Whidbey Club Shoots Down Own Male-Order Rule

One of Washington's oldest, proudest good ol' boys clubs swallowed hard, winced, and bit the bullet: By a 5-1 margin, members of the North Whidbey Sportsmen's Association last night voted to forge boldly into the 19th century.

Up on Whidbey Island, they're calling this progress.

If you're a female target shooter, hunter or angler, that's precisely what it is.

The club, founded in 1928 by Oak Harbor's sporting gentlemen, no longer is male-only. Women - most of them spouses or significant others of existing members - now can attend meetings, vote on club matters, shoot skeet and do everything else a Whidbey sportsman can do.

Getting there wasn't easy, club members say.

"It's been a good ol' boys club since the beginning," says J.D. Wade, the club's business secretary. "Times finally are changing."

Rejected by NRA

The process began eight years ago, when a proposal to admit women as full members was quickly harumphed to death.

The club bylaws were challenged again about five years ago, when club officers came to the stunning realization that their males-only dictum made them unnacceptable to the National Rifle Association.

You heard that right. The NRA, the last bastion of the nation's most ardent gun-toters, told Whidbey Sportsmen they were too hick to wear the NRA badge.

This was something of an embarrassment. Also something of a financial problem.

For years, the NRA had provided insurance for the Sportsmen's Association's shooting range. Disassociation with the group meant private insurance had to be secured.

Fine, said most men in the then 120-member group. No national organization is going to tell us what to do.

Especially since things appeared legal. Someone did some checking and found out that state laws preventing gender bias didn't apply to groups with fewer than 300 members. Sexual apartheid

But the NRA problem remained. Hoping to appease the national group, the club compromised, forming a women's auxiliary. It gave women their own facility, meetings and use of the shooting range - but no voting rights.

Not good enough, said the NRA. We need all the political help we can get. Men don't kill gun laws. People do.

The North Whidbey Sportsmen's Association promptly decided the NRA needed it a lot worse than it need the NRA. It found its own private insurance and, just to keep everyone happy, kept the women's auxiliary.

Sexual apartheid firmly established, business continued as usual: Monthly men's meetings. Sunday potlucks and fish feeds with the wives.

But pressure remained. And as any good ol' boy can tell you, the problem with being a good ol' boy is the "ol" part. One day you look up and you're outnumbered.

That's what happened to the North Whidbey Sportsmen.

"We've gotten so many new members, now over 300, and a lot are Navy guys (based at Whidbey Naval Air Station)," Wade said. "They want to have their wives be members so when they go out for six months, their wives can use the club."

Sooner or later, the change was inevitable, Wade said. Even if last night's vote had failed, club membership likely would have topped the 400 cutoff as early as next year.

Name change next?

What happens now? The club might be shopping for a new name. "Sportsmen" doesn't seem to cut it anymore. It also likely will reunite with the NRA.

And it's likely to see a group of loyal, founding members drift away.

"We'll probably lose 10 or 15," Wade said. "But to lose them, we'll be gaining 100 or 200."

Charter members of that group of 10 or 15 insist the change is not so much about sex as it is about age, outlook and experience.

"This was founded in the '30s as a men's club," says Milo Benson, 64. "It's always been a men's club. There are traditionalists, and I happen to be one, who think that's what it should be."

Benson, a 30-year member, doesn't understand why younger members would abandon its women's auxiliary, which he and other members saw as the "perfect compromise."

"I'm just disgusted with them," he said. "This will destroy the club, as I knew it."

In the beginning, the club was founded on traditions that happened to be male: Hunting, fishing, shooting, conservationism, he said. The new generation wants to change it to a shooting club.

"A lot of the younger people have no idea what the tradition of the club is," Benson said. "Sixty or 70 percent of them now are young sailors down at the base. They're here four years, or two years, then they're gone."

Benson fears that without the core of loyal old-timers, the club will lose its strong social ties and become just another drop-in center for shooters.

Not likely, says Wade. To many club members, it's not the end of an era, but the start of a new one.

"One of Whidbey's oldest traditions is finally gone," he said.

Now if they could just do something about those low-flying planes. . . .