The West Coplay Maennerchor, 3326 N. Ruch St., Stiles, held a New Year’s breakfast buffet Jan. 4. The proceeds will benefit the Maennerchor social club building improvements.

The buffet offered an all-you-can-eat menu including scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, French toast, cream chipped beef, sausage gravy, toast, potatoes, tea, coffee, milk and juice. The club bar was also open for Bloody Marys, mimosas and Bellinis.

Madeline Meyers and Triz Schoch, both from Whitehall, cheerfully sold tickets to the breakfast. The friendly bantering created a welcoming environment for the attendees.

Larry Gutleber, Coplay American Legion Post 426 commander, attended the event to partake in the delicious breakfast. Tracy Stauffer, of Whitehall, and Michael Soltis, of Northampton, happily shared a breakfast.

The kitchen and food service team, including Kassie Rompilla, Blair Hollschwandner, Butch Kroboth and Holly Kane, was busy preparing and serving the buffet food to patrons.

The club has about 11 decades of history holding wedding receptions, graduation and birthday celebrations, celebrations of life and more in the social hall. About 50 years ago, the club’s social hall hosted volleyball games for kids and adults.

The club, with its six-lane bowling alley and hall, was indeed a gathering place for the Stiles and Coplay communities.

Maennerchor means “men’s chorus” and is the name given to German social clubs primarily in the northeastern United States, particularly in Pennsylvania. The West Coplay Maennerchor’s mission statement is “to give members a wholesome diversion from their daily tasks, by means of music, sports and social activities.”

The club was organized May 5, 1915, by local German and Austrian immigrants. It was a time when the growth of the local industries like the Coplay Cement Mill, Whitehall and Northampton cement mills and other industries attracted immigrants seeking a new, better life in the United States.

In the pretelevision days, the club was a sanctuary and social gathering place for male industrial workers who spent long hours performing hard, difficult manual labor. In their lives at that time, the club was an oasis for them from the hot, dirty mills in which they worked.

The breakfast buffet had a steady stream of patrons in a social gathering place with a warm, accepting environment.