The first club meetings were held on Tuesdays at the El Cortez Hotel, after which the members purportedly could show their Soroptimist membership card and get free taxi rides anywhere in town. It's difficult to imagine this largess endured for very long as the organization grew and the years went by. But what a way to start!
Next we jump five years to 1936, when President Ellen Murray wrote "Through all these years we constantly and consistently kept working and raising money for our projects: Equal Rights, housing for the unadjusted woman, and world peace.... Our musicales (a music program forming the main part of a social occasion) continued to be our method of raising funds."
Just four years later in 1940 SISD sponsored the El Centro club, the first of the 36 neighbor clubs sponsored by SISD to date. Take a look at the SISD Club Tree graphic below, that shows how Soroptimist has spread in our geographical area over the years. This is an example of Soroptimist growth at its best.
