PEOPLE

Woman’s Club restores 150 vintage hats for theater company

By Donna Williams Lewis

The GFWC Stone Mountain on display after ART Station Woman’s Club has been a reopens, said the center’s costaunch supporter of Stone founder, David Thomas. Mountain’s ART Station since it “We’ve used them in so launched 37 years ago. many shows,” Thomas said,

So the club’s members adding that the center has could not sit idly by when the pandemic cancelled ART Station’s theater productions, education programs and a huge fundraiser last spring.

After learning that staff is working through the organization’s continuing shutdown on a variety of SPECIAL projects, the women asked how Carole Roddenberry, left; Jane Brown, center; and Beverly McConnell, right, model hats from ART Station’s collection. they could help. ART Station told them about loaned some of the hats to local some long-standing to-dos, and theater companies over the the women went to work. years. “They’re so beneficial.

Over the summer, Woman’s They make productions more Club members cleaned a garden authentic.” at ART Station and organized Organizing the collection and cataloged a library began with a scavenger hunt. containing about 3,500 to 4,000 The hats were scattered in a plays. costume storage room full of

They also cleaned, restored crammed shelves and boxes and repaired about 150 hats piled to the ceiling, said Jane estimated to be between 60 and Brown, chair of the Woman’s 80 years old. Club’s Art & Culture Community

The hats were donated to Service Program. “You could see ART Station over the past couple little hats here and there. … They of decades by the families were squished flat as pancakes, of four women — including many of them,” she said. three GFWC Stone Mountain The volunteers unearthed Woman’s Club members — who cloche hats and floppy sun hats, have passed away. turbans and beanies, pillboxes

Once restored, the hats and fascinators, applejacks and were photographed, cataloged derbies. Some of them were and carefully preserved in damaged years ago when a tree labeled boxes, and they will go fell on ART Station’s roof during

The women behind the hats

ART Station’s vintage hats came from the collections of the following women: ■ Wilma Hipps — Formed and managed a statewide advocacy group, Georgians for Better Transportation, and was active in many civic organizations. She was the first female director of the Stone Mountain Rotary Club.

■ Lucille Williams McCurdy — A Stone Mountain Woman’s Club member for more than 70 years, she was named Volunteer of the Year by the General Federation of Women’s Clubs and was the first woman named “Mr. DeKalb” by the American Heart Association.

■ Sarah Alice Horton McCurdy — Lifetime member of the Stone Mountain Woman’s Club and a nurse who served as Southeastern Supervisor for the American Red Cross Blood Bank during World War II. ■ Grace Tuggle — A past president of both the Stone Mountain Woman’s Club and the Fourth District of Georgia Federation of Women’s Clubs.

Sources: GFWC Stone Mountain Woman’s Club and Wilma Hipps’ obituary.

a storm and everything in the room got soaked. Brown, who sews, paints and crafts, took to the internet to learn how to restore and date vintage hats and worked with her team to brush, steam clean, stuff and stitch each hat to its original glory. “It was a challenge. It was exciting,” she said. “Not only was it an outlet to give us something to do during the pandemic, it was a learning opportunity.” As she repaired fine netting and replaced tiny chenille dots, Brown wondered about the story behind each hat, especially one little grayish blue number.

“It was so worn and frail, that you could tell someone had worn that to church every Sunday,” she said.

Thomas is thrilled with the restoration work.

The hat collection now is “just extremely organized,” he said. “It’s a great asset that’s not only for ART Station but for the theatrical community in Atlanta.”

Brown created a poster that depicts some of the collection.

“I just look forward to the day that I can walk into the ART Station and see the hats exhibited,” she said. “I think that that will be a nice feeling.”

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