Some of the best welcome mats on the Eastern Shore hang in other people’s yards. For newcomers to Fairhope, Daphne, Spanish Fort, Point Clear and Montrose, the first one is often figurative — an invitation to the Newcomers of Eastern Shore, a social club that has spent nearly five decades turning strangers into neighbors.
For one recent arrival, the introduction came the way many do: a neighbor walking her dog spotted a West Virginia license plate in the driveway and stopped to chat. The neighbor’s name was Nancy, and it turned out she was from Huntington, West Virginia — the same small world that so often operates on the Eastern Shore. She also happened to be the treasurer of the Newcomers of Eastern Shore, and her pitch was characteristically low-key: dues were $25 for the year, and if she wasn’t home, a check could just be left under the welcome mat.
The check was left. The club delivered far more than $25 worth of belonging.
A club built for the newly arrived
The Newcomers of Eastern Shore was founded in 1977, when the Fairhope of today — a town with a steady stream of new residents arriving from every state — was just beginning to take shape. Five cities fall under the club’s umbrella: Daphne, Fairhope, Montrose, Point Clear and Spanish Fort. Its roster has grown to roughly 220 members, and its mission has stayed the same: help people who have just moved in find their footing, their people and their place in the community.
The club’s structure is simple. Monthly luncheons and coffees form the backbone, supplemented by a long list of smaller interest groups — gardening, dining out, cocktail parties, card games, excursions, memoir writing — that members join as they please. Subgroups are deliberately kept small, which makes them sociable and means they often fill up quickly, though openings come and go as members’ lives change.
The luncheons themselves are proper productions. Meetings typically feature a guest speaker, though one newcomer’s first luncheon swapped the speaker for an acapella quartet from Mobile that ran through a set of crowd-pleasing arrangements. Tables are dressed with fresh flower and greenery centerpieces arranged by members of one of the club’s most active offshoots, the wryly named Down and Dirty Garden Club — and the centerpieces double as door prizes before the afternoon is over.
Learning your new hometown, one speaker at a time
Part of the club’s appeal is that the guest speakers teach members about the place they now live. One February program brought in the City of Fairhope’s horticultural manager, who walked the group through everything that goes into keeping the city beautiful: the flower beds, the lighted trees, the roses and seasonal baskets, even the white wooden trash bins that have become part of Fairhope’s streetscape.
Members left knowing that Fairhope’s pier fountain is believed to have been modeled on the fountain in Carmel, California, and that the city has held Tree City USA recognition since the mid-1980s. They also learned something less glamorous and more impressive: the crew that waters the flower baskets and beds starts hours before dawn, with the horticultural manager reporting at 6 a.m. to grounds that city workers had already been tending. Much of the stock that fills the beds is grown in local greenhouses, which were being rebuilt after Hurricane Sally damaged them.
Small groups, fast friendships
The club’s smaller groups are where the real friendships form. A memoir-style writing group called Lifestories meets monthly, with a coordinator who hands out writing prompts between sessions so members arrive with pages to share. A canasta group organized by the club’s card-player coordinator welcomes substitutes on short notice and plays at the James P. Nix Center in Fairhope, where five tables fill up fast and new players are eased back into the rules with patience — even the ones who lose every hand on their first outing.
Other groups have taken field trips to the Humming Star Alpaca Farm, and a small group of members was once treated to lunch and a talk on all things chocolate, complete with a tasting at Fairhope Chocolate. Dining out groups, cocktail parties, garden club projects and game nights round out the calendar.
Longtime members say the practical value is as real as the social one. Anyone who has just moved across the country knows the scramble to find a doctor, a dentist, a roofer or a bricklayer, and the club’s seasoned members are a standing referral network. “I like to be available when someone really needs help,” said one committee chair who moved to the area from Maryland and has chaired the club’s luncheon reservations for years — a job she describes, with a smile, as keeping the executive board calm.
Open to anyone looking for connection
Club leadership insists the doors are open even to people who are not exactly new anymore. The club’s president, who has lived everywhere from Mexico City to the Eastern Shore, put it plainly: newcomers get settled, then start looking for things to get involved with — and retirees whose lives have changed join for exactly the same reason. The club’s growth and the pace of new arrivals keep the executive board busy keeping the website current, which has become the hub for choosing among activities and signing up for subgroups.
The sentiment that comes up again and again from long-time members is simple: we have found friends for life here. They would know — every one of them was once the newcomer at the registration table, looking for a familiar wave across a crowded luncheon room. On the Eastern Shore, that wave is still going out, one new license plate at a time.