Yesterday’s influencers: Pen Chat Club left lasting legacy in Burnet
Attending a Pen Chat Club reunion tea on Valentine’s Day in the old Burnet County Jail, now a visitors center and museum, were Tommye Potts (left), Jayme Wilson, Florence Reeves, Lela Gore, Rachel Bryson, Suzanne Fiala, Polly Krenek, Lynda Lester, and Louise Lary. All but Reeves are descendants of club members. Reeves is the Burnet County library director who helped host the tea. Staff photo by Suzanne Freeman
Sisters Lynda Lester and Suzanne Fiala walked into the kitchen of the old Burnet County Jail on Valentine’s Day carrying a labor of love. They held in their arms the remains of a much-used cookbook, its printer galleys, and photos of their mother, Margery Felps, and her fellow Pen Chat Club members from the 1940s.
They were there for a “reunion” tea with other second-generation women whose mothers, aunts, and friends were Pen Chat Club members—a Daughters of the Pen Chat, so to speak. The gathering was hosted by the Herman Brown Free Library, The Picayune Magazine, and Burnet County Tourism.
Founded in 1939 in Burnet, the Pen Chat Club was made up of determined women with political connections and innovative ideas for making the city a better place to live, especially for families.
“The club was a combination book club/culture club,” said Burnet County Library Director Florence Reeves.
It is well known for establishing the first Burnet library in 1949 and being the force behind what became the Burnet County Library System.
“They had a library fund as early as 1945,” Reeves continued.
The club raised money through tasting luncheons, sales of a cookbook with recipes from those luncheons, and a variety of events, including community theater productions, fashion and flower shows, and speeches by prominent educators from across the state, usually the University of Texas.
“Those luncheons were instrumental in raising money for the library,” said Lela Goar, whose mother, Anne Mae Glimp, was also a longtime, active member of the club. “The current library would not have been built without the Pen Chat Club.”
The first library was in the old Burnet County Jail on the courthouse square. Patrons in search of reading materials climbed metal stairs past jail cells to the grand jury room lined with bookshelves. The building, which housed its last prisoner in 1982, was recently renovated into a visitors center and museum, where the reunion tea was held.
The Pen Chat Club bought the first 1,000 books for the library and raised money to move it to a larger facility at Burnet Presbyterian Church just one year later. According to a local newspaper article, “The year-old Burnet library will get out of jail soon” and “become a notable part of Burnet’s block of damnation, salvation and education.” The block along Pierce Street was home to three churches, the county jail, and the library.
The club was also instrumental in raising the money and support needed to finally construct a new building at 100 E. Washington St., where the library still stands, one block from the old jail. That facility opened to the public in 1977.
In 1979, the Pen Chat Club printed a cookbook to raise money to continue supporting the library.
“Mom wore hers out,” said Lester as she carefully placed the ragged, pink pages of the Pen Chat Club Taste Luncheon Recipes, more commonly referred to as the Pen Chat Club cookbook, down on a nearby table. “She cooked from this all the time.”
Lester and Fiala also have the printer galleys for the book. Their mother served three years as Pen Chat Club president and was chair of the cookbook committee.
The Pen Chat Club was affiliated with the Capitol District Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs and the General Federation of Women’s Club of Texas, which are both still in operation. The Pen Chat Club, not so much. The last newspaper clipping about a club event was dated 2005, although before that, the 1994 scrapbook was the last one with pictures and news clippings.
The two nonprofit statewide organizations with which Pen Chat was affiliated were established to combine the efforts of women’s clubs across the state to work for improvements in local education, natural resource conservation, improved home lives, public and international affairs, the arts, and Texas heritage.
The Pen Chat Club in Burnet also raised money for scholarships. It was instrumental in canvassing the county in 1947 with questionnaires supplied by the American Legion. That survey marked the onset of a long list of community improvements that brought Burnet into the modern era. Responses called for a sewer system despite the cost of blasting through rock, paved streets, vaccinations and early lung X-rays for school children, and a library. All of those priorities were noted and carried out, with the Pen Chat Club successfully taking on the library project.
The reunion tea in the old jail was a chance for descendants to reminisce about the club’s impact on Burnet and its future. Reeves helped with that effort by bringing all of the scrapbooks, meeting minutes, and a silver tea set with china cups that were bequeathed to the library when the club disbanded. (The tea set and other artifacts are currently on display in the Herman Brown Free Library’s genealogy room.)
Reeves and several of those attending the reunion also brought dishes featured in the cookbook. The menu included a salmon loaf (with gelatin), congealed avocado salad (with lime jello), drop cookies (with bran flakes), refrigerator cookies (nuts, raisins, and almond extract), and a cheese roll (with Worchestershire sauce, chili powder, and nuts). A citrus salad with poppy seed dressing and mini-muffins rounded out the snacks. Tea, of course, was served from the silver set.
Attendees searched their own dog-eared Pen Chat cookbooks or looked through the two copies at the Burnet library to choose their recipes. One of the two books is available for checkout, so, dear readers, you, too, can try out a recipe. (Fair warning: You will most likely need a box or two of gelatin.)
“They sure used a lot of Jello back then,” Fiala said.
Reeves was instrumental in putting the tea together. She designed invitations and made two of the most challenging dishes: the salmon loaf and congealed avocado salad (which were both delish, believe it or not). As guardian of the tea set and Pen Chat archives, she is a true fan of the club and everything it has done for the community.
“The members recognized that a strong community starts in the home,” Reeves said. “A strong family equals a strong community, and a library is part of that. They should always be remembered for their contributions to Burnet.”
Contributions include a strong, vibrant library system. Once the Burnet library was established, the group paid off the property and turned over the deeds to the county. They then lobbied for libraries in Bertram, Marble Falls, and Spicewood, which the county commissioners made happen.
The announcement that the library was paid off came during a regular meeting’s business session. The meeting included a presentation on “Care of the Hair—Styles and Personalities.”
“The smart woman chooses simple designs since she realizes that it is the little things that count, and that, above all, poise and sincere graciousness is a most valuable asset,” reads an unattributed sentence in a November 1949 newspaper article.
Throughout its history, the Pen Chat Club successfully mixed astute business decisions with the practical needs of women and the enlightenment of their community. Members also never failed to recognize the women in their community. Women business owners were often featured as speakers at Pen Chat meetings. At a meeting on April 11, 1984, members recalled and honored the first women who held jobs in Burnet.
Lester and Fiala’s mother, Margery Felps, who died in 2011 at the age of 85, is just one example of the hardworking, community-oriented, and forward-thinking women who served in the Pen Chat Club. One paragraph in her obituary crammed in a long list of her accomplishments and influences, including roles as a Sunday school teacher (46 years), a Girl Scout leader (10 years), and a series of officer positions in Pen Chat and the Capitol District Texas Federation of Women’s Club. She was on the Capitol District board for 10 years, treasurer for six years, and vice president for two years. She was a Pen Chat Club member for 35 years.
“Margery was a housewife and mother who helped manage the family businesses for over 60 years,” the obituary reads. “She especially enjoyed being involved in the Burnet Pen Chat Club.”
Her daughters remember her with a whole lot of pride and a little bit of ribbing.
“I always teased her that she was a member of a club of women that talked,” Lester said when asked why the club was named Pen Chat. “They were a chatty bunch!”
They were also a bunch who got things done and have left a lasting legacy in Burnet. Their descendants raised a cup of tea to toast their accomplishments.