Reusse: St. Paul Curling Club has Olympians and notable names, but all are regular folk

The St. Paul Curling Club was holding a major bonspiel in the middle of the previous century and decided that additional sheets were required to go with the six that were in place with indoor ice. That has made the portion of roof that covers Sheets 7 and 8 to have a distinctive appearance from that which covers the other six sheets.

“Kind of a fluffy look to it over there,” I said to a long-time SPCC member.

John Ordway laughed and said: “No, it’s good now — ever since 1982. Originally, it was basically a lean-to they put over the new sheets, maybe in the ’40s.

“It was described as ‘temporary,’ I was told, but it wasn’t replaced until 1982 when a city inspector got in here and condemned it.”

Putting in a new roof with voluntary labor from the club membership took care of the roof problem with the inspector. That also helped set the stage for the “Tuesday Night Work Crew,” a group that shows up in varied numbers on summer Tuesdays around 5 p.m. to do whatever tasks were needed with the building.

The ice is melted for the summer, waiting to be replaced for a new season in the fall — through the magic of SPCC’s ice technician, Craig Zbacnik.

As for the summer Tuesday crew, Ordway said: “With many improvements and much maintenance, this building has been here over 100 years. There are always things to do in the summer. Plus, it’s curling, so after the work is done, most of us will go upstairs for a beer.”

The Ordway name is most closely associated with 3M — “Mother Mining,” as employees from St. Paul’s East Side and suburbs referred to it back in the day — but they’re just throwing rocks and exchanging stories with the everymen, and women, who have kept this club going through two world wars, a depression and other bad times (perhaps even currently).

Lucius Ordway was among those involved when the Nushka Club and the Capital City Club merged into the St. Paul Curling Club in 1912 — then constructed a building on Selby Avenue, not far up the street from the Cathedral of St. Paul.

Lucius was John Ordway’s great-grandfather. His father was Smokey. Actually, also a John, but during my two decades (1968-88) at the Pioneer Press, I always thought it was true St. Paul (a small town with a lot of people) that one of the most prominent people in the city would be addressed by all as “Smokey.”

John will admit to spending some time in warmer climes than his home state in the winter, but he is here often enough to curl in a Tuesday league. His sons Erik and Daniel are the fifth generation of Ordway curlers — on Thursday nights.

“Erik was offered the chance to be one of our club’s youngest-ever presidents several years ago,” John said. ”He wasn’t sure. I said, ‘Our membership is full, our finances are good. This is a great time to take a term as president.’"

Through much negotiation with city and health officials, and open sheets of ice between the competitors, the SPCC was able to continue its league play.

And now, in this winter of much cold, snow and ice, the 114-year-old curling club is enjoying what has become a quadrennial outbreak of curling fever.

“Once the Winter Olympics are starting, people are calling every day, wanting to get in here,” said Jim Milosevich, the current club president. “We’ve had 400 people contact us already, trying to be part of this.”

The phones will get busier next week, when Tabitha and Tara Peterson — sisters and members of the SPCC — begin play as half of the U.S. women’s curling team in the historic Olympic Stadium in Cortina, Italy.

Tabitha is the skip, recently becoming a mother, joining Tara in that capacity.

He smiled and said: “They were here on a Tuesday afternoon not long ago and were playing an end against us. All of a sudden, miraculously, we were leading 5-0.”

Were the Peterson sisters so nice they let the old-timers hold that lead? “No, they got serious for a few minutes, and that was it,” he said.

The Erik Ordway rink was in a tight late Thursday night match vs. Liz Owens’ team. She is set to become the second female president of this club in a few months, and she also was delivering the hammer to rob the opponents of a two-point lead in this end.

She came down for a look at the wall in front of two rival stones cozied next to the button, went back those 146 feet, slid up to the release line, let go of the 42-pound stone, watched it crawl on a slight angle that made her teammates — including husband Zac — optimistic.

Soon, it was kissing one rock, that gently slid in and knocked away one of the Ordways’ point-getters.

“Good shot,” said her opponents.

And for that moment, over on Sheet 8, with a roof guaranteed sturdy by a regular member of the Tuesday Night Work Crew, if a Peterson sister had been around, she might have said: