It turns out her folks were wrong. The club has continued to meet once a month for over seven decades. When COVID restrictions eased in the spring, five of the seven remaining members reunited to celebrate a major milestone. They toasted one another with coffee mugs that read: “Forever Friends, Weveaweave, 75 years, 1946-2021.”
The story of their beloved club offers inspiring lessons on friendship for those of us who are beginning to reconnect with close friends after more than a year and a half of separation.
Woven together
In the beginning, the 12 teens got together at the Loretto, a Catholic home for single women in downtown Dayton, where on Friday and Saturday nights a group of young musicians provided dance music. The boys and girls attended three Catholic high schools that weren’t co-ed at the time: Chaminade, Julienne and St. Joseph.
“We called it Weveaweave meaning we have a weave,” explains Kramer. “We had regular meetings on the fourth Saturday of every month, we wrote a song and a constitution.” The constitution, she says, was rather silly and stated that members who missed two meetings in a row might be voted out. But when someone did happen to miss, the group would simply talk and laugh about it.
Meetings began with a prayer, minutes and a treasurer’s report. Dues were $1 per month. As time went on, some dated members of the club, others dated outside the group. As they began to marry, new members were welcomed. Each couple received the same wedding gift from Weveaweave: a handsome, sturdy card table and chairs.
One of the original 12, Bill Leibold, left to become a Benedictine priest at St. Meinrad Abbey in Indiana where he spent the rest of his life. When Weveaweave celebrated 50 years in 1996, Father Alcuin Leibold came back and said Mass, preceded by a formal group picture at Smith Gardens in Oakwood.
Over the years
When the Korean War came along, six of the members were called by the draft to serve, including a set of triplet men — Fred, John and Henry Kramer. Fred was injured and sent back to the United States to recover; Henry served on the front lines for many months. John was assigned to a carpenter shop at Inchon Harbor where he built furniture for officers. Rex Link was sent to Osaka, Japan, where he managed the motor pool for officers and others. Bill Brennan was in accounting at a field office. Thankfully, all six men returned home safely.
Mary Lou Kramer estimates their group has gotten together at least 1,000 times over the years. In addition to monthly meetings, there were social events, children’s weddings and funeral farewells.
The club members vacationed together as well. There were cruises to the Caribbean, Alaska and the St. Lawrence Seaway. There were trips to Niagara Falls, to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City and houseboats on Lake Cumberland.
“There were no separations or divorces among our members,” says Kramer. “We all practiced our Catholic faith and many of us attended Mass together on Saturday evenings at the church of the host couple of the month.”
Children and grandchildren
Club members parented 58 children over the years, three of whom were adopted. “It may seem strange, but in all of those monthly meetings and other events, our children were not invited other than Easter Egg hunts and Santa parties when many of them were little,” Kramer remembers. “We knew all of the children by name and they knew us. Their life experiences, like ours, have been shared among us. We have praised, loved, and grieved.”
Kramer says the pandemic, which has changed life in so many ways, has also kept Weveaweave from gathering in person. During 2020, they had no monthly meetings and talked by telephone only.
The group currently has seven living members including one couple, Rex and Ruth Link. Others are Dolores Mark, Betty Kramer, Mary Lou Kramer and Joe Willhelm. Mary Ann Iannuzzi, one of the original members of the group, has lived in New Jersey for many years.
On May 29, five of those members gathered at The Station House restaurant at St. Leonard’s in Centerville to mark the group’s 75th year. All had been vaccinated and Betty Kramer, the second youngest, celebrated her 90th birthday that day.
All agree it has been very difficult to lose their beloved friends to illness and death over the years. “Frailty and the pandemic have severely curtailed the monthly meetings, but the love and memories are not diminished,” Mary Lou says.
Tips on maintaining friendship
Throughout the 75-year friendship, no one ever left a meeting, social outing or other event due to a disagreement. “It’s the most cordial and easygoing group of friends,” Mary Lou says. “We learned that our friendship and support was much more important than any little issue or disagreement.”
“No disparaging remarks about any member were ever uttered. Accomplishments were celebrated and setbacks assisted. Marriages were honored and faithfulness never questioned. When two members died, the two surviving spouses eventually married, much to the delight of all of the others.”
To be a best friend, believes Rex Link, means laughing at one another’s jokes, even when they’re bad. “When a club member died, you would cry,” he says. “But then you would laugh your head off thinking about all of his or her jokes over the years. When there are bad times, your best friends show up to give you a laugh or two. You can count on them.”
The group made a pledge: If someone died, the surviving spouse was never left out of a meeting or activity.
While Kramer is certain younger people also have many friends, she believes those friendships sometimes get lost in the demands of everyday life.
“I hope young people realize how close friends can share the burden of hardships,” she says. “We hope the closeness of our group and the fact that we have survived the years this way may be a positive example to the younger generations.”
In 1996, when Father Leibold returned to Dayton for his club’s 50th anniversary, he told Dayton Daily News columnist Dale Huffman that the group seemed to get closer over the years. “They were there for each other, during good times and bad,” he said. “It’s quite a wonderful thing to see the love of friendship bloom and for the beauty of the bloom to continue to brighten lives.”
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