Columnist Susan Snyder: Take a trip down Lois Lane

Friday, May 25, 2001 | 9:08 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Fridays, Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

You want to go where everybody knows your name?

If your name is Lois you're in luck. Members of the Las Vegas Valley's new Lois Club are gathering for lunch and fun next week.

There are no dues. No board members. No committees. No formal agenda and, of course, no name tags.

"We have a luncheon and just gab," said Lois Larson, a former Minnesota Lois Club member who created the local chapter.

Qualifications are pretty simple. You must be named "Lois." No one is going to check birth certificates or drivers' licenses or anything. But don't be trying to sneak in as a "Louise" or "Louisa."

"We're very strict," Lois Utah, the local chapter's other founding member, said.

But they're not discriminating. No one is turned away because of gender.

"We did have a member who was a man," Utah said.

"They had four boys. His mother wanted a girl," Larson added.

"And she was holding the name 'Lois' for a girl baby who never came," Utah finished.

The man, member of an Ohio chapter, died in November at the age of 84. But Utah and Larson considered him one of "them," as all chapters consider themselves kin with other Lois Clubs across the globe.

The group owes its start to a pair of St. Paul, Minn., women named, well, you know. In 1979 one Lois bought life insurance from another Lois. They celebrated over lunch and decided a Lois lunch was pretty fun.

So each rounded up all the Loises they knew professionally and began meeting for lunch the fifth Tuesday of every month. That comes out to about four meetings a year.

There now are Lois clubs in 16 countries, most U.S. states and throughout Canada. The original Minnesota club now has about 180 Loises -- no small feat for a name that went from being the 19th most-popular in the 1930s to 21st in 1990.

Larson, who also started a Winona, Minn., Lois Club, said the name seems to have gained a regional popularity in the Midwest. Many Loises hail from there.

"But I'm from New York, and I never knew another Lois," said Utah, who now looks forward to dining with a dozen or more at a time.

Larson and Utah met through a Lois from Phoenix, whom each of them contacted in their search for the nearest Lois Club. Late last year Utah made a list of all 28 Loises who live in Sun City Summerlin, as she does. She called half. Larson called the other half.

Their first meeting in January attracted 13 Loises. They expect twice as many to show up for the second meeting Tuesday. It's at noon at Mimi's Cafe, on Fort Apache at West Charleston Boulevard.

Lois Tarkanian, probably Las Vegas' most famous Lois, plans to be there. She recalled when the national Lois Club convention was in Las Vegas in 1995, but there was no local chapter.

"I've been talking to people the past couple of years and asking about a Lois Club. And now these women have started one," Tarkanian said. "It just goes to show you how dynamic we are. I'm so excited. I'm going to meet some wonderful new people."

That seems like a pretty good reason to start a club.

For more information or to reserve a spot for lunch, call Larson at 233-0785. (Her first name is Lois, in case you wondered.)