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Photo by Erin Nelson Sweeney.
Guests make plates and mingle at the 50th Christmas Coffee with the Jennie June Croly Study Club at the Trussville Civic Center on Dec. 5.
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Photos by Erin Nelson Sweeney.
Laura Nielsen makes a plate for herself and her 3-year-old son, Wesley, at the 50th Christmas Coffee with the Jennie June Croly Study Club at the Trussville Civic Center on Dec. 5.
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Photos by Erin Nelson Sweeney.
Laurie Nabors speaks to guests at the 50th Christmas Coffee with the Jennie June Croly Study Club.
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Photos by Erin Nelson Sweeney.
Trussville City Schools Superintendent Patrick Martin speaks with Jane Alexander, a member of the Jennie June Croly Study Club.
Three binders of scrapbooked meeting plans, newspaper articles and photos at Jane Alexander’s Trussville home weigh a combined 16 pounds.
All those plans, articles and photos come from the Jennie June Croly Study Club, named for Jane Cunningham Croly, an English journalist, author and woman’s club leader who used the pen name “Jennie June” in the New York Sunday Times and Noah’s Weekly Messenger.
The Trussville club bearing her name was formed in February 1949 in Trussville and is now in its 75th year. In December, the club hosted its 50th Christmas Coffee at the Trussville Civic Center.
“I have truly enjoyed it,” said Barbara Colby, the current club president, who has been a member for 12 years. “It’s just a really good opportunity to get together with good friends. We do the coffee for the community and just do some different things for the schools and the fire department.”
The 1949 charter members of the club were Lucille Bates, Virginia Connell, Sarah Echols, Patti Ennis, Marguerite Harwell, Mary Hill, Adaline Marbury, Barbara McLendon, Lois Prickett, Anne Reese, Marie Sawyer, Elizabeth Sherer, Rhea Stallworth, Della Sutter and Bessie Tate. The group’s chosen motto was, “To enrich our lives as well as others.”
According to its bylaws, the purpose of the club “shall be for the intellectual and social development of its members.”
The binders prove that’s been done over the course of 75 years. They include photos and descriptions of monthly events, guest sign-in sheets, newspaper clippings, letters from other Trussville organizations and more. There are records of donations made to the Hewitt Elementary School PTA for Halloween festivals, the Trussville Public Library, the Greater Birmingham Humane Society and the American Red Cross for tornado relief.
For years, the group decorated the gazebo on the corner of Parkway Drive at Christmastime and helped with the annual Easter egg hunt. It has given scholarships to Hewitt-Trussville High School students. The club has hosted receptions for the Trussville Fire Department’s annual awards and for the election of new city council members and the mayor.
There is surely more in 75 years of service.
“We just look around and try to see where a need is in the community,” said Jennie June Croly Study Club member Diana Evans, who has served as president three times. “And that’s what we try to concentrate on.”
Evans has been a member of the Jennie June Croly Study Club since the mid-1980s.
“I think it’s a very worthwhile organization to be affiliated with,” she said. “And I enjoy all the people that are in it. We have a program of some kind every time we meet, and we do a lot of things for the community.”
The study club meets monthly September through May at the Trussville Civic Center. Colby’s favorite thing about being a member is attending the Christmas Coffee each year.
“We get to meet people,” she said. “We go around and talk to them, and it’s just a good time to meet and greet and just have contact with different people throughout Trussville.”
Colby believes the group’s mission — fundraising for toys for Trussville Fire Department’s Christmas for Kids program, buying copy paper for the schools and more — is an important one.
“We just try to be a positive influence for the community,” Colby said.
Evans is 81 now, and she has no intentions of slowing down.
“I think had I not thoroughly enjoyed every year of it, I would have resigned from it,” Evans said. “It’s just something that I look forward to and that I have really enjoyed tremendously over the years. I think it’s the camaraderie we have. Everybody seems to get along really well. Many of us have the same interests. It’s just a fun group to be with.”
