“Our whole goal was to share what we were learning in our Bible study with other women of the community,” said Jane Andrews, co-founder of the group. The name represents winning wholesome women to Christ, she added.

A dray on Cadotte Avenue pulls two luggage carts loaded with suitcases for Win-Some Women attendees to Grand Hotel. Hundreds of arrivals and departures make luggage management is an issue, but no bag has ever been lost. The teamster is Lacal Roberts of Mackinac Island Service Company.

Tuesday, May 17, through Friday, May 20, more than 2,600 women attended three back-to-back retreats, each lasting 26 hours, said former chairperson Meg Brown. Women come from all over the country and Canada, though most of the attendees are from Michigan.

“The purpose of Win-Some Women is to augment church life for attendees, not take over for their church,” said Mrs. Brown. “We fill the gap a small church is not able to do,” she said. Each session includes music, nationally known speakers, and, new this year, a play.

The program, said Mrs. Brown, is “not a box lunch or a picnic, but a real spiritual meal.”

Four years after the nondenominational study group was formed in the 1970s, Win-Some Women planned a luncheon and hoped 50 woman would attend. They did. The next year the group had 100 members and they moved their meetings to the Petoskey High School. When they outgrew the high school, they gathered at a meeting room at Boyne Mountain Convention Center. Ten years ago, the program was moved to the Grand.

The event is so large, the hotel moves furniture out of the western half of the main lobby and relocates the hotel’s afternoon tea so the women can set up a religious bookstore in that area, said Bob Tagatz, Grand Hotel concierge.

The three sessions are organized with split precision. As one group is finishing up in the dining room, a new group is arriving for orientation in the Theater. That, said Mrs. Brown, also creates a challenge for the hotel, which has to move luggage for about 1,000 women out of the hotel at the same time it is moving the new group’s luggage in. In 10 years, she notes, not a single bag has been lost.

Win-some Women maintains a mailing list of approximately 9,000 women who have attended a retreat in the last three years. About one-third of the attendees are new each year, and participants range in age from the mid-20s to the 80s.

The group is scheduled to return to the Grand Wednesday, October 19, through Friday, October 21.