CONFESSIONS OF A CLOSET JUNIOR LEAGUER

IT’S SORT OF A STRANGE THING TO HAVE TO HIDE FROM your co-workers. It would have been much easier to confess to being an alcoholic, an adulteress, even an illegitimate daughter of LBJ. But a junior leaguer? I hid it from my journalist friends for years. I laughed along with the junior league jokes. (Have you heard the one about the junior leaguer who doesn’t like to go to orgies? She hates writing all those thank-you notes.) And I tried to put on my best scowl when the guys at the news desk would criticize the “elitist mentality of groups like the junior league.” I had already made a near fatal mistake when I first came to Dallas. Fresh out of college, I actually had on my résumé, under “Personal Interests,” that I was a member of the Young Republicans. My god, that one almost finished me with the media in this town before I started. Luckily, I listed softball next. But even though I could hit just like one of the guys and could throw well enough to make a double play from left field-if they found out I was a junior leaguer, I knew I would be through.

It’s time for some important points about the junior league to be brought out of the closet. Yes, the organization is a bow salesman’s paradise-gold bows, velvet bows, tortoise-shell bows all bob and weave in a sea of (very well-tinted) blonde hair when these well-dressed women join for monthly meetings. Yes, there is a certain amount of pomp and fluff to the league. But despite all that, the league works and works well, And though the league may seem congealed in a pate of the past, it is slowly, gradually changing. It is coming to grips with the changing role of women in this city and with its own evolving demographics.

It has been almost six years since I transferred into the junior league here, and though I’ve revealed my membership to my colleagues at D, I admit that no matter how much I love it, there are still some things about the organization that make me cringe. Like the night I realized at 6:15-after one of those crisis-ridden days interrupted with phone calls from PR folks wanting to know if someone was coming to the Charity Cook-Off for the Benefit of Bulimics-that I was slated to bring refreshments to my junior league committee meeting, which started at 6:30. Beer and pretzels was my first thought. Fast, easy, no preparation. And entirely inappropriate, a co-worker reminded me-for a junior league meeting.

That’s the kind of thing that bugs me about the junior league. I mean, here are these fifteen or twenty intelligent women making important decisions on a very innovative junior league committee-an emergency fund that can respond immediately to critical needs of area agencies-and I’ve gone completely neurotic about the kind of refreshments I’m going to bring. I opted for pretzels and Diet Cherry Seven-Up. No one complained. But compared to the fresh fruit and crab dip with homemade rye crackers (all recipes from the new JLD cookbook South of the Fork, no doubt), I felt my humble offerings fell flat. Though I like to think I’m liberated or feminist, something about the peer pressure in the junior league makes me want to go home and fry chicken. And though I rarely wear lipstick or stockings to work, each time I go to a junior league meeting I suffer from an uncontrollable urge to do just that.

I felt even worse the time my committee went on a “community study tour” to seek out first-hand knowledge of Dallas community needs. Our stop at noon was at the Stewpot downtown. There, along with other volunteers, we served stew and poured milk and water into little paper cups for the homeless men and women who come there each day. These people have truly hit bottom, and I admit I felt apprehensive on our way down to the dingy, un-air-conditioned room where chicken and dumplings was served. It’s easy to walk by homeless people on the street and look the other way. But when you hand them a piece of bread or steady their hands while filling their cups with milk, you are forced to look them in the eye and feel a small part of their pain. I felt good about the contribution we made at the Stewpot that day-until we filed upstairs to a beautiful church room to eat our $7 box lunches. I barely heard our luncheon speaker that day because I was sick to my stomach. I was busy adding up all the money we had spent on those box lunches and calculating how much stew we could have bought had we opted to skip a meal that day. Why did we have to follow up a serious, moving experience with a pleasant social event?



UNTIL RECENTLY, I’VE KEPT MY JUNIOR league membership in the closet because sometimes the stereotypes are just too close to the reality, and I think part of me believed the propaganda thrown my way by associates, acquaintances, and strangers almost daily. It’s taken almost six years for me to fully appreciate these women and the vast amount of dollars and volunteer hours they contribute to Dallas-even if many of them wear silly bows in their hair while doing it.

I didn’t start to get militant about the junior league until I was pushed to my limit one day by Richard West. West is one of our regular writers here at D, a really smart man who writes a lot of the social consciousness-type pieces for us; he was being socially liberated in the Sixties while I was in diapers, and he hates “bidness,” as he calls it, with every ounce of his being. As the business writer for D and an ex-Young Republican, I clash with West more often than not in staff meetings. But one day he really did it: he repeated the worst cliché of cliches among the many pieces of junior league disinformation spread around this town. “They,” he said of the junior league in that snide way that only a weathered journalist can say it, insinuating elitism, racism, and a thousand other isms in just that one little word, “only give to the nice [hinting at museums, $20,000 gala dresses, symphonies, and such] charities. They don’t get their hands dirty,” West said.

That slur, more than any other, has brought me out of the closet to set the record straight on the junior league, which, despite its froufrou characteristics, serves an invaluable humanitarian function in this community. Such statements are easy to refute and supply me with a business writer’s favorite ammunition: I love to have some numbers and dollar figures to throw around in an argument.

To wit: the Junior League of Dallas gives more than 200,000 volunteer hours to community projects annually. Using a minimum wage figure of $3.35 per hour, that work is valued at $670,000. But given the fact that the junior league trains its volunteers extensively, a more accurate value of those 200,000 hours is around $1.4 million. Last year alone, close to $1.2 million in cash was contributed to sixty-six different organizations in Dallas. Of those dollars, about $87,000 was spent on the arts and about $115,000 on museums, so-called “nice” charities, in the last fiscal year. Approximately $197,000 was spent on mental health; $154,000 on children (including drug education); $140,000 on community awareness (including the Common Ground program for low-income housing); $135,000 on adolescents (including a teenage pregnancy program); and $97,000 on health.

The overwhelming trend in junior league giving in Dallas has been toward serving critical human needs. Yes, the group continues to support the arts and museums-and will into eternity. But the league has not turned its back on the hungry or needy in Dallas. In the coming year, all nine of the new projects adopted by the junior league research and development committee address human needs. Three of those projects address the homeless and low-income housing needs so critical now in Dallas.

Sure, some members of the junior league still wear white gloves. But that doesn’t mean that thousands of hands aren’t dirtied each year helping in problem areas where life is anything but pretty. Junior league volunteers are helping to counsel battered women at The Family Place and Genesis shelters, working directly with children and adolescents who have serious problems with drugs, incest, pregnancy, or delinquency. Junior league volunteers are in the emergency room at Parkland Hospital. And despite the fear of AIDS that is reducing the! health care workforce significantly, Parkland and other health care placements continue to draw large numbers of the Dallas junior league’s nearly 2,000 highly trained active volunteers.

Most people don’t know that the junior league has trained volunteers who are manning the Contact crisis lines or helping women who are recovering from drug and alcohol dependency at Nexus. The league’s most public profile is still with the money given to these organizations. People think of the league’s volunteers in the more traditional placements-like the ladies down at the City’s Office of Protocol, or the docents at area museums, some of the few glitz and glitter volunteer jobs still offered to league members. Another high-profile league placement is the Senior Citizens Craft Fair, which on the surface looks like a peculiarly female activity. However, look a little deeper: 80 percent of the people sixty-eight and older are women. After that age, their income drops nearly 70 percent. The Senior Citizens Craft Fair directly addresses the income needs of this growing sector of elderly poor.

And many people don’t know that for many league members the commitment to voluntarism does not begin and end with the junior league. Many times league members remain involved in community projects long after their junior league commitment to that organization is finished. Look on the boards of most volunteer community organizations in Dallas and you will find league members who’ve been there from the beginning-from huge projects like The Volunteer Connection to newer, smaller organizations like the Illiteracy Task Force.



PERHAPS WHAT THE DALLAS LEAGUE IS best known for in this city is the Follies. Oh god, how do you write about the junior league in Dallas without addressing the hopeful starlets who save it up all year to bump and grind at the annual junior league ball? At this fundraiser-one of the biggest and most successful in the country-companies and individuals who give to the junior league are invited to a great party and a variety show. This is where the Junior League of Dallas interfaces with the business community. And what image do we present? Up there on stage, while Your Company Name is being flashed on a giant overhead screen, a chosen babe in an elaborate, sexy costume prances Miss America-style to and fro to say thanks. These aren”t exactly New Women up there, but they’re having a good time. And the old saying is true-it takes all kinds. This ball, silly and sexist as the entertainment can be, has raised more than a million dollars each year for the last three years. It’s a tradition that’s more than twenty years old, and as long as there are women in the league-and husbands of league members- who enjoy singing and dancing and shaking their stuff on stage, the tradition will most likely continue.

That’s not to say that all junior league traditions will continue ad infinitum. The realities of today’s junior leaguers are very different from the blue-haired ladies in our past. The “typical” junior leaguer is not the WASPy wife of some important Dallas businessman looking for a little something to do with her spare time. The current junior league directory contains something new for Dallas junior leaguers-a business listing of members. And though the fattest section is somewhat predictably “Real Estate,” there’s a full page of accountants, a page of advertising executives, two pages of bankers, two pages of lawyers, etc. The league estimates that 60 percent of the junior league members in Dallas are employed outside the home.

The changing employment profile and the transient population in Dallas-bringing in about 200 transfer members a year from leagues across the country-have contributed to the changing face of the Dallas junior league. But change comes slowly, though the league prides itself in being responsive to its membership’s shifting perspective.

Probably the ugliest accusations thrown at the Junior League of Dallas are those of elitism and racism. Since the admissions process to the Dallas junior league is closed, and secret-only members can recommend new candidates for admission and they can’t tell those women that they are candidates-critics have some justification in making these accusations. But like any large group, there are widely varying and dissenting opinions in the junior league.

“What about the *#!*ing Salesmanship Club and the Dallas Citizens Council,” says one blunt junior leaguer.; “These male organizations don’t get any flak about it. The male-dominated array of Dallas service organizations has made only tenuous steps toward changing. I don’t know why the burden continues to fall on this organization except that it’s easier to throw stones at what’s perceived to be the weaker group in the greater power structure”

A feminist viewpoint. And in the junior league. Can you believe it? Believe it.

There was a pretty strong movement several years ago to open up the admissions process in the Dallas junior league, which is the only league left in the country that sticks with the secret balloting. In Dallas, any member can propose women for membership, but they must get other sponsors, recommendations, and compile an elaborate “volunteer” resume for the candidate without her knowing. Women don’t start their volunteer careers in the junior league. But, although it’s not really talked about, it helps if your mother or sister was a league member. It’s a very sororityish process in Dallas, right down to “bid” day when new members get messengered invitations and the ladies who nominated them hide in the bushes armed with balloons, cameras, and champagne. In other leagues around the country, there are various means of admission that range from an open interview process to the walk-in-and-sign-up variety.

The movement to change met with strong resistance- Unlike many leagues across the country, the Dallas junior league does not have a problem attracting or keeping committed members, making the apprehension about changing the admissions process somewhat understandable. There is a valid belief among members that the volunteer groups anyone can just sign up for are just as easy to blow off. The selective, qualifying process that the Dallas league uses to choose its members demands performance. But it also keeps the league parochial.



THE LEAGUE IS NO LONGER EXCLUSIVELY WASP. But the first Jew and the first black and the first Hispanic were slowly and deliberately handpicked and carefully followed through the admissions process. Blacks and Hispanics are still a minute minority in the Dallas junior league, partly because the admissions process demands that members proposing new members know the candidates very well, and women in the Dallas league are largely white and upper-middle-class. But though these changes didn’t happen quickly, or without effort, the important point is that change is occurring. With more junior league members in the workforce, the horizons of the league are broadening, and with that expansion I have to believe change will come.

Though becoming a member of the junior league is still talked of as an honor, the reason women value their junior league membership far transcends that sense of being “chosen.” I’ve met some of the best, brightest, most dedicated women I’ve ever known in the Dallas junior league. It’s a very powerful mix of people-the traditional bow-bedecked frosted hair types, the Phi Beta Kappas from MIT, the New Women from Smith, the mothers, the wives, the daughters. I don’t agree with everything about the Dallas junior league, and no doubt many members do not agree with all of my views. But regardless of the varying opinions, backgrounds, or lifestyles-or maybe because of them-it’s very exciting to feel joined in a purpose with these women and to see our force make a difference in Dallas.