BY JOHN JOHNSTON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
![[club]](/editions/1998/10/01/friends_171x150.jpg)
Husbands are Charley Magness, Dick Cassinelli, Paul Rutterer, Lou Westrup, Arthur "Joe" Schott, Dan Homasn and Jack Harris. Wives are Beryl Rutterer, Mary Ellen Cassinelli, Mary Jean Magness, Libby Schott, Mary Lou harris and Dorothy Homan.
(Ernest Coleman photo)
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The monthly get-together doesn't have a fancy name. Everybody just calls it "Club."
Club started 50 years ago because five young men who grew up on Cincinnati's east side wanted to ensure their friendship wouldn't fade. They decided to meet regularly, and bring their new brides.
It began with five couples, and later grew to seven: Dick and Mary Ellen Cassinelli; Jack and Mary Lou Harris; Dan and Dorothy Homan; Charley and Mary Jean Magness; Paul and Beryl Rutterer; Arthur "Joe" and Libby Schott; and Lou and Jean Wenstrup.
Today, Club is socializing on the second Saturday of each month. It is husbands playing poker and wives playing Tripoli.
It is reminiscing about old times.
It is laughter -- lots of it -- much of which they admit is about "dumb things."
But Club is more than a few hours on the weekend, shared by a group of aging friends. Club is a whisper from the past.
It is the way things used to be. Or maybe the way we wish they could have been.
It is people who fall in love, marry and stay that way.
It is a group of guys who are born and raised in a town -- and never leave.
Which raises a question: Are the people living in Greater Cincinnati more likely to stay, less likely to move away, than people in many places? Neal Ritchey thinks not. He studies population movements as an associate professor of sociology at the University of Cincinnati.
"I don't have a great sense that Cincinnati holds on to its people appreciably more than other metropolitan areas," he says.
In that respect, a group staying together 50 years is "a bit unusual," he says. Then again, having close good friends can be, in cold sociological language, a "disincentive to migration."
On a recent Saturday, cars are lined up along Bayberry Drive in Kenwood. It's the Homans' turn to host Club.
Everyone comes, of course. Most are in their 70s now, gray-haired with glasses.
But look closely at their old black-and-white photos, and it's possible to imagine the men as boys, playing ball on fields in Mount Lookout and Hyde Park, attending grade school at Christ the King (now Cardinal Pacelli) and St. Mary's, and drinking their first nickel beers together at Humphrey's on Mount Lookout Square.
They fought in World War II, all of them, and returned home to find that Humphrey's had become Million's Cafe. On Friday nights, the place was packed.
Paul married first, in 1945; within three years, Joe, Lou, Jack and Dan had followed suit. Soon they were starting families.
Club was their chance to connect, once a month. It met the first time Aug. 14, 1948.
Each couple, they decided, would pay $2 to the hosts. That would cover the cost of cold cuts, bread and two cases of bottled beer, which the ladies rarely touched. It was Hudepohl, usually, until "some yahoo started buying Top Hat," says Joe Schott, casting a bedeviled look at Jack Harris.
In those days, the couples thought nothing of Club running until 3 or 4 in the morning. They talked, laughed, played cards, and always asked the same question every month: Who's pregnant?
Forty children
Club more than kept pace with the national post-war baby boom. The seven couples had 40 children.
As the kids got older, their parents took them on group outings. They picnicked and swam at Lou's farm in Goshen; and in 1976, everyone gathered for a big Fourth of July shindig at Paul's farm near Morrow.
But those activities weren't Club. Club was always just for couples.
LOOKING FOR FRIENDS
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If you're part of an informal group that has met regularly for years with little or no turnover among members, we'd like to hear from you. Describe your group briefly, how long it has met, and the shared interest that keeps you together (playing cards, picking stocks or dining out, for example).
Write: Friends, Tempo Department, Cincinnati Enquirer, 312 Elm St., Cincinnati 45202; fax; 768-8330.
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At first, Club was sandwiches. It evolved to fancy dinner parties featuring Mary Jean's tenderloin or Libby's beef stroganoff. Eventually it reverted to simpler meals, or dinners at a restaurant.
Sometimes, Club had a theme. It was a tacky party, where everyone wore clothes that didn't match.
It was a little kids party, where everyone dressed up in knickers and broomstick skirts.
It was a famous lovers party, when the Homans were Sonny and Cher and the Rutterers were Frankie and Johnny.
The people in Club watched each other's kids grow up. They attended their weddings, even when it meant traveling to St. Louis or South Dakota. Some of the children moved out of town or out of state. Most of them married, and some got divorced.
But the furthest anyone in Club ever moved was Middletown.
And everybody stayed married. They are a middle-class bunch. Except for Dan, who still works in interior design, they have retired from careers such as pharmacy, insurance, the credit and warehouse businesses and manufacturing.
For years they have played the lottery together, hoping to get rich. They didn't.
Not financially, anyway.
Great as moral support
On a June day in 1997, Jean Wenstrup didn't feel well. The woman who'd never been sick lay down, and never woke up. In five months, she and Lou would have celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.
Since her death, Club has met twice at Lou's place in Milford. The first time, Lou's daughters came and got everything ready. He could have asked that Club skip him in the host rotation. But he didn't want to.
"It was tough," Lou says. But, "From the standpoint of moral support, (Club) has been great."
The people in Club have never lost their sense of humor.
They are sitting in the Homans' living room, remembering when five of them were young men, all on one bicycle, riding around a traffic island on Mount Lookout Square. Paul was on Dan's shoulders.
A cop saw them and yelled, "What kind of business do you call that?"
"Monkey business!" Paul said. But it was Dan who went to court and lost bike-riding privileges for six months.
They remember when an obituary for an Arthur Schott appeared in the newspaper. Club's Arthur "Joe" Schott called up Paul and asked why no one was offering condolences, seeing as how he was dead. The next Club became a "wake" for Mr. Schott, complete with dimmed lights and mourners dressed in black. Somebody handed Joe a Budweiser can full of dead flowers. Libby still has it.
Club has gone on the road. At Keeneland Race Course in Lexington, they stunk up Paul's Winnebago with Limburger cheese and had to air it out.
And Club has convened on a rented houseboat on Kentucky's Lake Cumberland. They were two people over the limit, so Charley and Dick stayed behind, got in a rowboat and joined the others on the lake.
Somehow, the stories get funnier each time they're told.
"We know the ending," Mary Jean Magness says, "but we laugh anyway."
Over the years, Club has met at least 600 times. Each couple still pays $2 to the hosts.
"We've talked time and time again," Joe Schott says, in a rare moment when his friends will let him be serious, "about how lucky and blessed we are."
"On the same page'
None of them ever dreamed Club would last this long -- half a century, and counting.
"(The men) always tease each other that the first one to die will have six pallbearers, but what are the rest of them going to do?" Libby Schott says.
Maybe that's the only disadvantage of Club.
"We've just been good friends," says Dorothy Homan. "We've always gotten along. We've never had any trouble. Never. Nothing." Not even one big blowup?
"Never."
Joe says that's because "we're all more or less on the same page." Lou says honesty has something to do with it.
"Honesty?" says Jack, incredulous. "You cheat like hell in cards."
And it starts again. The laughter of close friends who've come together for Club.
![[club]](/editions/1998/10/01/friends_550x483.jpg)