SI Cockermouth & District meet on the 1st & 3rd Thursday in the month at Hundith Hill Hotel, Lorton Vale, Cockermouth, Cumbria, CA13 9TH at 7.30pm for 8.00pm
Memories of a Founder Member
I have been trying to think back to our founding days. It all seems a bit blurry now.
At the time I belonged to Inner Wheel which was dependent on being a Rotary wife!
When I was asked to be one of 18 to form a new group I was interested particularly as it would be evening meetings and not afternoon which Inner Wheel had mainly as their members were on the whole not business or career women.
Our mother club was Whitehaven so we did look to them for guidance. I remember the early days held upstairs in the library and later the Globe Hotel. Mostly we had a speaker once a month but I will need to study the scrapbooks for what we did for fund raising. We usually had a stall for the Christmas light switch on but probably it was later into the 80s before we did much more ambitious fund raising such as supporting Mines Advisory Group.
We then became involved in the Dewode project among many other causes supporting women in Third World countries. We also supported lobbying about crimes against women which has never gone away. We had a talk about the Diana Lamplugh case and we were given a talk on self-defence. I can also remember being given a first aid demonstration but don’t have the details when that was.
I do remember how much more formal meetings were at the start and new members had to be recommended and approved! I wish I could be more specific but so much has changed in 40 years, mostly for the better. I would definitely need the early scrapbooks to jog my memory!
In friendship
Angela