Joan Bell bustled around her kitchen, uncorking wine bottles and occasionally stirring a pot of chicken tortilla soup simmering on the stove.
In the living room sat eight women. They had descended on Bell’s home in Denver’s Polo Creek North neighborhood for their annual holiday party, dressed in seasonal colors around a Christmas tree.
Outside snow fell from a pewter sky. In the room the warmth was palpable, even with no fire in the hearth.
“Most of us met in kindergarten growing up in Park Hill,” Bell said. “And with a couple of exceptions nearly all of us had become friends by the time we were going to East High School. And we’ve stayed friends through the years.”
The group has 15 living members — 10 live in Colorado — from its original 22.
In a country as transient as the United States has become, most of us would be hard-pressed to name even two kindergarten classmates. The idea of staying in touch with them for three quarters of a century? A sweet notion, but nearly unimaginable.
Yet these women — all of them graduates of the East High class of 1949, have done just that, meeting the first Wednesday of each month for the bulk of their adult lives. It is a sustained act of friendship that has buoyed them in times good and bad.
The women think of themselves as family, but the bond is stronger than that.
“We chose each other,” Edie Arsell said. “The older we get the more we realize how special this group is. We’re friends and family. It’s the whole ball wrapped up.”
A lot of history happens during the course of friendships that have endured for seven decades. Together the women have played, celebrated, fretted, married, forged careers, borne children, shepherded those same kids through adolescence, shared advice, and grieved over family and friends they buried.
They can recall the victory gardens and scrap-metal drives of World War II, which ended when they were in junior high school. There were movies at the Ogden Theater, skating at Mammoth Gardens (now the Fillmore), lunches at Baur’s (they took the streetcar,) Friday potluck suppers.
The friends saw the age of big-band music and crooners give way to rock ‘n’ roll, although Frank Sinatra remained eternal. They were pushing 40 when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon on July 20, 1969, making for quite a conversation when they met 2 1/2 weeks later.
And they have voted in 15 presidential elections.
“It’s a lifetime,” said Jeanne Wilde, the group’s historian, who has compiled 30 volumes crammed with photos, wedding and birth announcements, stories and sundry other memorabilia. “And it has just flown by. I cannot tell you what these friendships have meant to me.”
Wilde, who lives in Englewood, entered the circle in second grade at Park Hill Elementary School. “I’m a latecomer,” she said with a grin.
Most of the friends remain in the area. The five out-of- staters are never out of mind. “We talk a lot by phone and e-mail,” Wilde said. “When they do join us it’s like we never missed a beat.”
Big marker birthdays — ones ending in “5” and “0” — are cause for special celebrations. The women also take trips together. Aspen and Vail have been destinations. So has Washington, D.C.
On one occasion the women took a tour of Denver.
“It turned out we knew more than the guide did,” Janice Rippy said, inspiring a wave of laughter and nods.
“It has meant a great deal to me,” Kay Larson said. “You have this group to share your problems and happinesses with. Our roots go deep, and it has just grown richer over time.”
There is an easy level of acceptance among the women. Seeing one another as often as they do, the changes that come with age scarcely seem to register. Sure, the joints might ache and the hair can gray, but in their hearts the women remain the fresh- faced girls beaming out from Wilde’s albums.
“It’s come-as-you-are and you don’t have to worry about who you are because we’ve known each other too long to care,” Elizabeth Starbuck said. “We have so much history together and we know each other’s pasts.
“We can talk about things in kindergarten and laugh about memories from junior high.”
The key to the sustained friendship goes beyond mere proximity. The group, collectively and individually, has made a commitment to staying in touch. A visitor gets the feeling that by now this is a point of pride.
“It helps that we keep a regular date,” Puddy Seccombe said.
Ditto for the fact that they avoid controversial subjects. “We respect different viewpoints,” Seccombe said.
Added Nancy Allen: “There’s a lot of loyalty. No backstabbing.”
“I think it’s amazing what they have done,” said Julie Walls of Boulder, whose mother, Doris Danielson Lodge, was a member of the circle until her 1994 death.
Such moments are hard.
“When one passes on it’s like a part of us is gone,” Larson said.
The women make a point of staying in touch with the survivors because that’s what a family does.
Families also sit down and eat together. Bell’s chicken tortilla soup was ready, to much oohing and aahing. The dining room table was set with china. Wine, which a visitor had helped open when Bell’s corkscrew proved balky, was flowing.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” someone said.
The woman wasn’t just talking about the decor. But of course, the hostess knew that.
William Porter: 303-954-1877 or wporter@denverpost.com
