On an evening in April of 2002, several square dance couples met together to form a club which we hoped would take a new direction. At that time, caller and club founder,Eldon Lovingshimer proposed a club without officers — but rather a caller and his spouse who would take over the mundane responsibilities with the support of the clubmembers. Since we all go through various demands at different times of our lives, this group decided that volunteers would step in to carry out club duties as they could. This led us to the club motto that “It’s fun to have fun.”
We finalized our group with the name of the Grove City Western Squares — the patriotic club colors of red, white, and blue — and a badge created by one of the club members. These things we proudly displayed at one of our first “banner” activities that Eldon called in West Virginia and continued on through all of our classes and dances at the Evans Center.
Although we lost Eldon to cancer in May of 2003, our club has continued under the same tradition of no officers and mutual help in promoting all our activities. We have worked hard to have a welcoming attitude to anyone who visits us, and we think it is important to honor our church and family obligations before everything else. Therefore, we have a club which functions well but doesn’t dictate — which delights in the activities and not the obligations. And we have been a success in the square dance community.
Our thanks go out to Dave Stuthard who worked tirelessly as our club instructor from 2003 to 2010 and to Bob Daye who took over and is still giving his all to our class instruction. We also want to thank all the callers and cuers who have given us such fun dances. It would be nice to list all the charter members of Grove City Western Squares and their contributions, but the list would be too lengthy and certainly susceptible to leaving someone out through human error.
Suffice it to say, Grove City Western Squares is the club it is today because of the heart of the dancers who form its membership. To us, our group is not a club, but friends who care about each other on a personal level as well as other dancers we enjoy spending an evening dance with. And we hope to continue in that tradition.
We have come a long way since that time we met in April of 2002, yet we are still in our early days as most clubs have a longer tradition than we do. Still in all, we have as much energy and companionship as any club out there. We made a promise to our fallen founder to carry on the goals we had that first night — and we have seen it through.
Yes, for us, it is fun to have fun.
