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“If you’ll notice in our papers, I
was Mrs. Elmer McCarty,” she said.
“They didn’t use our names. …
Women didn’t have an identity.”
McCarty’s husband died over 20
years ago, but the fact that her title
was no longer Mrs. Elmer McCarty
didn’t hit her until she signed some
documents on her own behalf.
“I went up to First National Bank
to sign these papers. Mr. Maddux
called me a [few days later],” she
said. “He said, ‘You’ve got to come
back and sign these papers. You
didn’t sign your name. You signed it
Mrs. Elmer McCarty.’ I said, ‘I didn’t
know anything else. When I got
married, I was Elmer’s wife, I was
honey, I was darlin’. …”
While many women have come
and gone just like the times, McCarty
and her friends still boast more than
20 club members, half of which are
skilled with needle and thread.
“I think we have about 22
members,” 50-year member Tommie
Coalson said. “We average about 1618 [at our meetings]. We don’t always
have everybody.”
Asked what non-quilters do,
McCarty said, “they just buy raffle
tickets,” evoking laughter from her
friends.
The group produces one quilt a
year in April, which is later raffled
off in August to raise money for the
upkeep of the community center.
Originally, the club began raising
funds for Authon Volunteer Fire
Department, founded in the early
‘60s.
When the VFD disbanded in
the ‘80s, however, the remaining
funds from the department were split
between the Authon Community
Center and the cemetery. After this,
the club shifted their fundraising
efforts strictly to the upkeep of the
community center.
During the summer months, the
club doesn’t meet. McCarty said the
original reason behind a summer
recess was, “because we had gardens
and we preserved and canned.
Everybody in the country had a big
garden.” Now it’s just tradition, as
most don’t garden anymore.
But while members were literally