Andrew Crighton
Life Editor
It’s time to kick off the holiday season, and what better way to do it than to get an early start on Christmas shopping?
The ISU Women’s Club is holding its forty-fifth Annual Holiday Fair Friday Nov. 6 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturday Nov. 7. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Pond Student Union Building Ballroom.
Local vendors will set up booths and sell their wares, including pottery, jewelry, photographs, lotions, potions and art work and donate a portion of the revenue to the Women’s Club for their scholarship fund.
The Holiday Fair is the main fundraising event for the Women’s Club, which uses the proceeds to give away three $3,000 scholarships every year. Any money over the $9,000 is placed into an endowment fund to ensure that scholarships can be paid for a time even if the club shrinks to a size too small to raise the money every year. That endowment fund currently has enough to pay out scholarships for over ten years, over $100,000.
Jody Finnegan is the organizer for the event and explains how the club started.
“The Women’s Club started in 1923, and we’re told that it’s the oldest, active club on campus,” said Finnegan. It was created by wives of the faculty staff and was mainly in charge of organizing social events and greeting dignitaries. It was then expanded to include faculty and staff women. The current club includes students such as the ISU Ambassadors.
On Friday, starting at 11 a.m., lunch will be offered, chicken enchiladas, which have been served at the fair for years. The Women’s Club will also be providing a silent auction on Friday and a raffle, with tickets costing $1 each, six for $5, or a ‘Tiger Tail’ for $20.
Prizes for the raffle include: four to five gift baskets, with items such as a Kindle in one and the ‘grand prize’ of a homemade quilt.
This year’s quilt is themed on the Underground Railroad, with each block showing a different sign or symbol that would represent a house was a safe place to stop for slaves trying to escape the South. The bottom right block tells the Underground Railroad’s story and the meaning of all the symbols.
This year’s quilt has been almost a year in the making, and may be the last one offered at the Holiday Fair.
“We think this may be our last quilt,” Finnegan said. “Some of the ladies in our group are getting older, and I’ve been told that this will probably be our last one.”
