Every week, Town Talk will feature a quirky club or organization run by members of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro community. This week, staff writer Sam James learned about the Newcomers Club.
How do you make friends when you retire to a city where you have no connections? Like many people, Marvin Meyer wrestled with this question when he and his wife first came to Chapel Hill.
“We chose it as a place to live to come and retire,” Meyer said.
"We have children who have moved to various places, where for one reason or another my wife and I were not going to follow them, and we’ve found that this met everything we had on our checklist."
Shortly after they moved here, the Meyers found out about an organization called the Newcomers Club of Greater Chapel Hill, designed to connect new residents to the Triangle community.
“It’s a great place to learn about the area and meet like-minded people,” Meyer said.
John Hausmann, president of the Newcomers Club, said the club works to foster a welcoming environment within its four-year program. Members partake in a number of different activities designed to get them involved in the community and with each other.
“One of the primary activities is called Meet and Greet,” Hausmann said. “If you’re new to the area, and you’re just signing up, that’s where you come and meet other newcomers.”
Hausmann said the group often gets speakers from community organizations and businesses to come to these meetings and tell the members about different opportunities the area offers. Members can learn about everything from interest clubs — such as the New Hope Audubon Society, a club birdwatching and natural conservation — to where the cheapest place to get your oil changed is.
Members also have a variety of monthly activities to choose from, including nonfiction book clubs, fiction book clubs, Women Having Coffee, Men Out to Lunch, hiking, an independent movie night and ballroom dancing lessons, many of which the Meyers have participated in.
“We have been very busy in our time here,” Meyer said. “The newcomers group does offer quite a bit.”
Howard Goldberg, who moved to the Triangle area about two years ago, said besides the large group activities, the club also facilitates and encourages relationship-building among the members.
“There are a lot of really nice people who are a part of the club,” he said. “That’s first and foremost the thing that drew me to it.”
Goldberg said some club members host Friday night gatherings.
“It’s a way to get to meet people in kind of a congenial setting,” he said.
“Most of the club members are couples, I’d say 90 percent, but there are some singles, and a number of the singles meet for brunch on Saturday morning."
Goldberg said the Newcomers Club gave him an immediate sense of community.
“It’s a way to get to meet a lot more people than I would have otherwise, much more quickly,” he said.
Besides the opportunity to connect with other newcomers, Hausmann said the club also offers members opportunities to learn about the Triangle and North Carolina as a whole, such as educational events about Civil War history and the Durham tobacco and textiles industries.
“It’s a nice little event, and we’re learning more about our area,” he said.
Hausmann also said that learning about and touring the different universities in the Triangle and their different cultures has been fascinating.
“There are a lot of people like us who don’t really have a connection to UNC, Duke or NC State,” he said. “I didn’t know anything about it. How big is UNC? How many undergraduates? How many graduate students? How many are international? All of this was very interesting to us.”
Meyer said he wants the Newcomers Club to provide a welcoming community for people new to the area, like he has experienced.
“We’ve enjoyed the time we’ve spent here,” he said.
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