Jamie Boone of Boone's Hand-lettered Signs hangs a sign at the new Rosa T. Beard Debutante Club headquarters on Steed Street. Six A.R. Johnson High School students started the club in 1963. JONATHAN ERNST/STAFF

Social club to debut safe haven

Web posted September 11, 1999

By Clarissa J. Walker
Staff Writer

The 1960s offered no safe haven for six black A.R. Johnson High School students.

Though they had been denied entry into restaurants, a drink from nonblack water fountains and access to vast social and educational opportunities all of their lives, the girls could foresee the demise of segregation and started a debutante club in 1963, seeking to show Augusta that they had been worthy all the while.

Several decades and more than 4,000 debutantes later, the Rosa T. Beard Debutante Club will ensure the legacy lives on. The center will open its haven Sunday -- a headquarters at 1240 Steed St. that will house the club's community service programs, including blood pressure screenings, tutoring sessions and senior citizens activities.

Mrs. Beard, the club's original adviser, donated the house, which she and her husband purchased in 1964, after spending thousands on floor replacements, removing a wall and installing new windows and carpeting donated by former debutantes' parents.

``I first envisioned it in 1990,'' Mrs. Beard said, saying that the renovation and finding a house manager caused the delay. ``Then I asked my children what they thought about it, and they said, `That is a splendid idea,''' she said.

More than wearers of bodice-cut pouffy dresses at the spring cotillion, which the group has held since 1965, the debutantes -- all local high school juniors and seniors -- are required to maintain high grades, participate in club fund-raisers and visit hospitals and nursing homes year-round, advisers said.

``The principles on which the club was founded still remain today,'' said Sandra E. Wimberly, the house's director. ``We provide them with opportunity to go to cultural events that they would not ordinarily get to go to.''

Times have changed in 36 years, but the need for such organizations hasn't disappeared, Mrs. Beard said.

``I think that emphasis on ladylike qualities are not stressed enough in school, church and in the homes,'' Mrs. Beard said. ``A lady should always be a lady,'' Mrs. Beard said, adding that she knows the tenets created by the original members -- which include ladies never yelling, never showing public displays of affection and never staying out late -- are deemed archaic by some of today's members. But original ``ladylike'' requirements such as reading as often as possible and valuing education and self-respect are timeless, she said.

``I think that it is needed more now than it was then,'' she said.

Mrs. Beard was a teacher at A.R. Johnson when the students asked her to help them start the nonprofit organization.

``Those girls really wanted the club,'' she said. ``They really wanted to be prepared for the change that they could see was coming.''

Clarissa J. Walker can be reached at (706) 828-3851 or cjwalker@augustachronicle.com.

The Rosa T. Beard Debutante Club's headquarters opening will be at 3 p.m. Sunday at 1240 Steed St. For more information, call 722-4153.