Where Leading Is a Woman's Job

Ex-Men's Club Elects 1st Female President

When the first woman applied to join the elite all-male, all-white Old Dominion Boat Club, which sits smack on prime waterfront right at the foot of King Street, the membership reacted quickly: They rejected her application, returned her $200 application fee and expelled the two male members who sponsored her.

That was 1980.

City officials and power brokers, who for decades had made backroom deals there, began refusing to patronize the place. Activists for women said the place was "nothing but a living symbol of inequality."

When the club finally voted to change its bylaws to allow women to join -- after a raucous 1980 protest by more than 150 women during a speech by soon-to-be governor Charles S. Robb on the club's 100th anniversary and a tense property rights lawsuit with the federal government -- one member sighed that the club had finally emerged from the 18th century.

That was 1983.

The first female member didn't officially join until 1985. And the vote to let her in was grudging. "I don't see why a woman would want to belong to an all-male club," groused one member, unhappy that the smoky old boys' club ambiance was going to change.

And so it is with some fanfare and no small amount of pride that the 800-some member Old Dominion Boat Club announced recently that it had elected the first female president in its 128-year-old history. All these years later, there are still only about 50 female members. But Carolyn Dabney Bell, a retired airline executive in her late 50s, won by a landslide.

"We thought it was a special event for all of us," said Terry Anderson, newly elected vice president. "We're thrilled."

Stodgy old boat club, meet the 21st century.

Dabney Bell is hardly some bra-burning women's libber. And it never occurred to her that she was making club history when she decided to run for the job.

"I don't have any agenda. I love the club. I enjoy being part of the team. And the ones who talked me into running for president kept telling me that I was the most qualified for the job," she said. "That I was a woman was a coincidence."

What the membership noticed, Anderson and others said, is that Dabney Bell was good for the club.