The year was 1944. The Battle of Normandy was fought, the minimum wage was 30 cents an hour and a group of women in Mountain Home banded together to form the local chapter of the Business and Professional Women’s group.
Over the past seven and a half decades, members of the group have contributed to numerous scholarships and supported a lengthy list of community projects around Mountain Home. But, following its legacy banquet next month, after 75 years, the local chapter, like others across the state and the nation, will be disbanding.
Members Brenda Allen and Lucinda Blair, appearing on KTLO-FM’s Talk of the Town with host Kim Szecsi Thursday, said the banquet will be Mountain Home BPW’s last hurrah.
Allen says the closing of BPW is a sign of the change in our culture. She says she and Blair, like most of their fellow club members, worked, raised their children, became volunteers in their schools and then branched out into community support efforts.
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Allen says the organization’s final event was purposely titled as a legacy banquet in tribute to the work of the past 75 years.
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The legacy banquet is set for 5:30 p.m. April 25th at Big Creek Country Club. At the banquet, six local organizations benefiting women and children will be honored with cash donations. The recipients are Kindness, Inc., Gamma House, the Food Bank of North Central Arkansas, Serenity, Into the Light, and Care Center Ministries for the women’s ministry.
The disbanding of MH Business and Professional Women is one of at least three significant changes in long-standing community traditions. Last year, after at least 35 years of providing entertainment, the Twin Lakes Shrine Circus did not return to the Baxter County Fairgrounds and 2018 was the first time in 38 years the Cameo Club of Mountain Home did not hold its annual holiday tour of homes, although the club is still in operation.
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