MASON CITY – The Mason City Women’s Club celebrated its centennial on Tuesday with a luncheon and special guest speaker.
The 164 current members of the Mason City Woman’s Club recently learned that their club is 100 years old, not 90 as previously thought, so the event took on extra meaning.
The club welcomed special guest speaker David Vikturek, who spoke on the Music Man, Meredith Willson, in honor of Willson’s 110th birthday. Vikturek, the current CEO of Mason City’s Music Man Square, spoke for about an hour on the life and times of Willson, showing pictures of the iconic conductor and musician and offering a wealth of background on many of them.
One interesting point Vikturek shared was that in 1916 Mason City changed the names of all its streets and that the Mason City Women’s Club helped re-name them. “The men got it all wrong,” the saying went, Vikturek said. “The Women’s Club insisted on changing the street names.” He held up a street map of Mason City from the era which showed the old street names and the name street names.
The ladies of the Women’s Club enjoyed a birthday cake and light lunch after Vikturek’s presentation and a short reminiscence of former club presidents on their experiences in the club over the years. (See the video below.)
The club’s next endeavor will be a food drive for the Hawkeye Harvest Food Bank and collection of donations for the Crisis Intervention Service Shelter.
Yearly membership for the club is $15.00. Call Alberta at 641-423-1091 if you have an interest in joining.
Video:
httpv://youtu.be/Bwj25al4UY8
