After the Club’s March 24, 1922 charter, it began keeping scrapbooks recording its activities and the weekly luncheon meetings with guest speakers. The weekly meetings and other Zonta Club events were routinely published in the Washington newspapers – The Sunday and Evening Star, The Washington Post, and the Times-Herald.  The Washington Post even had a section titled “For and About Women.”  Today, our Club no longer chronicles its history in scrapbooks and coverage of our activities is rarely found in Washington newspapers. 

 Some of the scrapbooks have survived and are in the Club’s archival collection while others have disappeared into members private papers and are lost forever, or perhaps not, as the following story illustrates. 

About 2010, the Archives acquired a scrapbook covering the Club and its activities during 1952-1953. Doug Mackall, nephew of Florence Warner, Club President during that time, contacted us after finding the Zonta Club of Washington scrapbook in the private papers of his deceased Aunt Florence. Many of the early scrapbooks are only newspaper clippings but later ones contain beautiful hand rendered artwork. The 1952-1953 scrapbook is one of the latter. Below is a picture of the scrapbook’s entry for January1953 showing newspaper clippings and a hand rendered watercolor of a stylized lily of the valley. 

Much of the material following the January entry relates to the inauguration of the 34^th President, Dwight D. Eisenhower and the women associated with his presidency. Later in 1953, the scrapbook chronicles activities associated again with Eisenhower, but this time it is with Mrs. Dwight D. Eisenhower.  Mrs. Eisenhower served as honorary chairman of the National Women’s Advisory Committee for the sale of war Bonds and asked American women to join in the campaign to increase the sale of Saving Bonds.  As a member of the Advisory Board representing  Zonta International, Florence Warner, Washington D.C. Club President,  joined representatives of other  women’s organizations working on the “Crusade for Security” calling on professional and self-employed men and women to sign up for the Bond-A-Month Plan.  Below, Florence Warner, top row, second from the right, is pictured with Mrs. Eisenhower who received members of the Advisory Committee at the White House on February 16, 1953.

 For more Washington memories, a selection of the Club’s scrapbooks will be on display at the Club’s Centennial Celebration.