She called the birthday “quite a milestone.”
The third Tuesday of every month, club members meet in member homes, churches or community rooms if they live in a senior facility.
Each member is responsible for presenting a monthly program that touches on current events and also looks at history throughout the county and the country. The goal is to “educate ourselves about a variety of things,” Bowling said.
Bowling, a retired teacher who worked in the Hamilton and Fairfield school districts for 12 years, said the club allows her to interact at least once a month with some longtime friends.
Like many clubs and organizations, the Current Events Club of Hamilton is struggling to recruit new, younger members. The club has 15 active members, most of them elderly and retired, Bowling said.
The club doesn’t meet in December and January because members don’t want to drive in potential inclement weather, she said.
Bowling said Carrie Halim, who is much younger than most members, recently joined the club, and Bowling hopes she can recruit other members. Bowling called Halim, who lives in the Dayton Lane Historical District, “a real asset to our group” and “a light of hope.”
The club also has contacted college students about joining the club once they graduate and settle in the Butler County area.
Bowling has two daughters-in-law and neither is interested in joining any clubs, she said.
“That’s how society is going,” she said. “People aren’t interested and the club members are aging. The next generation is not interested in this.”
Most of the club’s history is told through scrapbooks that are stored in the Historical Society, according to Bowling.
The Journal-News periodically runs this Good News feature in the Saturday edition. If you have a story idea for this feature, please contact contributing writer Rick McCrabb at rmccrabb1@gmail.com.
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