Santa Ana : Assistance League Celebrates 50th Year

Somewhere past the room stacked with children’s jeans and socks, after walking through the brightly decorated day-care center, the dental center and thrift and gift shops, Mary Lou Engman smiled and said of the Assistance League of Santa Ana Inc.: “We do a lot.”

This is the league’s 50th year of service, and on Saturday some 300 members and guests celebrated the upcoming golden anniversary.

Although the 50th anniversary is not until June 21, the league celebrated its birthday Saturday with a luncheon featuring as one of its speakers Gloria Deukmejian, the governor’s wife. The celebration is scheduled to continue Monday with an open house at the chapter’s headquarters in the 1000 block of 1st Street.

Since its creation in 1937, Orange County’s first assistance league has grown to 571 members and changed to meet the needs of the community, said Jeanne Wahlberg, a 40-year member.

Among the services the league provides are a day-care center--replete with live bunnies and chicks--for 67 children ages 2 to 6.

In “Operation School Bell,” the league provides needy Santa Ana children with two complete sets of clothes, and in the teddy-bear-decorated dental center, volunteers see more than 400 children each year, league members said.

Other projects by the Santa Ana chapter include a homemaker service, which sends professionally trained women to the homes of local families during an emergency.

In appreciation of the group’s 50 years of service, Mayor Dan Young declared Saturday “Assistance League of Santa Ana Day,” league members said. The group received another proclamation from Gov. Deukmejian, who wrote: “Through the years, your endeavors that the citizens of Santa Ana are healthy and happy have met with great success and are deeply appreciated and warmly received by all Californians.”