Birmingham’s Speech Arts Club celebrates 100 years

A century ago, a group of women in Birmingham – including some from the most prominent families of the day and some of the area’s talented speech teachers – decided to form a club.

They had heard Dr. Henry Gaines Hawn, who had a school of speech in New York, speak, and 13 women “were just very excited about it and wanted to continue it,” says Barbara Sloan. “And so they met.”

The women formed Birmingham’s Speech Arts Club, and 100 years later, the club devoted to the importance of public speaking is still going strong. They celebrate their centennial with a meeting Tuesday, April 8, at the Virginia Samford Theatre.

Over the decades it has grown. Today, there are 38 members, the most allowed by the club’s bylaws. Members include speech teachers, actresses, singers and others who share a love of public speaking and performance.

Members include Sloan, chair of the Centennial Committee; Lisa Paden Gaines; Dolores Hydock; Kristi Tingle Higginbotham; Jan D. Hunter; Dana Porter; Kimberly Kirklin; Suzanne Mann; Martha Haarbauer; Martha Summey; Caprenia Anthony; Susan Lawrence; and Julia Matson. Fans of Birmingham theater will recognize many of the names, which is no accident. At each monthly meeting, a member presents a half-hour program, usually presenting a reading but sometimes singing.

At 91, Ginger Sharbel is the oldest member of the club, having been invited to join by Dorothy Williams, speech teacher at West End High School and one of the original 13 members.

“I threw the invitation away because I didn’t know what it was,” Sharbel recalls. “And then I got this call from her, which terrified me. Here I was married with a child at the time, and she said, ‘You will be at the Speech Arts meeting at so-and-so.’ I said, ‘Yes, ma’am,’ and I have been there for the next 70 years.”

Sharbel’s daughter, Cameron McKinley is the current president of the Speech Arts Club, which each year gives several book awards to speech and theater students in various schools.

“It’s an actual book we give them,” McKinley says. Last year’s book was a Shakespeare collection, and this year’s is a compendium of great speeches, “Speeches That Changed the World.”

There’s a reason the club’s yearly open meeting is held at the Virginia Samford Theatre. Samford herself was a member of the Speech Arts Club, following in the footsteps of her mother, Laura Suydam. “We don’t pay to meet there,” Sharbel says. “Virginia Samford set it up so we could meet there forever.”

Longtime member Beverly Brassel, who taught English, speech and drama at Vestavia Hills High School, chalks up the Speech Arts Club’s longevity to passion.

“The women who are invited and join this organization are usually women of passionate hearts and spirits,” says Brasell, who will present a program about Joan of Arc at Tuesday’s meeting. “Women who set out to change the world by changing lives tend to keep going, and they inspire others to keep going. So, I think it’s the passionate hearts.”

Sloan has another theory as to why the Speech Arts Club has persevered.

“One reason I think it keeps going is it’s a group of like-minded, open-minded, open-hearted people,” she says. “You know, when you do theater all your life, you just become a kind of person who is open to anything, and you’re looking for other people like that. And that’s what this group is about.”