THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 3, 1996 TAG: 9603020089
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 12 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHYLLIS SPEIDELL, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
The Portsmouth Executives Club met last week to celebrate its 50th anniversary - five decades of dinner meetings that have drawn internationally known guest speakers and hundreds of Tidewater business and professional people.
The club, a tradition among longtime Portsmouth, Suffolk, Chesapeake and Isle of Wight business people, has hosted political figures Barry Goldwater and Archduke Otto of Austria, baseball's Bob Feller, historian Will Durant, mentalist Dunninger, motivational speaker Norman Vincent Peale, humorist Ogden Nash, columnists Abigail Van Buren (``Dear Abby'') and Drew Pearson and scores of other personalities.
Once an exclusive, formal dinner club, the Portsmouth Executives Club, was organized in 1946 with 14 members and chartered in 1947 as an affiliate of Associated Clubs, a national organization that booked speakers for as many as 650 similar dinner clubs across the U.S., Mexico and Canada.
The dinner clubs, variously known as Knife and Fork Clubs, Metropolitan Clubs or Executive Clubs, were a product of post World War II prosperity.
Local business executives, professionals, civic leaders and educators - and their spouses and guests - met several times a year to socialize, dine and, most importantly, to enjoy educational or entertaining after-dinner speakers.
Charles Benjamin Franklin, founder of Associated Clubs, had been president of several large Chatauqua circuits and based his clubs on the same concept.
``He opted for clean, humorous speeches that, if political at all, were probably `conservative,' '' Hope Mihalap said. Mihalap is a Norfolk resident and public speaker who credits the Associated Clubs with launching her onto a national speaking career.
Mihalap remembers Franklin's credo: ``To hear a live speaker is a very good thing; to hear a very good one is a revelation.''
That statement rings true for Judge Dennis McMurran, a Portsmouth resident who grew up with the Executives Club.
``I still remember going with my parents when I was about 10 years old and hearing Will Durant talk,'' he said. McMurran's parents were charter members of the club. His father, Judge Robert F. McMurran, was the club president in 1966-67 and in 1974, Dennis McMurran served his own term as president.
Former Virginia governor and Suffolk resident Mills E. Godwin Jr. is another longtime club member who was the club's president in 1956.
``At that time, it was mostly Portsmouth people, but we had a good sprinkling of people from Suffolk and Smithfield,'' Godwin said.
Pauline Bradley and her husband, Thomas, were not charter members but joined in 1949. ``It was a big social event, very elegant, and oh, how we looked forward to it,'' she said. ``When it was over, we talked about the next one.''
``We met at the old Surburban Country Club then and it was usually packed with 200 or 300 people,'' Bradley added.
The club's membership gradually declined during the 1970s and it was forced to drop out of the Associated Clubs. By the time Bradley's son-in-law, Cameron C. Pitts, became president in the 1980s, the club was relying on local speakers.
``Membership was so low that we lost the ability to fund from the national circuit,'' Pitts said.
Unwilling to let the club die, members recruited new members and a wide variety of local speakers. Eugene Beacham, a Portsmouth resident, explained that the membership rebounded to over 100 and is still growing.
The Portsmouth Executives Club meets four times a year at the Holiday Inn in Portsmouth. For more information, contact president Lucky Stike, 393-4855. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by PHYLLIS SPEIDELL
Dr. Paul W. Robinett, Executive Club president in the 1960s, chats
with Pauline Bradley at the celebration.
by CNB