You’re invited to a BBQ dinner to benefit the Baby Island Saratoga Club–BISC–on Saratoga Road Friday, March 13th at 5:30 PM. Tickets are $15 per person. Please RSVP on or before March 9th to ensure timely meal planning and provisioning. The menu? Pulled pork, vinaigrette-base coleslaw, scalloped potatoes, cornbread, baked beans and sweet potato pie for dessert. Please bring your own spirited beverages. For more information contact David Stenberg at 425-269-7999.
Proceeds benefit the club, which has served as a neighborhood gathering place for nearly a hundred years.
The March dinner will be prepared in the club’s commissary kitchen, whose design was updated and upgraded in 2016. Commissary kitchens are ones that are rented by multiple users.
“The original kitchen was just awful,” recalled Cathe Mueller, an interior designer, who redesigned the kitchen and club’s two bathrooms. “Several of us got together and remodeled it to not only be more useful, but it met the requirements to become a commissary kitchen. It was my first design project on the island. It’s very basic, but it works.”
The club is open to South Islanders who wish to have a place to meet at a reasonable rental rate. For instance, the Saratoga Water District board meets there the third Wednesday of the month to manage its Bells Beach district business. The clubhouse is used for family gatherings, a weekly spiritual group, and, last summer, was home to a fun picnic and live music hosted by South Whidbey at Home.
The BISC website notes: “More than ninety years ago a small group of South Whidbey Island friends and neighbors got together monthly to socialize. They eventually agreed to create a fund to provide scholarships for Graduating Seniors at the local high school.”
BISC members meet monthly for potluck dinners, a chance to catch up on one another’s lives and to hear an interesting speaker.
A memorable speaker eight years ago was former astronaut Heidemarie Martha Stefanyshyn-Piper.
“Heide was our speaker at the 2018 Spring Tea,” recalled former BISC President Tom Vos in an earlier story. “A lot of the attendees brought their granddaughters for her inspiring presentation.”
Tom emailed a link to a short Vimeo film about Heidemarie. Watch it here. Heidemarie was a naval captain, awarded for a number of successful salvage operations, including destranding of an Exxon oil tanker and creating a plan to salvage a Peruvian submarine. She was an astronaut with NASA, serving aboard two Space Shuttle missions. In 2011 she was made commander of the Carderock Division of the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Maryland. She retired in 2015 after 30 years of active duty, and now lives on Whidbey Island.
The Baby Island Saratoga Club–from various articles and documents Tom read–was founded as a social club. Then it was called the Saratoga Baby Island Firesiders’ Club.
He recalled the history of the neighborhood in a 2024 thisiswhidbey story: “South Whidbey had very few homes,” he recalled. “No electric, no phone, no fire department. Saratoga Road was a gravel thoroughfare. What I found out is that Langley installed a generator, and was able to have light on First Street in 1921. In 1928, they upgraded the generator, allowing people to do their laundry on Monday and Tuesday mornings. In 1936, the precursor of PSE got a contract to start working on bringing electricity to the area. I haven’t seen any supporting documents, but it is quite likely correct to say that the Baby Island/Bells Beach area did not have electric and phone service till well into the 1940s.”
With such conditions, folks relied on each other for entertainment.
“Neighbors would get together in one another’s homes, trying not to die of boredom by playing cards and socializing,” Tom said. “It occurred to them that they needed a mission. The social group formed the Baby Island Saratoga Improvement Club. With power finally extended to the area, they built the fire station on Saratoga Road near Center Street. Around 1956 they petitioned to get Saratoga Road paved. A little later they petitioned Washington state to increase ferry runs to two an hour.
“In 1952 they built the first version of the clubhouse, where it now occupies four forested acres on Saratoga Road,” Tom added. “The clubhouse has gone through several transformations, adding a kitchen and even inside toilets. “In 1982 they became a charitable organization, a 501(c)3. They dropped the Baby Island Saratoga Improvement Club name, and became the Baby Island Saratoga Club. The mission was twofold—to raise scholarships for deserving students, and second, to provide a public assembly hall for the community to use for its purposes—such as education and family gatherings—at an affordable cost.”
Baby Island Saratoga Club is located at 3616 Saratoga Road in Langley. Visit its website here.