Amistad Helps Ogden Hall As Year’s Effort

A group of retired Spokane women have made it their mission this year to give some of the necessities of life to the women and children staying at Ogden Hall, a shelter in northwest Spokane.

The 17 members of Amistad, which means friendship in Greek, donated things like paper towels and toiletries to the people staying at the shelter. Amistad has been donating money, time and necessary items to people in need since 1937.

Denise Allessio, the only founding member left in the group, says Amistad chooses a cause to help each year, and this year it chose Ogden Hall.

Peggy Davis of Ogden Hall says the shelter relies on such support from the community.

The population in need is growing, she says.

“Now it’s more middle-class people who find themselves homeless,” she says. “There’s always been a need, just not so much.”

Allessio says club members try to help out with causes they hear about. They have gone to nursing homes with birthday cakes for residents, helped out in food drives, and worked with battered women.

The 25 original members were young women who graduated from Rogers High School in 1937. They formed Amistad because they didn’t want to be split up after graduation, and they wanted to help people.

Jeanette Stokke was asked to join the group when she moved to Spokane in 1939. In most families now, both parents are working, and they just don’t have the time to join groups like Amistad, Stokke says, and younger people are busy with other things.

In its more active years the group donated weaving looms, phones, typewriters and other equipment to groups that required assistance. Dances were held to raise money. Large events were common.

Stokke says that since the remaining members are all retired, no one has the energy to do things on such a grand scale anymore. The one big event left is the Friends luncheon in May.

Now, the members raise money among themselves. There is a $10 annual membership fee, and they hold an auction every year of members’ unwanted items.

Other members buy them, and the money raised is donated to charity.

Amistad also donates money to cancer research and other groups in memory of friends who have died. This year, members also donated turkeys to the Salvation Army.

, DataTimes