Junior Leagues Assn. Meets in Anaheim

‘Tis the season to be merry and fund-raise and explore avenues for volunteerism. There’s so much.

This week, the Assn. of Junior Leagues, fresh from receiving President George Bush’s Volunteer Action Award at the White House last month, holds its 67th annual conference at the Anaheim Hilton and Towers. Eight hundred delegates of the international women’s voluntary organization (273 leagues; 180,000 members) will explore “Advancing a Children’s Agenda.”

The host, Junior League of Orange County, and its president, Lydia Tyler of Irvine, are the welcome wagon. Association president Maridel M. Moulton of Moraga, Calif., will focus the agenda on the league’s programs in adolescent pregnancy child watch, seminars for parents on adolescent sexuality, public policy. At issue, too, is education; the AJL has received a $250,000 grant from the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation to improve academic performance in middle schools. In 1986-87, the leagues netted more than $20 million for community projects.

WHAT A CROWD: Angelenos on the social scene put their blessings on the official opening of the new Adventure Island, the Los Angeles Children’s Zoo, and what a mixture of ages--all learning about bats and porcupines and the wonders of the Southwest. The new children’s zoo is totally privately funded and Greater Los Angeles Zoo Assn. chairman Tom Tellefsen and his wife, Deborah, and their pretty daughter, Christen, were right up front with the seals to eat hot dogs and Southwestern bread pudding and celebrate the $8.3 million GLAZA raised for the new facility.

GLAZA trustee Lotsie Giersch tore herself between grandchildren Clayton and Austin O’Kane and meeting Peggy Ward to coax her into a big donation. Frances Larken petted a bantam chicken with her grandson, Parker Stephenson; new trustee Paul Livadary wore safari togs and corraled his Matthew, Emily, Katie and Sarah; Jim and Marty Childs watched son, John, 5, step on mountain lion paw prints that roared; Michelle Kazanjian, 9, independently peripatetic, listened to bird calls and studied algae; zoo curator Michael J. Crotty admired the fluffy king vulture in a crib, and a cheetah; George Boone sopped up three desserts with his grandson, Nicholas Fedder; Maxine Ralphs Ridgway escorted Kelly and Brian Ralphs; honorary preview chairman Betty White, appearing as a Pepper’s ghost--a miniature video image--at the skunk exhibit, told the young crowd, “Skunks sleep all day and run around all night.” And, also there in person, she had her photo taken with her secretary’s grandson, Nicholas Clark.

Los Angeles city administrative officer Keith Comrie and his wife, Sandy, brought Shannon and Colleen Comrie; chief GLAZA fund-raiser Caroline Baker, with 2-year-old daughter Julia in tow, noted there are still some “naming opportunities left because we would like to set up a $600,000 endowment fund.” GLAZA trustee Camron Cooper, Arco treasurer, interrupted: “Let’s go for $3 million.”

The biggest donors so far have been the Weingart Foundation with $3 million, and the Milken Family Foundation, $1 million. Beaming all night with the kids were more trustees, the Hon. Matthew Byrne Jr., Willard Z. Carr Jr., GLAZA vice chairmen William Ahmanson and Priscilla Tamkin and president Bruce A. Nasby, and Helen Maher.