By the 1920's, life in Rush started to get a little easier. There was extra money and time for entertainment, the roads were better and cars had electric starters. For Rush it meant drama! Many of the town residents participated in the Rush Dramatic Club. They performed plays and skits for audiences in the Kinsey's Hall and and in other venues that had enough space to hold a crowd.
The new Rush Union School was open, and there was an increase in population. There doesn't seem to be any good records on its beginning, but in 1921 parents of the young ladies of the town helped them start a "girls group" known as S. A. G. E.
There isn't any place where we have found what the acronym means. It is always spelled like this, and no one thought that in the future we might not know what S. A. G. E. means.
The best guess is that the acronym S. A. G. E. stands for: Setting A Good Example.
The S. A. G. E. group had meetings and raised money. It had officers and held dances and diners. It was organized like the Ingleside Club and performed dramatic productions like the Rush Dramatic Club. It was a social club for the young ladies of Rush. There were 21 original members:
Cornelia Price Vera Arner Helen Szatkowski Sarah Mack Elsie Fishell Ethel Miller Helen Wiles Mildred Upton Dorothy Fielder Katherine Martin | Flora Fielder Lucile Burgett Mabel Long Mabel Fitzgerald Elizabeth O'Brien Virginia Wood Erma Darron Irene Kiefer Gladys Hertzer Dorothy White |
S. A. G. E. seems to have been active until 1926, by which time all the young ladies were on their way to working or being wives and mothers (and sometimes all three.) Those who stayed in Rush remained friends.
