Over the last several years, the Centennial Committee has been busy brainstorming and planning a slate of activities to honor FWC’s 100^th. Now it’s your turn to join in the fun! There will be opportunities to participate:

• individually,
• within and across Sections,
• Club-wide, and
• with the University community.

FWC Quilting Show: “Stitched Together”

Continuing our FWC tradition of sharing artwork with the University community to celebrate significant anniversaries, the FWC Quilting Section was pleased to present an exhibit of fifty quilts at the Duderstadt Center at University of Michigan’s North Campus in March 2022. Ranging in size from placemats to queen-size bed coverings, these quilts are in traditional and non-traditional designs. Read more about the exhibit and see images of the quilts in the show in Michigan Daily and Ann Arbor Observer articles.

Winter Social Event Highlights U-M Trivia Knowledge

The Holidays: Past and Future

At the December 9th 2021 FWC Holiday event via Zoom, FWC President, Robin Richstone, shared remarks about how FWC has celebrated the holidays together for the past 100 years. Read the remarks (here) which included stories from 1922 until FWC started meeting at the President’s house in the 1980’s. The remarks ended with a toast to the next century and this limerick.

The group called FWC
Is as friendly as friendly can be,
     sharing joys, sharing tears
     now for one hundred years,
Here’s a toast to our next century!
     -- Robin Richstone

Centennial Word Searches

Knitting Us Together

On November 4, 2021 on the U-M campus, the Knitting Section celebrated the FWC Centennial with “Knitting Us Together,” a pop-up display of over 100 hand-knitted scarves and hats, encouraging passing students and community members to take them home as gifts. It was a cold day, so everyone was very appreciative!

For more about the response to FWC’s pop-up event and distribution of hats and scarves, see this Michigan Daily article.

Happy Birthday, FWC!

To commemorate the actual date that Nina Burton, wife of the University of Michigan president, gathered women from the university community to discuss forming a faculty women’s club here at the University of Michigan:

• Here is the announcement about the initial gathering that ran in The Michigan Daily on October 26, 1921 (Announcement link with article starting bottom of second column.)
• 2021-22 FWC president, Robin Richstone, shares thoughts on the 100th anniversary date, October 26, 2021, with members (PDF).
• Some FWC members gathered outside the Michigan League on October 26, 2021 to cheer the club’s founding.

FWC Arts and Crafts Section brings you MADE of 100

Members of the Arts and Crafts Section decided to commemorate the FWC Centennial with their own MADE of 100 projects. Scroll through the images below to see their fun, clever and attractive handiwork. Follow this link to see images and detailed descriptions by project creators.

More images, please. Do you have an incomplete project of any kind? We want to identify all the best-laid plans that didn’t come to fruition during the Covid era, for example, yarn purchased but the shawl not made; a set of watercolors sitting on your shelf begging to be used; or a new cookbook with untried recipes.Send a photo to FWC-100th@umich.edu. When we get 100 photos of incomplete projects, we’ll create a collage and complete an exhibit of them!

100 Ways to Celebrate FWC’s 100 Years

We’ve compiled 100 Ways to celebrate FWC’s 100 years! Follow this link for an inspiring list of opportunities to reflect, give, explore, learn, connect, appreciate, participate, volunteer, and more. How many things will you check off before we wrap up our centennial celebrations next spring?

FWC Book Sections Curate Centennial Reading List

Looking for fiction or mystery, memoir or history? We have just the thing for you! Our Book Sections have carefully curated a Centennial Reading List of suggested titles. View /download List.

Read one, several, or all of these titles! In doing so, you might discover a new (to you) author, reread an old favorite, and/or revisit an era that holds fond memories. Better yet, it may inspire you to join one of our eight FWC book sections or even help start a new one!

Bonus: We’re collecting photos of members reading these titles! Share a digital picture (selfie or otherwise) of you reading one of these titles! (Extra style points if you’re reading in some scenic or unusual location…perhaps one that relates to the book itself.) Let us know if we can publish in a future FWC newsletter, on our Facebook page or on the website. Send submissions to FWC-100th@umich.edu.

Revisiting Our FWC History: Decade by Decade

As we begin our centennial year, we thought you might enjoy revisiting our past to learn how we started, grew, and changed with the times.

Below you’ll find links to the 11 articles that offer glimpses of that trajectory. First published in our FWC newsletters, these newsy articles make fun reading. Enjoy!

• 1921, Our Founding Year!
• 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s
• 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010-2021.

These 11 articles barely scratch the surface of everything we achieved over the last 99 years. You can find many more details, clippings, and photos in the FWC Historical Archive, and our digitized Scrapbook.

 Click through the slide show below to get a glimpse of past FWC activities.

Stay Tuned

The last year+ of social distancing and limits on group sizes were definitely hurdles to our planning process. That is why we’re still working with the Board and Section Leaders to finalize dates, times, and locations. Check back here regularly to find:

• details about activities in which you can participate;
• links to Section-specific commemoration of our 100^th;
• puzzles to download; and
• trivia, classic recipes, and fun facts from our first century.

See you soon…we have a terrific centennial year ahead!

Updated 4/10/2022