A Page from History: The Renaissance of the Ocean Beach Woman’s Club

The club has survived waves and fire in its 100 years of ‘Friendship, community, fun and philanthropy’

By Eric Duvall /Pt Loma-OB Monthly (SDUT) / July 17, 2024

In the early days of the Ocean Beach Historical Society, it met in the Ocean Beach Woman’s Club clubhouse.  In the early days of the Ocean Beach Woman’s Club, it met at the Alligator Rock Lodge (aka Collier’s Shack).

Think about that. When I first started spending time in the archives of OBHS, I couldn’t help but notice 10 banker’s boxes labeled “Ocean Beach Woman’s Club.” It was a bit of a “wow” moment for me.

Our archivist, Mary Allely, told me, “Eric, the history of the Ocean Beach Woman’s Club is the history of Ocean Beach.”

Advisement well-taken. Did I mention that 2024 marks the centennial of the Ocean Beach Woman’s Club? It is nothing but a party all year long.

If I were to tell you that the Woman’s Club clubhouse was once destroyed by storm surf, you might respond, “Are you sure? I thought it burned down.” Guess what, we’d both be right. Sort of. And yet, it perseveres. What a great club!

An early Woman’s Club member was “Beach Town” author Ruth Varney Held. According to Ruth, the group “was busy in civic affairs from the beginning. They cooperated with the Chamber (of Commerce) in trying to eliminate the ‘bad element’ that had invaded the dance hall during prohibition.”

The ladies had hit the ground dancing. In its first years, OBWC successfully lobbied for a kids playground and a new branch library building for Ocean Beach.

The OB Library is one of the oldest branches in the city. But the library got its start a dozen years earlier in the Sutliffe Building, where Newbreak Coffee is today.

“It was one room next to the jail,” Laura Dennison of Friends of the OB Library told me. “But it was friendship that created that library. The same women who would become the OB Woman’s Club came up with the five bucks a month to rent that space. They got their husbands to build the bookcases and tables that went into that room. It was a concerted effort by a group of friends.”

One of the several slogans of today’s OB Woman’s Club is “Friendship, community, fun and philanthropy.”

A clubhouse

Just days before Thanksgiving in 1924, the group of friends who would become the Ocean Beach Woman’s Club held an organizational meeting at the Trinity Mission, later Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, in OB. The 45 charter members planned the first of many events, a Christmas Carol sing-along, to be held the Monday before Christmas at the Ocean Beach Dance Pavilion at the foot of Newport Avenue.

The first president of OBWC was Roberta Winens. For the next couple of years, the club met at Trinity Mission and at the auditorium of the Baptist church on DeFoe Street (now Sunset Cliffs Boulevard). The club met in members’ homes and several times at the Alligator Rock Lodge.

The group sometimes met in the Masonic Hall, then above Faber’s Grocery Store on Newport Avenue. But the women naturally wanted a home of their own.

Members of the Ocean Beach Woman’s Club gather on the porch of their clubhouse in the Flatiron Building on Abbott Street circa 1931. (“Beach Town,” courtesy of Louise Near Murphy)

In 1927, the Woman’s Club took out a one-year lease on the wide end of Fred Jennings’ Flatiron Building — formerly a bathhouse — on the west side of Abbott Street, where Veterans Plaza is today. One year turned into 14.

93 trees

By 1930, the garden department of the Woman’s Club, chaired by Mary Near, was thoroughly invested in planting street trees along many of the beach town’s avenues, following in the tradition of OB pioneer Charlie Collier.

The figure of 93 trees, cited several times in the club’s records, is likely merely a minimum.

With the cooperation of the city of San Diego, jacarandas were planted along Sunset Cliffs Boulevard. Only two or three remain.

As recently as 15 to 20 years ago, the pink oleanders up and down both sides of Brighton Avenue were something to see when they were in bloom.

The club planted acacias along Muir Avenue, pink hibiscus along Long Branch Avenue and wildflowers in many vacant lots. Some 95 years later, a few of those hibiscus are in bloom right now.

The 1930s saw the Woman’s Club continuously lobby to get OB’s streets paved and streetlights erected. It sponsored recreational activities for children. Craft classes and dances were held at the old Merry-Go-Round Building. In 1939 the club was successful in getting lifeguards for OB year-round. What a big win.

Weathering the storm

Years of high tides and strong currents had left the Flatiron Building in a precarious position. Then on Oct. 16, 1941, high waves demolished the long wooden building. The Woman’s Club had been able to get most of the contents (furniture, etc.) out in time, but its clubhouse was a complete loss.

High waves destroyed the Flatiron Building, home of the Ocean Beach Woman’s Club, in October 1941. (Mic Gammons, via Ocean Beach Historical Society)
The club found temporary digs in a former Safeway building before Pearl Harbor was attacked just two months later, on Dec. 7.

OBWC historian Marian Krettler recorded the following: “At the meeting of Dec. 11 we were told that soldiers from San Luis Obispo were guarding our waterfront,” meaning the beach at OB and along Sunset Cliffs.  “These boys needed a place to bathe and hot coffee to relieve their long night watches. Mrs. Veda Moss of the American Legion Auxiliary appeared and said her organization would like to work with the Woman’s Club in order to make our soldier boys more comfortable. …

“And with that … came a new era for the Ocean Beach Woman’s Club, an era of devoted service in a beloved country at war.”

Grace Greeson, whose son was fighting overseas, became chairwoman of the servicemen’s club committee.  She suggested that rooms at 1959 Abbott St. be rented for $20 a month to accommodate the enterprise. If that sounds like space in the Sutliffe Building where Newbreak Coffee is today, you are to be congratulated.

“Through the industry of Mrs. Greeson, her husband and various club members, the rooms were refurbished and the salvaged belongings of the club placed therein,” Krettler said.

Krettler recalls that “in the face of reverses for the country, of the newness, loneliness and annoyance of the ‘blackout’ and radio silence,” the Woman’s Club carried on and “the servicemen’s club was a success from the very inception. Members of various women’s organizations acted as hostesses, goodies were baked in homes and conveyed to the club, and the steaming coffee pot was eternally available when the boys dropped in for rest and refreshments.”

The club’s piano was repaired and tuned, paid for by an anonymous club member.

“Mrs. Greeson reported receiving many letters from grateful mothers of servicemen” who had dropped in at the center, which was described as “the particular jewel in the crown of the Ocean Beach Woman’s Club.”

Mrs. Rittenhouse, Miss Spani and a new clubhouse

Two of the Woman’s Club charter members were Ocean Beach businesswoman and real estate broker Jean Rittenhouse and OB Elementary School Principal Kate Spani.

Spani was club president in March 1944, when for $1,350, OBWC was able to purchase a sturdy little redwood bungalow at auction from the Board of Education.

Rittenhouse, who in January 1942 had purchased another lot from the Woman’s Club, stepped in and donated three lots on the corner of Muir Avenue and Bacon Street to OBWC, provided it move to and maintain its clubhouse on that location.

That was sure easy, right? Not at all.

Spani’s task was to find a contractor to move the bungalow and make it suitable for club functions. OBWC notes record that “she had many discouragements, as building materials were under war restrictions and labor was hard to get. … In fact, a less interested or less determined person would have given up in despair of ever getting it ready for occupancy until after the war.”

The Ocean Beach community rallied to help. It was recorded that OB businessmen and the Kiwanis Club helped to get the almost impossible things restricted by the war effort.

The clubhouse was ready for its open house on Aug. 6, 1944. Club notes recall that “beautiful baskets of flowers were sent to us for this occasion. Mrs. Rittenhouse (a noted local artist in her own right) hung many of her own paintings on the walls for the occasion and has let them remain ever since, bringing both beauty and inspiration to us.”

Of course, the above chronicle was written before the fire.

Fire!

Group projects and activities continued apace, and membership rolls ebbed and flowed over the next five decades as the “new” clubhouse proved to be a sturdy and much drier home for the Ocean Beach Woman’s Club.

On a Sunday night, Sept. 21, 1997, firefighters from Ocean Beach Fire Station 15 were called to the corner of Muir and Bacon, just a few blocks away, to find the Woman’s Club clubhouse engulfed in flames.

Twenty minutes later the fire had been quenched, but significant damage had been done to the old bungalow. Damage to the building was estimated at $180,000, with an additional $50,000 estimated loss to the contents, which included the club’s venerable piano and Rittenhouse’s historical paintings.

A fire in 1997 heavily damaged the OB Woman’s Club clubhouse at Muir Avenue and Bacon Street. (J.B. Hall)
The corner of a couch standing over the grill of a floor heat register evidently caught fire around 10 p.m. Why the heat was left on was never known. The new clubhouse roof and fence, two very recent improvements, also were casualties of the calamity.

San Diego Union-Tribune reporter Terry Rodgers described the charred clubhouse interior as “a blackened junkyard of melted sofa cushions and charcoal walls. All that remains of five original oil paintings are the rectangular frames, which look like blank television screens melted into the walls. In the kitchen, the refrigerator doors melted together like cream cheese left on a stovetop.”

Initially thought to be a total loss, the clubhouse bones remained strong and intact. The rebuilding effort fell into the lap of 71-year-old club President Mary Brooks. Aided by club members and invaluable help from her husband, Chet, and son David, Brooks began the process of salvage and rehab.

“The community needs a place like this,” she said. “We need to get it up and running again.”

And they did. But it took two years.

Making waves since 1924

Local nonprofit and community groups supported by the Ocean Beach Woman’s Club over the years have been many. For years club members famously baked and frosted thousands of cupcakes for the OB Recreation Center’s Halloween Carnival. They have supported the Peninsula Wind Ensemble and sponsored a patriotic essay contest for OB Elementary School fifth-graders.

Members of the Ocean Beach Woman’s Club get ready for the 2023 OB Holiday Parade. (Ocean Beach Woman’s Club)
In recent years, OBWC grant recipients have included the Peninsula Shepherd Center, Project Street Vet, Loaves and Fishes Food Pantry and even the Ocean Beach Historical Society. In the past two years, the Woman’s Club has jumped in to assist the OB Kiwanis as a co-sponsor of the 77-year tradition that is the Ocean Beach Kite Festival.

A delicious way to help support the work of the Woman’s Club would be to stop into California Wild Ales or OB Brewery and order a pint of the commemorative collaboration “Making Waves Blonde” ale, which celebrates the Woman’s Club’s first hundred years and will raise up to $3,000 to support the club’s philanthropic work.

Renowned centennial hops reportedly are involved. One of us did a little field research on this subject while at the recent OB Street Fair. Recommended.

I asked a few current OBWC members what they would like folks to know about their club. Former club president Alison Lyons told me that when she joined OBWC, “we were rebuilding after our membership had dwindled considerably. Watching women come through our door and feel welcome right away has been wonderful. I’ve seen so many people make new friends; it has really been heartwarming.”

“I’d like people to know that the Woman’s Club is a place to make friends, have fun and make a difference in the community,” Lyons said.

Current club Vice President Arlene Fink described club members as “the most eclectic group of women, and so much fun. Our members range in age from 20 to 80. We have a powerful legacy in this community, and we want to follow in the footsteps of those women who have done so much for Ocean Beach.”

“We want people to know that they are welcome in our clubhouse,” Fink said. “There are lots of clubs you can join, but this is the most welcoming group of people I have ever met.”

When OBWC treasurer Donna Titus was new in town and didn’t know anybody, she followed up on a suggestion to check out the Woman’s Club.

“I’ve made so many friends and connections,” Titus said, “and really feel like I have become a part of the community. The Woman’s Club is literally involved in everything going on in Ocean Beach.”

The OBWC calendar is packed with exciting events and activities in the summer of its centennial. It is significantly more info than we can detail here, so give the club a look at oceanbeachwomansclub.org, but only if you want to be involved in something positive and don’t mind having some fun or meeting some great ladies.

“It has been a goal of ours for a while to get to 100 members,” club President Faren Shear told me. “If we can achieve that goal in our 100th year, that would be extra special.”

Eric DuVall is president of the Ocean Beach Historical Society. Board member Kitty McDaniel contributed to this article. Membership in OBHS, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is $25 annually. Visit obhistory.org.