December 2014

The ten-thousand-square-foot Georgian Revival mansion appeared to be sturdy with its tan bricks, showing resilience after eleven decades of parties and meetings. Thousands of people had stepped up on its wide concrete steps and then into an impressive foyer with a 360-degree view to attend a club meeting, celebrate a wedding, watch a school skit, participate in a fashion show, and even live in an apartment on the second floor. The Martin Mansion, belonging to the Woman’s Club of Norfolk, seemed alive with its beautiful architecture, so unique that it had drawn curiosity and admiration from passersby. And the locals here in Norfolk, Virginia, never failed to reminisce about a debutante party or a Christmas caroling decades earlier whenever they drove by this stately home. I was one of the locals and often thought of my elementary school activities in the auditorium on the right side of the mansion and Thanksgiving family gatherings on the first floor.

Long after its 1910 construction, the Martin Mansion appeared to be gracefully aging like the Egyptian pyramids without any chance of toppling. But it only looked that way on the outside. No one knew the decrepitude of the mansion, much less what was happening underneath. The brick foundation had already begun to sink after over a century of sitting on Fairfax Avenue in a coastal city known to be prone to flooding and unleveled with soft, loamy soil. The foundation’s extensive cracks could be seen through the arched openings under the wraparound porch but had not been checked for years. The mansion inched forward at a slight angle toward the street, a little more every year, and inside, the cornice areas on all three floors were noticeably bending down toward the front. But the mansion was too big to give a discernible sign of sinking to anyone standing on the sidewalk.

However, the interior showed otherwise, indicating that something was terribly wrong with this long-beloved Woman’s Club. The walls were peeling. Hardwood floors were deteriorating. Dust balls were developing. The Martin Mansion was abandoned due to an elderly director in cognitive decline. It was eerily quiet except for a few tenants upstairs, unlike the boisterous atmosphere reverberating through the first floor in earlier years with a bride throwing her bouquet or chatty members of the Woman’s Club of Norfolk. The mansion was on the verge of dilapidation.

***

It was during an evening walk with her husband in the early 2010s that Susanne Ott first stumbled upon the Martin Mansion, mesmerized by its grand porch. She did not see its current state but rather clearly what it could be, not fully recognizing the future parallels to the Tom Hanks movie, The Money Pit. It took several weeks for Susanne to muster up the courage to knock since she did not know who owned that house. An elderly lady came to the door and introduced herself as the director of the Martin Mansion. Those two began a conversation in which Susanne accepted the invitation to join the Woman’s Club of Norfolk, a century-old organization that bought the mansion in 1925. The director gave Susanne a history book of the club that impressed the latter so much that she recruited a couple of friends to join the Woman’s Club; one of them was Paige Rose.

After several weeks, Susanne and Paige found themselves among a handful of remaining active members of a club that boasted a buoyant seven hundred members in 1930. And the director appeared to be affected by age-related health issues. She was also living in one of the second-floor rooms at the Martin Mansion and ran the place. As soon as they paired up to investigate the condition of the mansion, Susanne and Paige noticed curiosities and irregularities all around. It was not only the mansion but also their Woman’s Club as a dying organization.

The financial state of the Woman’s Club of Norfolk was questionable since there was hardly any income from club activities and rental events in the mansion known for its popular wedding venue for many years. And the money from the second-floor tenants did not appear to flow in. A building structure and piece of the property had been sold by the director without board knowledge or approval – at far below market value. Worse yet, the Martin Mansion was at the point of bankruptcy.

Susanne asked the director questions about the financial state of the Martin Mansion, only to be rebuffed by the older lady who insisted, “We are comfortable.” She was still in charge of the mansion and the organization; therefore, Susanne could not get precise answers on the monthly club income or outgoing bills. Not one to give up, she persisted and repeated hard questions to the director, who became belligerent and irritable. That continued for two years as Susanne endured harsh words, sometimes personally insulting, while Paige watched with great concern. It appeared that old age had taken a toll on the director, who first managed the Woman’s Club of Norfolk with no problems or abnormal behavior. She became unbearable and drove away club members but Susanne and Paige, who loved the mansion too much to relinquish it to disintegration or put it on the market.

They asked the director point-blank what would happen if the club ran out of operating funds. The director casually said, “Well, we would just give the house and contents to the General Federation of Women’s Clubs or just sell it.” That statement shocked Susanne and Paige, and it was when they also learned that their club had lost its hundred-year membership in the umbrella organization, based in Washington, D.C., because of non-payment. And it was interesting that the director said “she” would give the mansion back to the General Federation to surrender the Woman’s Club of Norfolk altogether. Hearing that one statement from the director, Susanne and Paige felt their energies galvanized to save their club and the mansion, which were fading fast in front of their eyes. Time was running out, as was money.

Those two women later told me that there were times they felt like giving up but knew that the Martin Mansion was too valuable with its unique woodwork and rich history dating back to 1910. Paige had her wedding there in 2006 and could not bear handing the mansion to a developer who would likely gut it out and turn it into condos. And she and Susanne knew that locals would be heartbroken if the cherished “The Woman’s Club” on Fairfax Avenue lost its historical value to the developer or even the bulldozer. I, myself, would feel the same way after growing up along with the mansion and attending a great many parties there.

Since the Martin Mansion has been owned by an organization for decades, it is known as “The Woman’s Club” by the locals and out-of-town guests. However, the “Martin Mansion” name still sticks with some people today, especially a fundraising organization trying to save the mansion. And I intend to use that name throughout the book as well, depending on the situation. So, the Martin Mansion and The Woman’s Club refer to the same Georgian Revival home on Fairfax Avenue, as those two should not be confused with one another in this book. And to make it less confusing, I am referring to the organization, not the mansion, as the “Woman’s Club of Norfolk” or “WCN.”

***

During the holidays of 2014, the director’s family members arrived at the mansion and announced that it was time to save the mansion by removing their mother from her apartment on the second floor and taking her home. But not before the paperwork had been transmitted to the next person in charge of the Martin Mansion and the Woman’s Club of Norfolk. Susanne knew the director would not take kindly to her request for the financial and bank statements transmitted directly to her. Therefore, all agreed Paige would handle the transition of papers between the departing director and the Martin Mansion. She and the director arranged to meet at the bank one afternoon, where documents, bank statements, and checkbooks would be exchanged. One of the older lady’s family members would accompany her.

Believing there would be extensive stacks of paperwork to return to the Martin Mansion, Paige emptied her Mazda sedan, temporarily removed her six-year-old daughter’s car seat and flattened the back seats. As a busy mother jostling between The Woman’s Club and Natalie’s preschool, Paige had to run against the clock to get the paper transition done before reinstalling the car seat and meeting the pick-up time for her daughter.

As soon as Paige walked into the bank lobby, she was roughly greeted by the director, who thrust the paperwork toward her. It was not even a stack, as Paige would have expected the director to possess after years of documentation for The Woman’s Club. Instead, the tiny blue tote bag she found holding contained only ten pages of paperwork, accompanied by a checkbook and a few bank statements. Paige later imitated herself to me, holding up an imaginary bag by the handle with her index finger and expressing astonishment by such a measly amount of paperwork expected to cover decades of the mansion’s records.

Ignoring her club associate’s shocked look, the director showed Paige one page consisting of phone numbers of the mansion’s electrician and other service companies. Next, she gave quick instructions for managing a twenty-one-room mansion with a reception hall that had hosted weddings, parties, funeral wakes, charity drives, and other events for nearly a century. The director’s family member stood by, appearing uneasy, and urged it was time to leave. The older lady looked at Paige, smiled sheepishly, and said in a roaring voice, “GOOD LUCK!”

Paige was too stunned to speak as she stared at the lady who once sweetly complimented her at her wedding at The Woman’s Club in 2006. The bride in her forties had decorated the reception hall with a garden party theme. The director told Paige she had seen many wedding decorations at the mansion over the years, and it was the prettiest one she had ever seen. Paige took that compliment as a unique token from the director of the Martin Mansion. But now she was a different person, affected by old age mentally and physically.

As the director turned to leave with her family member, Paige tried to stop her with a few more questions about how to take charge of the Woman’s Club of Norfolk and the Martin Mansion altogether. The director stopped, turned to Paige, and exhibited slight remorse for thrusting all the untrained responsibilities toward a stranded lady thirty-five years her junior. Her face softened for the first time in a while, and she met Paige’s eyes in genuineness. The director had always liked Paige for her innocence and possibly felt guilty for placing her in an enormous mess to clean up. She opened her mouth to explain further instructions, but her family member pulled her away and steered her toward the door. The family member knew Paige and Susanne, even without training, would repair what was left off by her mother, who was no longer competent to manage the mansion.

Astonished, Paige watched the director heading out the door as she held a flimsy tote bag that would not yield much information for her unexpected new position. It was as if a massive jumble of confusing IKEA tidbits was heaped on Paige to put together a whole object. A ten-thousand-square-foot mansion in disarray AND a dying club with only three or four active members would not be a piece of cake. Paige realized she and Susanne were in for a difficult, unbearable job during the holiday season.

***

Susanne and Paige were left with the empty mansion except for the second-floor tenants and a handful of club members. To their dismay, these two women found only nine thousand dollars in the bank account of The Woman’s Club, whereas it should have been in the five digits or more. Susanne and Paige learned that the tenants had been paying meager rent, if any. And nine thousand dollars in the bank account was not enough to maintain the then 105-year-old mansion and the Woman’s Club of Norfolk. Worse yet, the mansion was in terrible condition. Now in charge and determined to revive their club by asking some members to return for help, Susanne and Paige inspected the mansion without being blocked by the director. They braced for the worst.

The downstairs, with the decorative foyer surrounded by handmade dark oak paneling and a landscape mural, might have looked normal to the untrained eyes. Still, there were obvious signs of scary, deferred maintenance. The two women were horrified to see water stains on the walls and ceilings, apparently caused by pipe and roof leaks. And there was a moldy smell all around. Susanne and Paige feared the Martin Mansion was dripping on the inside like a long-unopened jar terrarium.

The electric cords overloaded with appliances in the industrial kitchen were a fire hazard. Those two women immediately unplugged all the appliances, leaving a few intact. They knew water and electricity do not mix, much less dripping moisture. In addition, the kitchen had not been cleaned thoroughly for months; the countertops looked sticky with old spills, and the white cabinets had fingerprint smudges. The women dreaded looking down on the filthy vinyl floor, which felt spongy under their feet. Finally, Susanne and Paige looked at each other and figured they would have to go down to the basement directly under the kitchen since it had the potential for flooding during severe storms.

When they opened the basement door, the odor of urine, mold, and decay overwhelmed them. It was the site of a men’s restroom, along with one large room and a few small ones. The basement windows seemed opaque, with no outdoor light because of their location under the wraparound porch, not the mansion’s exterior wall. The women predicted a few inches of standing water in the basement. Then they opened the electrical panel on the wall and found no labels for the switches. That is not good, Susanne and Paige thought. With its horrid smell, the basement was so suffocating that the women had to escape back upstairs.

Before calling for assistance, Susanne and Paige figured there were bills to pay, so they opened a large stack of unopened mail neglected by the director. One stood out from the city of Norfolk regarding the inspection. The women learned from the phone call that the director had blocked the city inspector several times, insisting it was her house.

The Martin Mansion did not pass inspection in both home and fire safety. Not even one positive check on their list. Susanne and Paige were handed a thick folder of required repairs with a two-month deadline. The unpredictable gas stove was no longer permitted due to fire hazards. The electrical wirings were in shambles. Some water pipes were corroded. Worse yet, the roof leaked. That meant many expenses for the Woman’s Club of Norfolk. And two months did not seem long enough to beat the deadline.

Susanne and Paige were despaired but wanted to save the Martin Mansion. The Woman’s Club of Norfolk only needed more members, more dues, and a renewed membership to the General Federation. That was not unsurmountable, but the ten-thousand-square-foot mansion in the worst shape would be like a massive tangle of strings to untangle, albeit with a lot of money. The nine thousand dollars left in the checking account by the director was likely not enough at all.

Then, the situation at the Martin Mansion became worse. Susanne handed Paige a letter, and it was from the Internal Revenue Service stating the Woman’s Club of Norfolk had not paid some required taxes in years and owed approximately eight thousand dollars. Paige dropped to her seat and looked at Susanne in despair. They then looked around the wall-paneled room and felt their hearts ache for the mansion that was once beautiful and bustling with hundreds of club members in the past, foxtrot dancers, wedding guests, Christmas parties, elementary school skits, and even the First Ladies of Virginia. But to Susanne and Paige, the Martin Mansion had come to a standstill like a ghost, with virtually no money to keep it afloat. Realizing there were no more options to bring it back to life, Paige turned to Susanne with a dreaded look and conveyed the worst possible idea. Susanne heard the message, shook her head, and said, “No, no, we cannot let it go. We must fight.”

Underneath these women, the aging foundation was also fighting to keep from sinking.