Served Course Dinner on the Yolande

Detroit News, July 7, 1902

Rufus Gillett Lathrop was one of those multi-industry men who excelled in several fields and made his way onto the Yondotega Club roster in good standing. This newspaper article recounts his elaborate stag party plotted out by his friends before being married in 1902 at the age of 30.

15 of his pals decided on renting out the Yolande, a specially designed entertainment car of the DUR. a double-truck, 53-passenger trolley, built in 1901 and which replaced the first Yolande car in 1902. I'm not sure which is pictured above but one would assume that the party embarked on the newest and shiniest of the two models.

They traveled to Orchard Lake for a baseball game playing cards and drinking cold beer. Afterwards, Yondotega steward Reuben Davis reheated a pre-prepared meal which waiters served to the party. using the club's finest china. Unironically, Rufus would later become Secretary of the Detroit Department of Street Railways.

He would also go on to become a lyricist of popular ballads, to which at least some were published by his fellow club member Jerome H. Remick and son, whose The Book of the Yondotega Club I have a signed copy of. There's another damned collection I'll have to start thanks to these two!

Rufus doesn't appear in any of remembrance rosters of the three Yondotega Club books that I possess so he either left the club, was ejected or simply forgotten.