DUANE
Get the App
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Woman's Study Club of Holland, Bell County. Now, January 14, 1914. Dead of winter.
A small group of local women in Holland, Texas, sat down together with something on their minds. Not gossip, not idle talk. They had come to organize.
What they built that day was a study club, founded on the cultural advancement of its members. A modest enough beginning, you might say. But modest beginnings have a way of outgrowing themselves in Texas.
Before long, the club had looked up from its books and looked outward at the community around it. Civic projects, one after another. Financial support for public school programs.
The kind of quiet, steady work that doesn't make headlines but absolutely shapes a place. Then came 1939, and here's where the story gets some teeth. Holland had an Opera House.
A real one. And it was in danger of being lost. The club launched a campaign, and that campaign worked.
The Opera House was preserved, repurposed as a civic center, saved from whatever fate had been closing in on it. That's not a small thing. That's a community deciding what it values and then doing something about it.
The marker tells us the club continues to reflect the goals and ideals of its founders. Those women who sat down together on that January day in 1914 set something in motion that is still moving. That's how you leave a mark.
What the marker says
On January 14, 1914, a small group of local women met to organize a study club for the cultural advancement of its members. In addition ot its primary focus, the club soon adopted a series of civic projects, including many that offered financial support for public school programs, that had a dramatic impact on the development of the community. Among the projects was a 1939 campaign that resulted in the preservation of Holland's Opera House for use as a civic center. Through its activities, the club continues to reflect the goals and ideals of its founders. (1988)