One of Belleville's most venerable and successful organizations marks their golden anniversary this year.
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Back in 1956, Mrs. Zaio W. Schroeder, the chairwoman of the board of trustees told the closing annual session of the Southeastern District of Women's Clubs that things were looking good for creating a Girlstown in Belleville.
A home for no more than 10 girls had been in the planning stages for approximately two years.
Plans for an Ann Arbor home had to be scrapped because they would not rezone the site.
The original operating fund for the project was $53,197.47, raised by the 100 federated clubs of the SDWC over a four and a half year period.
A preliminary agreement for the purchase of the Charles Cozadd home at 330 N. Liberty - now demolished - was negotiated after the Ann Arbor proposal fell through.
"If this project is to be successful it must have the complete support of Belleville's citizens," Cozadd said.
A letter to the editor of a southeast Michigan newspaper, signed merely as "A Fortunate Adult" wrote, "These kids are unfortunate in some aspect of their lives and need the help and love of a good community like ours to make them citizens."
She added, "They certainly don't need the whispers, rumors, and bigotry of evil tongues."
And so, 330 N. Liberty became the site of the Michigan State Federation of Women's Clubs pilot house for the first Girlstown in Michigan.
Described as a "large, rambling Victorian home," the living room was 16x30 feet and held 11 rooms on three floors.
According to a Detroit News article dated May 13, 1958, Loch Rio, the official name for the Girlstown Home on Edison Lake, was dedicated
"in a simple religious ceremony."
Curiously enough, Belleville Lake was always referred to as Edison Lake or Lake Edison in the newspaper accounts of the day.
By the early 1960s, an annual autumn Ingathering allowed members of the Women's Clubs to visit their now very successful pilot house.
In fact, 150 club women "braved the elements on November 21, 1960 to make our Thanksgiving Ingathering a success," a local newspaper reported.
"The club women of Michigan have reasons to be proud of their project...taxpayers are paying $3,500 per year per individual to keep our delinquents in State institutions with little hope of being rehabilitated."
Girlstown, however, successfully discharged seven of fifteen girls admitted there in 1959.
By the mid- 1960s, The Michigan Federation of Women's Clubs had raised $40,000 toward building a second unit of Girlstown, located three quarters of a mile away from the 330 N. Liberty site.
In 1971, groundbreaking began at the second Girlstown Home on Quirk Road.
Hundreds of young women have been helped through the caring and innovative nurturing of the Girlstown Homes in Belleville.
On June 7, at the Soaring Eagle Resort in Mt. Pleasant, The Girlstown Home that started as a pilot program in the State of Michigan will celebrate 50 years of success and caring.
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