"Flashback on Start of Clubs Stirs Memories," Bloomington (Monroe County, Indiana) Saturday Courier, May 8, 1953, p. 3C. NOTE: The item below was abstracted from the original by Randi Richardson. NOTE: The Home Ec club members of the 1920s and Homemakers of the 1950s are now known as Extension Homemakers. In 1928, Mrs. Harry Stevenson organized the Homemakers, the first of the home ec clubs in Monroe County. There were seven members. The club was active in securing a full-time home demonstration agent by carrying petition to the various townships to obtain the necessary signatures. Five additional home ec clubs were organized in Monroe County that year. The Energetic Club (which is still in existence) was the outgrowth of two clubs from Washington Township that met during World War I. Lessons topics centered on war-time shortages and how to overcome them. At the end of the war the clubs ceased to exist but were re-organized as the Energetic when Walter Rogers became the county agent aided by the efforts of Mrs. G. K. Robinson and Mrs. T. L. Brown. The Pleasant Hour Club stems from the Industrial Economic Club also organized during World War 1 by a group of women meeting at the home of Mrs. Claude Rankin on Maple Grove Road to help the Red Cross. In 1928 it affiliated with the Home Economics organization, changed its name to the Pleasant Hours Club and took in a wider area of membership. In 1926, Mrs. L. A. Winslow and Mrs. Harold Voliva conceived of a club while waiting in a harness shop for their husbands following a shopping trip. It was called Our Day Off Club and offered an occasional day off for learning from the monotony of farm life during that period. It is now known as the ODO Club and has grown in membership from five to nineteen. These clubs and the remaining two others celebrated their silver anniversary this year during Home Demonstration Week.