Junior League Enters Its 60th Year : Makeup Has Expanded but Service Goals Remain Same

Time was when an invitation to join the Junior League came engraved, special delivery and--if you had a butler--on a silver tray.

Today an invitation to join the Junior League comes via regular mail, typed on league stationary, and is actually less an invitation than an announcement of two orientation meetings that a woman may attend to learn more about the league.

Time was when Junior League members were generally referred to as debutantes or young matrons, a reflection of their marital status. They were the wives and daughters of doctors, lawyers and bankers, “the backbone of the community,” as Eve Lee, an early president, described them. “The group was not so much snobby as, well, exclusive.”

Today, any woman between the ages of 22 and 39 can join, says league President Sue Patrick, 37, provided she has lived in Los Angeles one year and is willing to commit herself to the league’s ideals.

What the league is all about is community service, training, leadership and advocacy. And that is as it’s always been. Indeed, as the Junior League enters its 60th year, its members say the league has changed only in numbers and the intensity of its approach.

What hasn’t changed, they maintain, is the substance, that concern with social issues, the desire to make things better. Indeed, the tribute to that fact, declared Peggy Jo Clark, 37, external public relations chairman, “is that we’re still here. Even after 60 years, look at us: 143 provisionals (members in training).”

Looking Back

Nevertheless, retrospection is fun. Especially around this time, when everyone’s hustling to complete preparations for the league’s 6th annual Los Angeles Antiques Show tonight through Sunday at the Ambassador Hotel. Eve Lee, 82, president from 1935 to ‘36, can remember how a horse show at Flintridge was the league’s chief fund-raiser, bringing in $6,000 to $7,000.

Now there’s the antique show, which fills three ballrooms with 18th- and 19th-Century furniture and, according to chairman Phyllis Hennigan, has more dealers wanting to show than it can accommodate. Only reluctantly, for it’s considered bad luck to talk profits before a fund-raiser, does Hennigan admit that they’re hoping to raise $100,000. And, as with the profits from Lee’s horse show, all proceeds will be used for league projects.

Lee, Hennigan, Clark, Patrick, 1964-65 President Margaret Carr, 52, projects director Carlyn Clark, 28, and internal public relations chair Carole Klove, 27, have gathered in the league’s long-time offices upstairs, above Gate 12, at the Farmer’s Market.

There, drinking instant coffee and trying to avoid the sweet rolls, they talk. First, there are the statistics: $6.7 million and 23 million hours donated to the community in the Los Angeles Junior League’s 60-year history; current active membership is 526 and there are 1,300 sustaining members. Then there are their projects, nine at this time; their goals; their training. And if what they are doing sounds more sophisticated than, say, the projects that Lee worked on, “it’s not the concepts that have changed, it’s just that now we market it,” Peggy Clark explained.

“These days we have to articulate what a project is about, what training it requires and what training it offers. This is just the way things are done in order to attract women who are sophisticated.”

Consider the Junior League’s two main goals: to start new projects within the community (with attention to what the community needs and to whether it’s being provided by anyone else) and to offer training to its members.

Consider the league’s projects just this year:

--Adolescent Pregnancy Childwatch, co-sponsored with a number of other organizations, designed to prevent children from having children.

--Neighborhood Earthquake Preparedness which will create and present a one- to three-hour earthquake preparedness program on personal, family and neighborhood planning to Neighborhood Watch groups in the West Valley.

--Developing and implementing, with the Museum of Contemporary Art, a contemporary art program for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

--Staffing the Psychosocial Cancer Counseling telephone help-line, which provides telephone counseling to cancer patients, their families and friends, referrals to the community and information to health professionals.

--Computers for Nonprofits, which introduces computer fundamentals to representatives of nonprofit organizations. It’s co-sponsored by the California Community Foundation.

--Crime Prevention Awareness for Children, which has league members, trained by the West Los Angeles Police Department, researching, writing and designing a booklet and companion training manual to teach crime prevention to school-age children.

--A Day Outdoors, co-sponsored with the William O. Douglas Outdoor Classroom, providing grade-school students with a hands-on educational nature experience.

--Working With Children’s Institute International, league volunteers are developing a support program for sexually abused children and their families.

--With co-sponsor United Way, Junior League members are providing training seminars, workshops and counseling to other organizations throughout the city to develop leadership, improve management, increase accountability and enhance delivery of service.

Spun Off to Community

If a project works, it will be spun off into the community after a few years. If not, it is dropped. Just a few of the Junior League successes now on their own: The Performing Tree; the docent program at Monlux Science Center in the San Fernando Valley; Venice Alert, which became School Alert, co-sponsored with Dr. Madeline Hunter of the University Elementary School at UCLA; the docent program at Cabrillo Beach Marine Museum in San Pedro; the Home for Convalescent Children, now known as the Childrens Hospital Rehabilitation Center.

High-powered is the word Peggy Clark likes to use for what league members are doing. “Not to minimize licking stamps or anything like that, but we start these projects and we give them only a short time to either work and be given to the community or not to work and be dropped. We get in, get done and get out.”

“You don’t find people who are slouches in Junior League,” Carlyn Clark added. “There are a lot of professionals.”

True enough. The league prides itself on having been flexible enough to adapt its meeting times to evenings when it discovered that a majority of its members had paying jobs. And the maximum membership age was extended to 45 because so many women joined in their late 30s and the league didn’t want to lose valuable resources.

Dues are $100 a year and after that members are expected to volunteer for one of the year’s projects. Or they may choose to work in administration. But if a member isn’t living up to her commitment, or has gotten bogged down in just one volunteer activity year after year, well, for that the league has special counselors.

Lee, who’s remained a league adviser all these years, looks at the group and sighs at all the energy and responsibilities league members have assumed. “Why at one time, someone suggested we accept professional members--you know women who worked--and all of us fell dead at the idea,” she recalled.

Times Have Changed

“Now,” Klove laughed, “professional members represent 60% of us.”

What about minority members? Or members whose families aren’t, as Lee put it, “the backbone of the community?”

Peggy Clark nodded. “Well, I’m here. But I know my mother wouldn’t have been asked. She was a first-generation Greek in Pittsburgh.”

“And they didn’t have a Junior League in the town where I grew up,” Patrick added. “Actually, that’s one of the nicest things about the league. It really opens doors to the community.”

As for other minorities, “they’re among our membership,” Patrick said. “But I couldn’t tell you how many. We don’t keep statistics on that kind of thing.”

One of the finest things about the league, Lee said, “is it opens doors to so many things afterward. I was asked to join the Defense Advisory to Women in the Armed Services. I made some trips. I enjoyed it immensely.”

From the Junior League, Margaret Carr went on to organize the first docents group for the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Assn., then to the Grand Jury where she was its first woman foreman. “In the league, you have that year of working through a committee and all of us get an opportunity to find out what it’s like to establish something from the start. That really helped with the Grand Jury, setting up the committees and all that. Then when I became the county’s head of protocol. It was the same thing, setting up a new office.

“The challenges are always there, but in the league you learn how to respond to them.”