Billiken Club will be honored at Pioneer Picnic

The historic Billiken Club of La Conner, founded more than a century ago, will be recognized as one of four Spirit Award recipients at the 118th annual Pioneer Picnic on August 4.

As far as the Billiken Club is concerned, Janna Gage of Seaport Books, is the go-to person. She wrote the definitive history of the Billikens in a guest column for the Weekly News nearly three years ago.

At that time, Gage defined the term Billiken, which also serves as the mascot for St. Louis University athletic teams and is a constant source of local inquiry.

“The Billiken,” Gage explained, “is the God of Things-as-they-ought-to-be.”

La Conner women established the Billiken Club in 1909, said Gage, choosing the name since it had served as a good luck charm at that year’s Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle. The club was founded, she said, to promote charitable causes in and around La Conner.

Gage cited a host of worthy projects that the Billikens championed through the years.

“They provided the playground equipment for the grade school and the tennis courts at the high school,” she said. “They supported Children’s Orthopedic Hospital, food baskets and baby clothes for families in need, and the Red Cross during both world wars.”

That is not all.

“In the 1920s and ‘30s,” Gage said, “a silver cup was awarded to an outstanding La Conner High School graduating senior and the student’s name was engraved on it.”

The Billikens were self-supporting from the outset. Gage said they raised money through membership dues – starting at a dollar a year – plus individual donations, bake sales, card parties, skits and dances.

In recent years, the club has supported the La Conner Regional Library, La Conner Sunrise Food Bank, La Conner Schools and local families in need. Its membership stood at nearly two dozen as recently as Washington’s 130th statehood anniversary celebration in November 2019.

That membership, noted Gage, is linked to pioneer roots.

The Skagit County Pioneer Association will also recognize as Spirit Award winners at the picnic the Harmony Birthday Club, Edison Women’s Club and the regional chapter of Territorial Daughters of Washington.