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In this age of foundations with billion-dollar budgets, a service organization like Mountain View’s Fraternal Order of Eagles can seem almost obsolete. But on a recent Monday the club was lively as ever, and members say it continues to grow every year.
Locals often pass the tidy downtown headquarters — “Eagles’ Aerie 2356,” located at 181 Castro St. — and wonder what’s going on inside. (The place is closed to the general public.) So the Eagles invited the Voice to step in earlier this week to meet with members and hear about what they do.
First of all, there’s the social-club aspect. Inside 181 Castro St., the atmosphere is of a sleepy small-town bar where time stands still. On any given afternoon one will find a group of people, most of them over 40, watching sports or playing pool. Members say the place gets packed on Friday and Saturday nights and during the regular karaoke night. There’s also food, free to members, cooked in the on-site kitchen.
There are never any problems at this bar because, as member John Bolero said, “We screen who comes in.” If your guest causes trouble, he added, “we make you responsible.”
Besides “social club,” members had numerous other ways to describe the group, including “service group,” “a controlled environment” with a “personable aspect,” and a “friendly atmosphere” where “nobody is a stranger.”
One of the group’s main roles is to donate money to worthy causes, said Sean O’Malley, chairman of the group’s community relations committee. Often it’s the small causes that get overlooked, he said, like sports equipment for the high school baseball team, or helping a local resident pay for a medical procedure. The group has also sent money to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
The group currently claims 480 members — with some, members say, as young as 21 — and that includes 160 women, some of whom were seen on a recent afternoon chatting and watching a cooking show on one of the TVs.
Members said they worked for such companies and organizations as GTE, Lockheed and the US Geological Survey. Most were engineers, managers or small business owners. Hip Telmont, for instance — a 70-year resident who is also a member of the Mountain View Historical Association — said he worked for a trucking company.
The Eagles were quick to boast about their group’s growth, attributing it to the open, friendly atmosphere there. To highlight that, O’Malley compared Eagles Chapter 2356 to the Elks Lodge in Palo Alto, which has dropped from 3,300 to 800 members in the last 17 years. And the Odd Fellows club across the street — possibly Mountain View’s oldest organization, established in 1872 — is at 27 members today.
The local Eagles formed on March 28, 1946, with 180 members. It is Chapter 2356, meaning 2,355 other chapters came before it, the first of which was in Seattle.
There are a few familiar names listed on the charter among the group’s first members, including Vidovich, a relative of the John Vidovich who now owns the Sahara Village mobile home park. There is also a John Lubich, who once owned orchards where the Waverly Park neighborhood now exists. Lubich Drive near Mountain View High School is named after him.
Also listed is the Wagner of Wagner’s Drug Store at Villa and Castro streets. The original Eagles building was above the drug store.
In October 2002, a faulty electric sign at 181 Castro St. caught a bar stool on fire, causing the group’s building to burn down. No one was injured in the early morning fire, but much of the group’s old photos and memorabilia were lost. It cost $550,000 to rebuild — 60 percent of which has been paid off, members said. Bolero said the group should have the mortgage paid in a few years, even as the group continues to donate to its various causes and sponsors its Little League baseball team, also known as the Eagles.
Members’ dues are little more than $50 a year, but larger donations are made — and apparently the juke box and pool table are big money-makers.
Each chapter is asked to meet a 10 percent quota every year to recruit new members, which the local chapter says it has already met this year. Its next big event is an Oktoberfest-themed dinner dance, which can be attended by guests of the members.
You have to know somebody to become a member, or get two members to vouch for you. Or, even if you don’t know a member, you can sometimes join the group by being that rare person who simply comes in “through the front door,” O’Malley said.
