Tellico Village Solo Club for decades has provided a niche for people looking to meet others who share similar interests and helped some get out in the community after the loss of a loved one.
“Just a great opportunity for people that are in the same boat,” Lowell Studebaker, club president, said. “... This is our primary source of getting together, socializing, take trips to together, have dinners together, just a wide variety of different activities each and every year.”
The longtime club continues to have an ever-increasing membership decades after it was established in the late 1980s around the same time Tellico Village emerged in Loudon County.
The group started with about 10 members, Barbara Tunnacliffe, who has been with the Solo Club for 15 years after her husband died, said.
That figure has ballooned to about 180, and on average six to eight new members join each month.
“Let’s say the Village is roughly 7,500 population,” Studebaker said. “The vast majority of people are married, but over a period of years there may be 15 or 20 or 30 of those that become widowed or single throughout that period of time. That’s why our club continues to grow, too. One hundred eighty or 200 members is a good-sized group and in many cases it’s almost too much. ... The interesting thing about it is when I came here I would say there was 35 to maybe 40 (members) max and here it is 15 years later we’re pushing 200.”
Tunnacliffe said some members have become couples, which is fine, but makes it so they can no longer attend.
“The nice thing about it is that the Village is largely, of course, made up of married couples,” Studebaker said. “Well, I went to some of those because we’d been doing the HOA, HomeOwners Association, but it’s like you’re just out there by yourself. So the idea of a social organization for single individuals — divorcees, widows, whatever — is just a wonderful program because it’s like like-minded individuals.
“It isn’t a group like match.com or anything like that at all,” he added. “It’s strictly a social organization and a fun organization. There’s something almost for any individual within the club. I don’t care if it’s some of the elderly people have like to just play cards, that’s their thing, and they just enjoy cards.”
Group activities are made possible through a two-person social committee that assigns members to coordinate plans for each month. Whether it’s something as simple as going out to eat at a local restaurant or as grand as going to New York City, Nashville or Chattanooga, Studebaker said the club offers activities for all single men and women in and around Tellico Village.
Last Wednesday, 50 members traveled to Keeneland Racecourse in Lexington, Ky., for thoroughbred racing.
Solo Club members’ ages range from 50s to the oldest at 91 years old, Studebaker said, but mostly it consists of those in their 60s and 70s.
“When people move here for the first time, we’ve had single men and women move here and they’re kind of at a loss this time in their life,” Tunnacliffe said. “What are they going to do? Well they’ve been very excited to get into something.”
Studebaker said the club recently implemented an updated website that should make it easier for members and others to navigate for the latest information on activities, inquiries and photos of past events. The club can be found at www.tvsolos.com.
“The way I think it’s going to help the club is it’s going to be something that they can go to at any time in their own home and find out exactly — if they, for example, missed the meeting,” Studebaker said. “They’ll be able to go to this website and find out all the activities. They get this calendar for the whole month and, of course, move into each new month, and so that’ll provide a sort of a help to the current membership, but it also opens up the opportunity for new people moving into the Village.”
Annual dues are $15 to help cover costs for some of the club’s larger activities like the annual spring and fall picnics at the Tugaloo Pavilion. Another large outing the club holds is its annual Christmas party at the Yacht Club.
Newcomers are welcome to join, and club representatives say the club isn’t solely for Villagers. Studebaker said “at least a dozen” are from outside the Village, including Maryville, Greenback, Loudon, Lenoir City and Knoxville.
“The important thing is people understand that this organization fulfills a niche that had not been met before in the Village years and years ago, and it has grown with a lot of enthusiasm of people who either heard about it or talked to people about it and said, ‘Hey, that’s something that I could be interested in’,” Studebaker said.
