In 1913 a group of women in the Alameda neighborhood noticed that a family was camping in a nearby wood. That wood is now Wilshire Park. The women decided to help the family by giving the children milk. This initial impetus to aid those in need continues today in the form of the Alameda Tuesday Club. The club has met each year since 1913 and focuses primarily on helping women and children. Its continual presence in the neighborhood is marked in Wilshire Park by a celebratory plaque at the base of a park bench, noting the club’s 100th anniversary.
The club provides small, non-profit organizations (mainly on Portland’s east side) with financial support. “The club is made up of 36 women, and any woman is welcome who resides in the Alameda neighborhood,” said Lulu Levenson, club president.
Members pay annual dues, which are donated to a single organization at year’s end, but each member may decide how much or if she will donate to monthly projects. Until one chooses to leave, once a member of the club, always a member, even after moving out of the neighborhood.
Michael Richman, chair of the club’s Philanthropy Committee, pointed out that members research and choose potential organizations to aid.
“We note where the donation might be most helpful,” Richman said.
Based on the Philanthropy Committee’s recommendations, the Program Committee hears a presentation from a nonprofit group in the area monthly from September through May.
Levenson, who donates new swimwear from her business, Popina, to Project Lemonade, a nonprofit that provides new clothes for children, said the club looks for small agencies to help. “It allows the club’s contribution to have more impact.”
The Alameda Tuesday Club is a model of humanitarian action in a world that is not always humane. From its inception the club has sought to fill the needs of children in particular. Though we might not live in the Alameda neighborhood, we could take a page from the Alameda Tuesday Club’s book and create something in our own sphere of influence that emulates what these women do: good work.
Pamela Plimpton, a B-W resident since 1980, retired as a professor of English in 2020. Her interests include reading, writing, gardening, and singing with a community chorale. She and her husband enjoy playing golf, working out at the N.E. Community Center, traveling, and grandparenting their granddaughter.