Years ago, members of the St. Helens Club gathered to hear an hour-long lecture about Albert Einstein. After the introduction, a door opened and the speaker slowly strolled into the room dressed as a man in a gray wig and carrying perforated early computer papers.
“I started the speech in German,” recalled Susan Remund, of Curtis. “Actually, a lot of people understood. I actually tried to explain the theory of relativity.”
Her talk about Albert Einstein, the pioneering German-born physicist best known for his theory of relativity (the world-famous E=mc2 equation) and contributions to quantum theory, was one of her favorites.
Susan marked her 50th year as a St. Helens Club member this month. She married attorney Rene Remund in 1970, moved to Lewis County in 1973, and joined the club in 1976. Every other year, each club member presents an hour-long lecture on a topic assigned by a Lecture Committee, so in half a century, she gave probably 25 lectures. Researching the topic during the early years — before the invention of computers, cell phones, and the internet — required heading to the local library.
“We all still worked on typewriters, and mine was a manual,” she said. “I think almost all the women wore dresses or blouses. It was a little more formal, although I think at that time pants were beginning to become acceptable. Not jeans — the pantsuit.”
Susan had three children in six years and still managed to attend two meetings a month and present her lecture every other year. As for the Albert Einstein lecture, she said, “That one I didn’t go to the library because I already had enough books on him, being a math major. I was fascinated by the man.”
Her first hour-long lecture focused on dance.
“When I was growing up, I took ballet with a studio that was affiliated with the Royal London Ballet,” she said. “And when Dame Margot Fonteyn came to Los Angeles to dance Giselle, our dance class got to have a private audience with her backstage. … We spent at least two weeks learning how to curtsy.”
The famous English ballerina born in 1919 danced with the Sadler’s Wells Ballet Company, known today as the Royal Ballet, and Queen Elizabeth II appointed her the company’s prima ballerina assoluta. She died in February 1991 at 71.
“I decided right off the bat that I would focus on Dame Margot, and I went out and bought a book about her and started reading. I kept thinking about the speech and thought, ‘I can’t talk about her for an hour. Everybody’d be asleep.’”
So, she wrote to each member’s husband and asked him to share about his wife and her experiences with dancing. She spoke about Dame Margot — all without using any notes — then surprised the members by sharing their stories during her presentation.
At the end of the speech, she had everybody move back their chairs so she could lead them in the Hustle, a disco dance propelled to popularity by John Travolta in 1977’s Saturday Night Fever.
“Bev Ramsey even took it to heart, and she taught her sorority,” Susan said, recalling that the two of them joined St. Helens Club about the same time. “When time got closer to me hitting 50 years, I thought, ‘Boy, it’s going to be really neat. Bev and I will be celebrating together.’”
But Bev died at her home in Chehalis in November 2021.
Susan joins Luellen Charneski, of Tumwater, and Joanne Schwartz, of Chehalis, as honorary members in the club.
Another time, Susan spoke about the personal computer when it first arrived in homes. She recalled telling members, “You know, we can use this to store recipes.”
And so much more.
The club, which was organized in 1895, has moved its meeting location around Chehalis with gatherings inside churches, office buildings, Sterling Savings, the old Chehalis Carnegie Library, members’ homes, and today back to Westminster Presbyterian Church.
At the May 6 meeting, where Susan received a bouquet of flowers to mark her new role as an honorary club member, Rochester attorney Laurel Smith spoke about “The Constitution: Our Country’s Framework.”
I brought a guest with me to the meeting. More than four decades ago, as a journalism student at the University of Washington, I participated in a legislative reporting internship started by the well-known — at least in journalism circles — William “B.J.” or “Bill” Johnston, who worked as an editor at The Lewiston Morning Tribune before serving as the university’s first publisher of student publications and later as an associate journalism professor.
I was assigned to write stories for The Columbian in Vancouver, which employed a “real” reporter in Olympia covering state government. I reported to Marcia Wolf, a former Seattle Times reporter who mentored me as I covered public hearings and wrote features about the legislative bill clerk, students serving as pages, and Sen. Al Bauer, D-Vancouver, Rep. Joe King, D-Vancouver, and Rep. Hal Zimmerman, R-Camas. I remember Marcia told me that Columbian editor Gregg Herrington believed in being hard on interns because they thought they knew everything. Not me, though. I was a rather insecure, terrified young woman putting up a good front. And I was grateful for the buffer of Marcia between me and him.
Afterward, Marcia and I exchanged Christmas cards and followed each other’s lives through annual missives. I celebrated the births of grandchildren and prayed for her when her husband passed away. We talked about the need to get together, since she still lived in Olympia and I was in Toledo, but we never did.
Then last year, I didn’t hear from her, and I worried.
I know many people have stopped sending Christmas and holiday cards and letters, often because of the expense and time involved when it’s much easier to reach people digitally through email, Facebook, or phone calls.
I contacted Marcia via Facebook Messenger to see if she was OK. We decided to meet at Once Upon a Thyme in Chehalis for lunch followed by the St. Helens Club meeting. What fun to reconnect after so many years and catch up on each other’s lives and those of our children.
I thought 44 years was a long time, but after the meeting, Maree Lerchen, a longtime Packwood real estate broker who now lives at Stillwater Estates, told me she reconnected with a high school friend whom she hadn’t seen for 60 years! They chatted and even took a cruise together. She said they picked up as if the ensuing six decades hadn’t happened.
It’s so easy to put off reconnecting when all it takes is reaching out. Is there someone you might want to call? Why not do it today?
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
