Members of the Sweet Home Squarenaders sashayed their way around each other as the club celebrated its first club dance on Saturday, Sept. 14, since the pandemic.
When COVID curtailed pretty much every social activity worldwide in 2020, the Squarenaders were boasting approximately 50 members in its circle –er, square – but when the health scare was over, they found themselves down to barely enough to form one square (which requires eight individuals).
“You can’t survive with one square,” said long-time club treasurer Charlotte Bates, referring to the fact that the $5 membership fee from eight people isn’t enough to cover the cost of a dance room plus a caller and cuer.
Also, she added, “it’s a lot more fun to have four or five squares rather than just one square, especially if we want to rest. We want to sit down once in a while.”
The Squarenaders began in Brownsville some 66 years ago and moved to Sweet Home after a fire burned down the club’s building. Honorary lifetime member Marie Dorsey told The New Era the club was first organized “by popular demand” with about 88 couples joining. The first dances were held in the old Dance Hall in Brownsville Pioneer Park and lessons were offered at Sweet Home’s Oak Heights gym.
Today the lessons and dances are held at Foster Elementary (5526 Poplar St.) from 2:45-4:30 p.m every Sunday. The first two lessons are free for newbies, and the cost is $5 per lesson thereafter. No partner is required.
Current club president Ginger Allen has been a member of the Squarenaders for 25 years. She said that during COVID, not only did the club lose most of its members, but the caller also moved out of state, putting the Squarenaders in the wrong corner.
“It’s not easy to get a caller to come in,” she said, “but there was a new caller that was taking classes, so we asked if he would have a class for us so that we could jump-start and get a class going and see where that went to start having dances again.”
Allen was referring to Shaun McKamey, who called during Saturday’s event. He agreed to help, and the club was able to host a set of classes from February to June this year.
While the Squarenaders were holding steady between 35 and 55 members during this century, they have been able to rally up 20 members to date since COVID, allowing the club to once again hold dances.
Among the newest members is Cindy Kurle, who moved to Sweet Home more than a year ago from Forest Grove.
“I looked for square dance clubs online before I moved down here and I found all four of the alliance clubs (Albany, Corvallis, Lebanon, Sweet Home),” she said. “Then I got down here and I found out that the Squarenaders was basically defunct, and I think the official (standing) was they were a traveling club and there were, like, five people.”
Kurle is now vice president for the Sweet Home club. Another new member, Rod Stidham, was encouraged by Allen to try the sport out.
“I always say, ‘No, I don’t think I’m gonna do this, it’s not for me.’ But I thought, you know, I’d take a chance. So I did and found out that I really did enjoy it.”
Stidham could be a poster child for square dancing, given that he testifies freely to the benefits of art.
“It’s good exercise, it makes me breathe heavy sometimes, and I have to think and listen and then interpret what’s going on, so it does a little mind exercise for me too,” he said.
Now Stidham attends square dances throughout the Willamette Valley.
“It’s opened up my whole world, just about,” he said. “I enjoy the social aspect of meeting all these people close to my age.”