarter of a mile from the school. She joined the Valley View Women’s Club, which was very active. Amelia’s favorite were the three-act plays, although they also had skits, card parties and potluck suppers, sometimes twice a month.
“The men worked on the clubhouse as they had time,” Amelia said. “We raised money by having dances.”
In those days, she said there was no place to dance in Polson, so people from town would come out to dance and bring their families.
Babies would sleep in corners, the children would dance until they played out and went to sleep. And, of course, they served a lunch at midnight.
“We had homemade music — a lady who played the piano, a guy who played the guitar and a trumpet player,” Amelia said, saying they lit the hall with lanterns since there was no electricity.
“It’s been fun just remembering,” Amelia said, laughing. On her birthday on Oct. 25, she turned 94.
“It was their social life in those days,” Benson said.
“When we started out,” Amelia said, ”there was no running water. There was a big old wood stove, two barrels, one on top of the other.”
When they were going to have a party at the clubhouse, someone would go up around noon to start the fire to warm up the building. All the members would carry water in milk cans so they’d be able to wash dishes and cook. With no running water, the bathrooms were privies.
Now the clubhouse is modern, complete with a kitchen, bathroom and electricity. People rent the clubhouse out for weddings, receptions and funerals.
The Valley View Women’s Club is not such a social thing anymore, Benson said, although they still have a potluck once a month. One of the original reasons for the club was to foster neighborly feelings, she added.
“It’s a small group of us these days,” she explained. “We’re a nonprofit. Any money we raise goes back into having an event or fixing up the building.”
But on Saturday night, lights beckoned from the clubhouse windows, music played, people laughed, everybody danced and babies napped in corners, just like the old days.
