The club hall becomes a barracks
The Bend Bulletin · May 2, 1917
In the story: 4. Emblematic measles, 1917–1922.
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Three weeks after the country went to war, the room the club danced in was housing a company.
The United States declared war on April 6, 1917. The Bend Rifles were formed at a meeting in the Emblem club on April 20. By May 2 the club's hall is the company's barracks, its drill nights are a standing line in the paper's weekly calendar of “Doings in Your City”, and the men are ordering uniforms.
The roster is printed, and the names are the club's own. “Captain, Frank R. Prince; first lieutenant, Carl A. Johnson; second lieutenant, D. G. McPherson; adjutant, J. B. Heyburn; first sergeant, Harry Shoults; color sergeant, Mr. Lundeen; duty sergeants, T. Beagan, Myron Powell, B. A. Stover, Fred A. Woelflen; chief musician, Frank Kelliher; chief drummer, H. H. Lamping; chief of medical corps, J. D. Donovan; corporals, Joe Lyons, Charles Frazier…”
Carl A. Johnson would be the Emblem Club's first vice-president the following February, and in 1922 would stand up at a Commercial Club lunch and present the gavel and the juniper block with a Bend emblem on it. Frank R. Prince's wife would chair the club's music committee in 1921. Fred A. Woelflen had been elected vice-president of the Bend University club, organised in the same hall ten weeks earlier. The building did not merely host the town; the same few dozen men ran everything that happened in it.
From the source
BEND RIFLES' ROSTER GROWS. Two Drills Will Be Held Weekly. Enlistments For Company to Reach 100 Before End of Week — Uniforms Ordered For Members — Drill Hour Changed.
The Bend Rifles, with an enlistment of more than 50 men, will get on an actual drilling basis Friday night… That the company's operations may assume more of a military aspect and that it may be afforded drilling facilities of a regular company, drill grounds and field headquarters have been established… The hour of drilling has been changed from 7:30 to 8 o'clock… The change in the hour will enable men working in the mills to return to their homes for dinner before drill. The Emblem club hall will be used temporarily for barracks until the athletic club building is completed. Drills will be held Monday and Friday nights.