By Melanie Patterson

The North Jefferson News



A small but enduring group is taking steps to preserve its own historical significance in Gardendale.

And it’s just in time, too, because club president Evangeline Sloan was getting ready to burn several boxes of the organization’s mementos.

The Blue Star Garden Club was started and federated in 1952, making it one of the oldest organizations in the City of Gardendale.

Before deciding to make scrapbooks out of the material, Sloan had already gotten rid of much it.

“You should have seen the stuff I threw away,” she said recently as she was arranging artifacts on the table to be organized.

Eight of Blue Star’s 11 active members were at the Gardendale Civic Center on Thursday for the first session of making scrapbooks out of Blue Star materials old and new.

The club will donate the books to the Gardendale-Martha Moore Public Library.

Many of the awards, pictures, newspaper clippings and yearbooks date to the 1950s and represent every decade between then and now.

Sloan joined the group in 1979 when the club met at Happy Hilltop Kindergarten, a private school that Sloan owned and operated for 17 years.

But there is at least one woman who can beat Sloan’s 30-year membership.

Yvonne Gamble is Blue Star’s longest-standing member, having joined the group in the fall of 1959.

Gamble remembers when the club met in members’ homes and required formal attire.

“Everybody wore hats and gloves. We all dressed up in our Sunday best,” Gamble said. “We were known as the garden club that wore gloves.”

Now the informal group meets at the Gardendale Civic Center and even includes one male associate member.

The Blue Star Garden Club is known for its community involvement. Over its 57-year-existence, the club has donated money to schools, taken part in recycling and beautification projects, donated to nursing homes and much more. The club even had an annual parade in its early years.

The club, though small, is filled with pride in its work and its involvement in the Federated Garden Clubs of North End Council and the Garden Club of Alabama, Inc., Third District.

Patricia Akers, a member of Blue Star and president of the North End Council, said she appreciated Sloan’s efforts in organizing the scrapbooking.

“We’re just so proud of our president for organizing this and for making sure the history is preserved,” Akers said. “It’s so important.”