By Barbara de Michelle

Issaquah Historical Society

Although the 1980’s feel like almost-modern history, in many ways they represent a watershed era for the Issaquah area. Take, for example, the issue of women’s rights. In the 1980s Issaquah women were at the forefront of opening traditionally all-male organizations to female membership.

Until 1986 and 1987, respectively, service clubs like Rotary International and Kiwanis International restricted membership to men. Kiwanis, established in 1915, specifically restricted membership to males in a 1924 constitutional revision. Rotary International restricted membership to males from its beginning in 1905.

By the early 1980s, gender restrictions were being legally challenged by service club members themselves but, here in Issaquah, things took a charmingly different course.

According to Bonnie Kosko, at that time the Darigold office manager, in 1983 a group of Issaquah women assembled to organize Issaquah Women Professionals.

“We wanted to serve the community,” Kosko remembers. “And we were barred from the service groups. We decided to do it ourselves.”

Issaquah Women Professionals modeled itself on Kiwanis and Rotary. Members met once a week, the club sponsored speakers and programs of interest, and members undertook successful fundraising efforts that benefited the Issaquah community. Like Kiwanis and Rotary, meetings started with a “happy dollar” sharing period. “We even had a bell, like the noon Kiwanis,” says Kosko, “which was a gift from that group to us.” The bell was used to ring in the start of each meeting.

Marilyn Moon, another Issaquah Women Professionals member, says, “I came to IWP with a really strong need to network.” Moon, who ran a one-woman business consulting firm, adds, “I needed to figure out what I was doing with my business, I needed to promote my business, and I learned a great deal about what other women professionals were doing.

“Most of all, I learned that no job was too daunting. We women were powerhouses.”

At the height of its activities, Issaquah Women Professionals included approximately 40 members. Almost all made their mark on Issaquah history: Linda Ruehle, since deceased, Issaquah City Clerk; Debbie Berto, publisher of the Issaquah Press; Suzanne Suther, Georgia Megow and Jan Bodine of the Issaquah Chamber of Commerce; Mary Scott, Issaquah School Board member; and local lawyers, court officials, bankers, doctors, dentists and real estate brokers. Donna Graves, since deceased, an Issaquah native and long-time Issaquah insurance broker, was another of the founding members. Graves and Kosko went on to serve terms as president of the Issaquah Chamber of Commerce.

However the times, as they say, “were a-changin’.”

According to Larry Hapgood, author of Dimensions of Service: The Kiwanis Story, by the early 1980s about 50 local Kiwanis clubs around the nation had voted to admit women. Those clubs were then sued by Kiwanis International, who threatened to take away their charters. In 1985, local clubs fought back by filing suit in federal court, maintaining they had the right to select their own members.

At about the same time, a local Rotary Club in Duarte, Calif., voted to admit its first woman member, according to a history posted to Wikipedia. Like Kiwanis, Rotary International threatened to take away the club charter. The Duarte club filed suit in California, maintaining that Rotary was in fact a business enterprise that could not discriminate against women under California’s equal opportunity laws. The suit was successful, but Rotary International appealed the decision to the Supreme Court.

On May 4, 1987, the Supreme Court upheld the Duarte decision, effectively requiring Rotary to open its doors to women. On July 7, 1987, voters at the Kiwanis International Convention overwhelmingly voted to open membership to women. At the same convention, delegates reinstated all local clubs whose charters had been threatened and officially recognized all women who had been serving “illegally” as members before the decision. In the first month alone, 3,000 women joined Kiwanis.

Here in Issaquah, the previously all-male Kiwanis club admitted 16 women members in 1987. The first was City Clerk Linda Ruehle, who also went on to become the club’s first woman president.

According to long-time member Fred Nystrom, the Issaquah Rotary actually admitted its first woman member, Issaquah real estate broker Kathy Johnson, before the Supreme Court decision was rendered. “Some guys threatened to quit if we admitted women,” says Nystrom, “and we said, ‘bye-bye.’”

But the Supreme Court decision spelled the end for Issaquah Women Professionals. Within a few months, the club ceased holding meetings.

“I don’t think there was a lot of sadness in letting it go,” says Kosko. “When the doors to the service clubs opened, we thought, sure, that’s what we really wanted to do.”

Both Kosko and Moon, however, speak about the bonds established by the short history of IWP.

“There was always a really special camaraderie in that group,” says Moon. “We stuck together, even years afterward. That club filled a really important niche, a really important need, at the time.”