Dec. 31—Young women and girls could expect to find multiple ways to improve their fitness and health at Terre Haute’s Ywca in the early 20th century.

The YWCA’s connected with community in so many other ways, though. That bond bloomed in the World War II era.

Its cafeteria became so popular that women, and men, stood in long lines along Seventh Street for its lunches. United Services Organizations, better known as USOs, conducted dances and special events at the YWCA. Girls learned to swim, but older women practiced knitting and sewing there. An Overseas Wives Club formed at the YWCA to help women from other countries, who’d married U.S. servicemen from Terre Haute, to acclimate to the town. Groups formed within the YWCA for women of various ages — Y Teens, Club 121 (18 to 35) and the Golden Age Club (over 50).

For many years, the Young Women’s Christian Association also stood as a place to live for young women working in downtown Terre Haute or attending college, or both.

“I was just impressed by the impact of the YW as kind of a dual organization,” said Dale Bringman, referring to the YWCA’s health and fitness mission and its outreach as a community service hub.

Dale Bringman and his wife, Pat, uncovered a long list of the YWCA’s virtues as they compiled the history of the Terre Haute organization. Their deep dive into that history wasn’t quick. They spent long days in the Vigo County Public Library special collections room, poring through newspaper microfilm, studying documents from the Vigo County Historical Society, talking with local historians and longtime YWCA advocates.

“We worked intensely for 21/2 years,” Pat said.

Their efforts resulted in a new book, “The Terre Haute YWCA Story: As Reported in the Newspapers.” It recounts the successes, the difficulties and the everyday activities of an organization that first flickered to life as a campus chapter at Indiana State Normal School, followed immediately by a Terre Haute chapter, both in 1885. Its first official home came in 1902 inside a large rented house at 414 N. Sixth St., where the present-day Indiana State University Hulman Memorial Student Union stands.

Story continues

Just a decade earlier, in 1892, Terre Haute’s first YMCA opened.

Iterations of the YWCA and YMCA have continued here since, surviving the merged YMCA’s tumultuous closing and absence from 2010 to 2012. Today, the YWCA exists in the DNA of the current Vigo County YMCA, revived by the Clay County YMCA in 2012 and now operated with the Clay and Putnam county Y’s as a part of the YMCA of the Wabash Valley. The city of Terre Haute now owns and maintains the Vigo County YMCA building at the south edge of Fairbanks Park.

The Bringmans are retired educators, so the book’s potential to educate the community is no coincidence. They came to Terre Haute as ISU students in the early 1960s. Fittingly, Pat lived briefly at the YWCA as a student while her campus residence, Erickson Hall, was being renovated. She later taught in the Vigo County schools. Dale taught in ISU’s School of Technology. She’s 82. He’s 80.

They discovered the need for a historical account of the Terre Haute Y’s while using the facility.

“We noticed people exiting the Y and having no idea of the history of it, and not realizing how long it had been there,” Pat recalled this month. “And we thought, ‘They need to know.'”

As they collected the backstory of the YWCA, the Bringmans decided to compile its timeline, attaching dates to specific changes and additions to the Y.

“It occurred to Dale and I, you have to build a story from [the timeline],” Pat explained. The Bringmans had the timeline illustrated in informational placards that now line the wall of the Vigo County YMCA’s main hallway.

Perhaps no activity better describes the evolution of the YWCA along that timeline than dance. When the Terre Haute YWCA first opened its doors, dancing wasn’t considered appropriate for a proper young woman, as the Bringmans write. Their book quotes a passage from the city’s Saturday Spectator newspaper in 1913.

“Only a few years back, the idea of allowing dancing to be taught at a YWCA would have been regarded as joining with the emissaries of the devil. Now every director of physical training must be an accomplished instructor in dancing,” the Spectator citing reads.

Through the coming decades, the YWCA became not only a sponsor of community dances, but a host site for them.

More importantly, it helped initiate social change and racial integration in Terre Haute, particularly after World War II, the authors write.

By the 1980s, Terre Haute had Indiana’s second largest YWCA by membership, totaling more than 4,000 from adults to youngsters, the then-executive director Dorothy Jerse reported. That growth led to a $2-million-plus building expansion project launched in 1987. Officials broke ground in 1989 on the 25,000-square-foot addition, which included a five-lane swimming pool, a new gymnasium, locker rooms and child care center, as “The Terre Haute YWCA Story” explains.

The core of that facility continues to operate as the Vigo County YMCA along the Wabash River front area.

Of course, a companion history coexists with “The Terre Haute YWCA Story.” Pat Bringman is also writing the history of the Terre Haute Young Men’s Christian Association. She’s finished a handful of chapters through the YMCA’s move into its longtime home at Sixth and Walnut streets in the 1940s.

“The beginning of its history is really interesting,” Pat said, hinting at the early YMCA basketball and fundraising activities.

She hopes to complete the YMCA book for publication by August or September of 2023. Informational placards from its historical timeline will line the other side of the Vigo County YMCA hallway, Pat said.

Like the men’s organization, the local YWCA provided opportunities that otherwise might not have existed in Terre Haute.

“The YWCA had all kinds of programs that filled gaps that government couldn’t provide,” Dale said.

Mark Bennett can be reached at 812-231-4377 or [email protected].