Today, women make up about 47% of the American workforce, but 100 years ago, that figure hovered around 20%. The norm of the day was for a woman to stay home, supporting her husband and raising children. And the tradition held a grip on society for decades longer.

This spurred the birth of the St. Mary’s Women’s Club, and others like it, to offer stay-at-home mothers some reprieve from their domestic lives. While American culture has changed considerably over the past century, the Women’s Club in Orange remains active to conduct welfare work and to promote spiritual and intellectual advancement.

“It’s very nice,” said Orange resident Maida Richards, 83, who served as club president from 1977 to 1978 and from 1985 to 1986. “It was just a fun thing to do and be a part of.”

The club held its annual parish fair last October to mark the organization’s 100th year. There was a cash-and-scratch-ticket raffle, with first-, second- and third-place prizes of $100 cash, 100 lottery tickets and $50 cash, respectively. Proceeds from the fair went to the Women’s Club for parish and community causes including scholarships, annual Starry Starry Night events, community holiday lighting and rectory improvements. This event started the anniversary festivities, as the “club year” spans from September until June.

Vice President Maureen Riendeau said David Small, of the Athol Bird and Nature Club, visited in January and delivered a presentation on moths and butterflies. One of February’s meetings fell on Valentine’s Day, so the gathering included a wine tasting, “which is a little different than our usual meetings.”

A special club meeting, which was open to the public, was held on April 11 and featured a slideshow celebrating the club’s history, with photos of activities over the past 50 years.

“We didn’t have a whole lot of outsiders there but we had a decent crowd,” Riendeau said.

The Rev. Shaun O’Connor marked the occasion by presenting President Emily Carey White with a statue of the Virgin Mary. Riendeau said the May 9 meeting will consist of a potluck dinner and a performance by a musical group.

The club’s meetings are held the second Tuesday of each month from September to May. Any woman who wants to join must be a St. Mary’s parishioner or have a spouse who belongs to the parish.

Catholics in Orange began celebrating Mass in private homes around 1881, and St. Mary’s Parish was founded in Orange in 1903, with an altar on the stage in the Orange Town Hall. That was until the former Fraternal Hall on School Street was purchased and used as the church from 1904 until 1953, when the current church was built at the corner of Congress and Cheney streets. However, times have changed — Riendeau mentioned the Christmas gift that members gave to the parish priest in the 1950s came down to a vote between $25 or a carton of cigarettes.

Riendeau became involved with the Women’s Club in the late 1960s and early ’70s, when she was invited to show slides from her trips to Appalachia during her college spring breaks. Her mother had been an active member and Riendeau became an officer shortly after her son was born in 1976.

“I answered the phone after getting home [from the hospital] with my son and they asked if I would be an officer and I said, ‘Yeah, sure,’” she recalled. “I don’t think I was quite awake yet.”

Richards said she joined in 1973, shortly after her mother died following years of being cared for by her daughter.

“I felt it was a way of having contact with women, because I hadn’t had much socializing as far as going out, at the time,” she said. “So I was quite pleased to go and be with a group of ladies.”

She recounted that she was already attending the church every Sunday and was working in the rectory as a bookkeeper. It was there that she met Wilfred Richards, a custodian who became her husband of 34 years. Maida Richards said the camaraderie of the Women’s Club helped her deal with the death of her mother and, later, her father.

Joan O’Brien, 87, of Orange, said she joined around 1964 because she had three children at the time, and eventually a fourth, and she wanted some personal time. She served as president from 1965 to 1966.

“At that time I had small children and at that time it was nice to get out of the house to have something to do. People joined the Women’s Club so they could get out and get away from the kids, for an outing,” she recounted, noting that the members often played cards and exchanged stories. “I left my husband in charge of the kids. … It was more of a social outing and you got to mix with other people, so it was nice.”

O’Brien mentioned that in the 1960s, her family spent a year on a Native American reservation in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, where she and her husband taught students at Red Cloud Indian School. The people there made such an impression on her that after the family returned to Orange she and Women’s Club members made dresses and sent them to the students for a few years.

“It was quite a project,” she said.

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