The Cape Cod Chronicle's article of September 27 covering our Septemder Opening General Meeting of September 17

Chatham Harwich Newcomers Club turns 30
By Debra Lawless

Welcoming Newcomers. The Newcomers Club of Chatham Harwich, celebrating the 30th year, recently held its first meeting of the season. From left, Anne Stawiarski, greeter; Mark McGrath, president; Kim Breen, greeter, publicity; Jack McDowell, program director. In the background Newcomers are signing up for activities in the Oak Street Community Center.
Debra Lawless photo

Nowhere does the application for the Newcomers Club of Chatham and Harwich ask what you did for a living before you retired and moved to Cape Cod.

"We want everyone to start off fresh," says club president Mark McGrath. He is standing in the gymnasium of the Harwich Community Center on Oak Street, and along one entire wall Newcomers are busy signing up for activities as diverse as a political discussion group, mah-jongg and cross-country skiing.

"You move to the Cape with no new friends. It's a whole new life," says McGrath, who retired four years ago and moved to Harwich from Hartford. "And all of a sudden you have more friends than you ever had."

This is the first day many Newcomers are seeing each other again after their busy Cape Cod summers. Most Newcomers are retired people, generally ranging in age from their late 50s to early 70s, but any age is welcome to join the group, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.

As befits a group devoted to Newcomers, these are unusually friendly people who don't let a stranger stand alone for long. Anne Stawiarski is one of 34 greeters. "We watch them when they walk in the door," she says about strangers. "They walk in all timid." She says that so far this morning she has welcomed 10 new people.

Down the hall, in the activity room near a table with donuts and coffee, Newcomers are paying their annual dues of $12.50 and greeting one another with hugs.

"I haven't seen you forever," a woman says enthusiastically to a man.

The group was founded after a 1978 New Year's Eve party in Chatham, when some newly-retired people discussed the idea of such a group. The group clearly fills a need: It now has about 400 members.

Jack McDowell's experience is probably typical. He and his wife Suzanne, summer residents for several decades, retired to Harwich from Pittsburgh in 2003. They joined Newcomers to find new friends, and this is their fifth or "swan song" year in the group. The one negative aspect to Newcomers is implicit in its name - the group considers you a Newcomer for five years, and then you graduate to a second group, Continuing On Newcomers Chatham and Harwich (CONCH).

In the past four years the McDowells have made many friends in Newcomers. They traveled to Italy in a group of five couples under the auspices of Newcomers. Later they formed an "ad hoc" group on their own and traveled to Ireland. They are planning a trip with 18 of their friends to New Zealand and Australia next year.

Here's how Newcomers works. For nine months, September through May, the group convenes monthly. Meetings with speakers such as a bagpiper and a specialist on joint replacements alternate with luncheons. The November meeting will be devoted to local volunteer opportunities. And in the spring the group will hold its second Spring Dinner Dance "senior prom" at the Wequassett Inn.

Last year men wore tuxedoes and women wore their old prom dresses - if they still fit. One hundred sixty newcomers came to dance through "a wonderful evening," McDowell says. "It was fun to see everybody dressed to the nines. Everybody's gotten so casual." After the prom the group convened on Harding's Beach for a post-prom party.

A key component of the luncheons is knitting new people into the networks. For that reason, McGrath says, "there are no cliques or sitting with friends - it's all random seating." Each seat is marked with a place tag and the greeters spring into action again, leading new Newcomers around and introducing them.

Judging by the enthusiasm of the people swarming around the gymnasium this morning, the group seems to work. McDowell points to a woman who is now engaged to another newcomer. Last year a couple who met through Newcomers married.

The place that lasting friendships are formed, McGrath says, is the activities. "These activities are much more intimate where you get to meet your new friends," he says. While some activities charge a nominal fee such as $2 for the year to buy snacks. Most are free.

Eve Dalmolen runs a non-partisan political discussion group that convenes twice a month in the Eldredge Public Library in Chatham. Before the meeting she emails her 30 or so members with a current topic.

"Everyone has to raise their hands," she says. "There's no talking out of turn. No fisticuffs. I have a bell to ring if things get out of hand." Despite the honest differences of opinion in the group, she says, they remain friends and go to the Chatham Squire for a Christmas party where "you can't talk politics."

On this first morning of the Newcomers' new year, the nearly 200 Newcomers in the gymnasium take seats to hear a few words from their officers. McGrath then goes around the room with a hand-held microphone and asks new Newcomers to introduce themselves to the group.

"We have a couple of friends who said we must join, so we're here," one woman says.

"We're looking forward to just having fun," a man says.

For more information, see www.chathamharwichnewcomers.org. 9/27/07

Copyright (c) 2007, The Cape Cod Chronicle