Community - Former youth group members start such projects as a garden and scholarships
Fact Box:
What: Rural Grange turns Urban Asset
Where: 8340 SW Seneca St., Tualatin
When: Established 1895,
Grange Hall built 1941
Website: www.winonagrange271.org
Thursday, July 17, 2008
SARAH DUNLAP
The Oregonian Staff
TUALATIN -- When Tualatin had a rural backdrop and a majority of its residents worked the land, Winona Grange was a hub of social activity, and its membership flourished with more than 200 souls.
That was in the 1940s, Grange Master Dolores Crossway said, when dozens of area children were loyal members of the youth group and attended weekend dances at the newly erected grange hall, mingling with adults and learning proper social etiquette.
"The Grange really was the center of the farming community," Winona overseer Mary Ann Hulquist said.
About three years ago, it looked to the state Grange deputy that Winona was about to die.
Its members had aged, attendance dwindled, and gatherings were long and dull recitations of previous meetings' minutes, said current Grange secretary Loyce Martinazzi. A former youth group member, she took it upon herself to revive Winona by increasing membership and focusing its commitment on community service.
"Winona die? Over my dead body," Martinazzi recalls thinking to herself.
She telephoned old youth group participants, including her sisters Vicci and Rochelle Martinazzi, urging them to rejoin the Grange. Many members of the old youth group returned, many citing fond childhood memories.
"When I was young, I was involved in youth grange there, and we had a lot of fun," said Crossway, who has been a dues-paying Grange member for 60 years but had let her involvement lapse. "They were nice memories."
Today, Winona Grange centers its efforts around community service.
With help from invested Grange savings that date to the Great Depression, Loyce Martinazzi said, Winona members award scholarships to local students, purchase dictionaries for third-grade classrooms, and grow fruit and vegetables through the Grange Gardens, a new project that produced full-grown radishes, lettuce and other produce in 27 days.
Crossway said Winona largely funds its community projects with membership dues and by renting its hall to tenants that include Abundant Life Family Church, two square-dancing organizations, a yoga class and an Irish dance group.
Winona members began the Grange Gardens program in response to increasing living costs, in an effort to share healthful, organic food with lower-income families, said Hulquist, who is second in rank to Crossway. The garden, located at Rochelle Martinazzi's Century Farm in Tualatin, is made up of patches of land adjacent to a field of young Christmas trees that will be full grown by December.
After harvesting vegetables last week, Loyce Martinazzi and a few other members deposited their baskets at the Tualatin Food Pantry.
