Rubio fundraiser draws biggest crowd in recent memory

CLAY TOWNSHIP — Over 120 people turned out to the unincorporated town of Rubio Saturday morning for a breakfast fundraiser benefiting the community building.

“We opened at 7 a.m. and we serve until 10 and it’s just been a steady crowd all morning,” Rubio Community Club Member David Long said. “We haven’t had it for two years, so that might have something to do with it. It’s a rainy day, so the farmers aren’t in the field, so that could be some of it too. I would say it’s our biggest crowd, we ordered extra food and we’re still running out.”

Club volunteers said they had nearly exhausted their supply by 9:30 a.m., including 80 lbs. of sausage, 20 dozen eggs, 200 biscuits and too many pancakes to count.

Long said the fundraiser was important to keep the building open, supplementing the limited revenue from building rentals.

“This building is only supplemented through being a rental building at $35 a day,” he said. “Our bare bones expenses just keeping the building open all year is over $2,000 for insurance, electricity and heating and stuff like that. With only about 15 rentals a year, we have to do fundraisers to keep everything stable.”

The building is both a historical site and a way to keep the unincorporated community of roughly 40 residents on the map.

“The building’s been here for almost 80 years, it’s the only thing the town’s got,” Long said. “There’s a lot of history here, it used to be the railroad depot.”

Residents of the community at Washington County’s southwestern edge said they agreed.

“It’s a gathering place,” said Dianna Sheets, member of the Rubio Ladies: a group that started the initiative to maintain the building before passing that responsibility to the community club. “And it’s important to not tear down an old building. And that’s what would happen if we didn’t do what we do. It’d be torn down or go into disrepair, and then that’d be the end of it.”

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