-Caveat Lector-
an excerpt from:
The Right People - A Portrait of the American Social Establishment
Stephen Birmingham�1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1968
Little, Brown and Company
BostonoToronto
LCCN 68-11525
360pps. � out-of-print
--[8]--
8.
Lovely, Lovely Ladies
0NE Sunday morning a couple of years ago, devotees of the New York Times
crossword-puzzle page found themselves confronted with the following problem
and partial solution:
While, manfully, doers of the big weekly puzzle tried to find a nineletter
word to fit the definition, members of the Junior League themselves,
girlfully, tried to make the solution be "volunteer." But try as they might,
"volunteer" would not mesh with the vertical words around it. Less parochial
puzzle-workers came to the correct solution more quickly � which, alas, was
"debutante." So distressed were members of the Junior League that many
letters were written to the Times about it, and an entire article on the
subject appeared in the Junior League magazine.
That Sunday crossword, and the trouble the Leaguers had with it, illustrates
the curious dichotomy that exists within the Junior League today. League
members are, indeed, volunteers. A specific amount of weekly toil and
endeavor in behalf of some approved good cause is a requisite to continuing
membership. But League members are also, to a large extent, debutantes and
former debutantes. In smaller cities that do not have organized debutante
balls, joining the Junior League is the accompaniment, if not almost the
equivalent, of coming out. Still, Leaguers do not like to be known as "Just
debutantes," because, as one Leaguer puts it, "That makes us sound as though
we're dilettantes who are afraid to get our hands dirty." Nor do they like to
be considered it just volunteers." That, as the same lady says, sounds
"pretty dreary," as though Leaguers' hands were wrist-deep in mud most of the
time. In other words, Junior Leaguers are unwilling to give up completely
either half of their disparate organization, though the two halves do not
seem to blend very comfortably, if at all.
This problem is currently reflected, in other forms, all across the
pastel-bued landscape of American Society: should "society" be written with a
capital or lower-case s, for example? Most people who are "in Society" today
would seem to want to have it a little of both, but such a compromise would
call for a new kind of typography. "In 1904 and 1905, when 1 came out in New
York, Society was still written with a capital S," says Mrs. Corinne Robinson
Alsop Cole, a niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, very definitely a member
of the New York Old Guard and (by her first marriage to the late Joseph
Wright Alsop) the mother of columnist Joseph Alsop and Saturday Evening Post
editor Stewart Alsop. (Mrs. Cole, from the bastion of her farm in Avon,
Connecticut, is also, along with such formidable figures as Mrs. Winthrop
Aldrich and Mrs. Alice Roosevelt Longworth, one of the towering grandes dames
of the entire East.) "It was a period of an elite Four Hundred," she says,
"the last year of Mrs. Astor's great balls. The list of debutantes was small.
Forebears, not fortunes, gave the 'open sesame' to parties at the great
private houses."
In those days, Mrs. Cole recalls, a young woman who made her debut was
simultaneously made aware of the great and pressing obligations that family
and social position imposed upon her. Society was a serious business and upon
entering it a girl lifted her share of the city's poor, beleaguered, and
untidy masses upon her fragile and well-bred shoulders. The community's
unfortunate � its sick, its blind, its orphans, and its unwed mothers.-
became a burden that would be hers for life. As a result, says Mrs. Cole,
coming out was not so much "a debutante party" as "a terrifying ordeal." In
those days, a girl was "polished" rather than educated, and part of the
polishing instructed her as to her responsibilities to those less well-off
than she. "The word 'charity' was not in disrepute then, as it is now," says
Mrs. Cole. "We all had our charities. We had local families whom we
considered deserving, whom we cared for. And if a project seemed worthy we
supported it with time and money. But we did it on a personal basis." Society
was, for the young Corinne Robinson, "the small group of people we knew,"
and, in her debutante year, Miss Robinson joined a smallish organization
established by a group of her friends and contemporaries called The Junior
League for the Promotion of Settlement Houses "for the benefit of the poor
and the betterment of the city."
Just three years earlier, in 1901, two well-connected young ladies Miss Mary
Harriman (the daughter of railroad king E. H. Harriman, and the sister of New
York's ex-Governor Averell Harriman) and Miss Nathalie Henderson (later Mrs.
Joseph R. Swan) � were driving down Riverside Drive in a snappy four-wheeled
sulky behind Gulnair, Mary Harriman's trotting horse. On that excursion,
Nathalie Henderson Swan later recalled, Mary Harriman said (in the somewhat
stilted phrases Mrs. Swan has attributed to her), "There is an exceptionally
large number of debutantes coming out our year. What can we do to make it a
particularly good year, and to show that we recognize an obligation to the
community besides having a good time?" Miss Harriman promptly answered her
own question. She had heard about the College Settlement House on Rivington
Street, and said, "We will work for the benefit of the College Settlement."
The Junior League was born.
That year, a little entertainment was presented at the house of another
debutante, and about $1000 was raised -not a large sum, perhaps, considering
the wealth of the young ladies involved (E. H. Harriman alone was presumed to
be worth a good $200,000,000), but, when one considers that this was in an
era when young women were not supposed to handle money, and that the $1000
must have represented the girls' carefully hoarded piggy-bank cash, it is
impressive. The idea (after all, there had never been anything quite like a
debutantes' organization in the perfumed world of the Four Hundred) spread
like wildfire. Debutantes clamored to get into the League, and other cities,
hearing what New York was up to, raced to start leagues of their own. Boston
came next and then, in quick succession: Brooklyn; Portland, Oregon;
Baltimore; Philadelphia; and Chicago. "We had made it amusing," said Nathalie
Henderson Swan modestly, "and also chic to belong."
This helps explain some of the problems that today surround the Junior League
� why, particularly in the largest American cities, it is felt to have lost
some of its status. It became too amusing, and too chic. Everybody and her
sister wanted to belong. Today, there are more than sixteen hundred members
of the New York Junior League. The Boston League has over fourteen hundred,
and the San Francisco League has eleven hundred-plus. All together � busily
manipulating puppets, restoring historic houses, manning mobile museums,
pushing book carts through hospital corridors, singing Christmas carols to
shutins, planning children's concerts and zoo trips, putting on operettas,
plays, and films, organizing educational television stations, teaching arts,
crafts, science and language courses, leading nature hikes, telling fairy
stories to orphans, brightening the twilight days of the elderly by hanging
pictures in their hospital rooms, stuffing envelopes and licking stamps,
dancing their feet off in junior League Follies, cheering the wounded and
uplifting the imprisoned � there are more than eightyfive thousand Junior
Leaguers in over two hundred cities in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
Over them all the mother-hen Association of Junior Leagues of America � with
headquarters located chic-ly in a suite in New York's Waldorf-Astoria � keeps
track of all the scattered League chickens, and attempts to impose a
centralized system and discipline. To those who knew the Junior League in the
drawing-room era, these figures and growth are "fantastic," "incredible, and
"really rather frightening." "I simply cannot believe," says one woman, "that
all those thousands of young women are really in Society today." Though Mrs.
Cole is loyal to her old organization, she does not quite seem to believe it
either. But, rather than admit that the Junior League has changed, she
prefers to say that Society has changed.
Nowhere are the difficulties of big-city Junior Leagues more apparent than in
the Pine Room of the New York Junior League clubhouse in East Eightieth
Street where, at lunchtime, the ladies gather for a preluncheon cocktail
served by a white-coated bartender, and where trays of Bloody Marys
circulate. (The Bloody Mary, says one member, "is sort of the traditional New
York Junior League drink � and they make yummy ones here.") The clubhouse,
formerly the town house of Vincent Astor, is handsomely paneled, furnished
with French Provincial furniture, and features a splendid curved staircase
("perfect for wedding receptions") and a cuisine so exceptional that even the
husbands of League ladies enjoy coming there for dinner. But the League
ladies themselves are fond of speaking of their mansion as though it only
offered shelter of a sort most Spartan and austere. "But this Place is
nothing," they remind wide-eyed visitors, "compared with the old clubhouse in
East Seventy-first Street. That had a marvelous big ballroom, an indoor
swimming pool, squash courts, and its own hairdressing salon. But during the
war it just seemed wrong for us to have a big place like that, and we moved
over to this little place in 1949." At the same time, lest anyone accuse the
League of living too plushly even in the old clubhouse, Junior Leaguers hurry
to point out that, contrary to " that persistent rumor," the Seventy-first
Street place did not include a nurse and baby-sitting service for members to
free them for good works. "It's ridiculous to think we'd need the League to
provide us with sitters," an older League member says. "Why, in those dear,
golden days we all had servants and nannies of our own."
It is in the Pine Room that the arguments most often arise over just what
today's junior League is, as well as what it isn't, and what it means to the
world outside, and what it doesn't. "We're often thought of as a purely
social organization," said one Bloody-Mary-sipping member at a gathering the
other day. "People who aren't in the League don't realize the tremendous
amount of work we do. We're considered snobs." Others agreed that it was
other people � "outsiders" � who brand the League snobbish. Those in the
League don't consider it snobbish at all.
"But isn't everything snobbish, really?" said another lady. "I mean, we're
like a sorority. We want people in the League who are nice, and share the
same interests, and get along with the other members."
Several others agreed that everything was, in a way, snobbish. "For
instance," said one woman, "I live in the heart of Yorkville and there's a
Hungarian social club right around the corner. Now, if my husband decided to
drop into that Hungarian club for a drink some Saturday night, do you think
they'd admit him? They would not! They'd throw him right out on his ear � as
he should be thrown out."
"Yes," agreed another. "The junior League isn't snobbish � just selective."
"If," said one, "you asked someone like a taxi driver what the junior League
meant to him, he'd say, 'Yeah, the Junior League -a rich girls' hangout.' But
we know differently."
"On the other hand," said another, "we do come from a higher economic
bracket, and Junior League affairs do rate Society-page attention."
"But don't we want to get off the Society page?" put in one woman. "Isn't
that our trouble?"
'Well, yes," agreed the first. "But we don't want to get off the Society page
entirely, do we?"
"I think," said one woman with finality, "that similarity of education is the
greatest equating factor in the League � and similarity of interests."
"But we wouldn't hold it against a girl if she went to school in Europe," put
in another.
"To me," said one lady, "the Junior League is simply one of several pleasant
clubs in New York City." And so it went.
Of the many pleasant women's clubs in New York City -which include the Colony
Club, the Cosmopolitan Club, the River Club (a family club), and such
hereditary ladies' societies which exist, for the most part, without
clubhouses, such as the Daughters of the American Revolution (the Daughters
use the Junior League clubhouse), the Colonial Dames of America, the National
Society of Colonial Dames of America in the State of New York, the Daughters
of the Cincinnati and the Daughters of Holland Dames � only one enjoys top
social prestige and top Society patronage, and that is the Colony Club. In
Boston, the Colony Club's equivalent is the Chilton Club; in Philadelphia,
the Acorn Club; in San Francisco, the Francisca Club. When invited to lunch
"at the Colony," a New York lady is expected to tell -by the tone of voice
and inflection -whether her hostess means the Colony Club or the elegant but
slightly more flashy Colony restaurant. In the sedate and serenely still
rooms of the Colony Club on Park Avenue are considered to gather New York's
noblest and best women. And it is typical of the Junior League's ambiguous
and uncertain position that there should be considerable internecine warfare
between the League and the Colony over which is the "more social" or the
"more important" club. And this is a little odd because the two clubs have
little in common but the sex of their membership and their formal interior
decor.
The Junior League's stated raison d'etre is "a desire to participate, through
volunteer service, in the community's health, education, welfare, and
culture." The Colony Club has no such lofty aims and is a social club, pure
and simple. Yet the battleground between Sixtysecond and Park and Eightieth
and Lexington is strewn with the aspersions the two clubs cast back and forth
about each other.
Membership in the two overlaps rather little. The Colony seems to select its
members almost exclusively from the pages of the Social Register; the League
no longer does. As a result, Colony Club members smile sadly and say that the
Junior League has gone "terribly, terribly downhill," and "Just isn't what it
used to be." Junior Leaguers counter by saying that the Colony Club is
"stuffy and dull," and is filled with it very, very old ladies." ("They say
things like that about the Colony," says a. Colony member, "simply because
they can't get in." Replies a Junior Leaguer with a brittle laugh, "But who'd
want to get in?" "Sour grapes," insists the Colony.)
A newcomer to New York from Austin, Texas, made her first social move in the
city by transferring her Austin Junior League affiliation to New York. The
New York League likes to say that it "isn't always easy" to transfer from one
of the minor Leagues out of town to the bigcity League, but the Austin woman
accomplished it without difficulty. She soon realized, however, that a more
significant social goal still lay ahead of her � the Colony Club. Lunching
with a Colony member who she hoped would propose her name, she cited, among
her qualifications, her League membership. The Colony member gasped and said,
"Good heavens! I wouldn't mention that if I were you!" (The Austin lady kept
mum about the League, got into the Colony, and now snubs the League.)
The situation is different in other, smaller cities � cities which New
Yorkers loftily lump together and call "the provinces." In such places as
Knoxville, Mobile, Spokane, Great Falls, South Bend � even Austin � the
junior Leagues are composed of women who feel themselves to be from the very
top drawer of local Society, and it is unwise to treat them otherwise.
A New York woman had this demonstrated to her forcefully when her husband's
business required that the family move from New York to Oklahoma City. Being
a member of one of New York's proud families, she was promptly rushed by
Oklahoma City Society, and was invited to join the Oklahoma City Junior
League. But, according to a friend, she made the naive mistake of saying, "No
thank you. In New York, you see, the best people don't join the League."
Great beyond description was the wrath of the Oklahoma City ladies, and the
new arrival soon found that she had been placed in the social deep-freeze by
everyone in the town who mattered � a circumstance which, besides making her
lonely, caused her husband some embarrassment in his business relationships.
It did not take the lady long to see her error, but it took a longer time �
and a series of blandishments, persuasions, letters from family and friends
across the country, and from one particular friend from New York (who had
been smarter when she had moved to Oklahoma City) who actually threatened to
blackball every new member the Oklahoma League wanted to take in if her
repentant friend were not accepted -before the League grandly deigned to
include the humbled and contrite woman in its ranks.
Just what is "wrong" with the League in New York, and why "the best people"
eschew it, is a complicated question to answer. There are several answers,
actually, and they apply not only to New York but to Boston, Philadelphia,
and San Francisco as well, for in all four cities the League occupies a
social position somewhat below the top. Naturally, no loyal Leaguer in any of
these cities will admit that there is anything wrong, but a few disloyal ones
will. One New York woman who is "really much fonder" of the Colony Club
maintains a dilatory Junior League connection because, as she puts it, "The
League makes you do things that you probably should do, but probably wouldn't
do if there weren't something like the League around to make you do them, and
that's good." She inveighs against the run-of-the-mill Leaguer, however, for
the following reasons: "I bate to sound snobbish, but those League women just
don't do things the way we do. For instance, they start calling you by your
first name too quickly. My name happens to be Caroline, and I was no sooner
introduced than everybody started calling me Carol. I think I dress simply
and nicely, but really � those women are so overdressed. They wear cocktail
dresses for lunch. And the hairdos! I went to a meeting the other day in a
woman's house, and it could not have been grimmer. She served curry � for
lunch! You could smell it in the elevator lobby. We all had to fill our
plates and then sprinkle different things on our food from a lot of little
pots. And her apartment! Over the mantel she'd put some hideous ornament that
I'd seen at Altman's for eleven dollars and ninetyfive cents, and all the
women raved about her apartment. She confessed that she'd decorated it
herself. Do you see what I mean?"
To see what this woman means, to understand the crimes of first names too
soon, of overdressing, of decorating your own apartment with department store
figurines, and of serving curry for lunch � you have only to appreciate the
hazy but still palpable line which, in bigcity Society, separates "our kind"
from "not our kind." This explains the persistent comparison in New York
between the League and the Colony Club. The Colony draws the line firmly. It
� and its comparable clubs in other cities � is felt to be peopled by real
Society. The Junior League, to a greater or lesser extent, is populated by
climbers. And climbers, of course, are the most snobbish souls in the entire
Society picture.
The Association of Junior Leagues of America is cautiously vague on the
subject of membership requirements. They murmur such generalities as "Members
should be compatible," and "Members should be interested in the community,"
and "Members should meet junior League standards." What are Junior League
standards? "If a woman is judged to be Junior League material, she is
considered to have met Junior League standards." Just as each city sets its
own dues � which range from ten dollars a year up to one hundred dollars,
according to the community � so does each city decide for itself whom it will
take in, and sets up its own mechanics for doing so. In some Leagues, members
are voted in by a simple show of hands; in others, an elaborate
sorority-house ritual of secrecy is followed, and new members are informed of
their acceptance with girlish cries of "Surprise! Surprise!" and are expected
to shed a few tears of joy at the news. Because the League likes to keep the
emphasis on the junior part of its name, no woman can vote or hold office
after she reaches the age of forty. She is then called a sustaining member,
and is considered "a trained volunteer, active in her community." Of course,
women being the way they are about age, this rule is a delicate one to
enforce and, often a woman will be tactfully treated as an active member
while, secretly, her name is placed on the sustaining list. As for women who
refuse to reveal their ages, one woman says, "Every now and then we hear a
member say, 'You know, that rule about becoming inactive at forty is silly.
Let's change it.' That's a dead giveaway that that girl's fortieth birthday
is just around the corner."
In growing to its present size, the Junior League has accepted a number of
Jewish members � particularly in the larger cities. This, too, startles the
Old Guard. On the other hand, the Jewish membership is still significantly
small and, as one member candidly puts it, "Most Leagues just take in a token
number of Jewish girls � enough so they won't be called anti-Semitic." At the
same time, many Jewish girls � recalling the state of affairs a generation
ago when the League was unquestionably discriminatory nearly everywhere �
refuse to belong to the Junior League when invited. As far as is known, there
has never been a Negro League member.
Meanwhile, nobody denies that the Junior Leagues make important contributions
in a number of areas. In Raleigh, the League sponsors a cerebral palsy
clinic. A nursery school is League maintained in Kansas City. In Evanston,
the Institute for Language Disorders is sponsored by the Evanston League in
conjunction with Northwestern University. Also in Evanston, a now famous
Mothers' Milk Bank was a League brainstorm, hit upon when a League member
discovered a shortage of this commodity in local hospitals. Now, according to
the League, new mothers in the organization put their babies immediately on
formula or hire wet nurses so that they may donate their own milk and, if the
picture of well-bred young women hurrying to the hospital on schedule to be
milked seems a trifle grotesque, it is nonetheless said that these women fill
a vital role. The Mothers' Milk Bank has been widely copied elsewhere.
In Tulsa, a children's medical center has been developed by the League. The
list goes on and on. The AJLA reports that some five hundred specific health
and welfare projects are being kept afloat by Leagues across the country, and
that as many as a hundred and twentyfive thousand volunteer jobs for various
other community organizations are tackled by Leaguers in a busy year � and
these figures do not include the tens of thousands of ladies who volunteer
for special fundraising jobs, year in, year out.
New York City's Commissioner of Welfare has nothing but admiration for the
work done by the New York Junior League, which he considers an important
force in the city's life, and other organizations that have sought help from
the Junior League pronounce themselves It astonished and delighted" with the
cooperation and efficiency of the Leaguers, and are impressed with the
thoroughness of the groundwork and training in welfare operations that the
League gives its young members in the provisional training course.
True, there are moments when the Junior League seems to go off the track a
bit in its zeal for doing good, as happened awhile back at a fund-raising
party in Philadelphia. At the party, chances a dollar each were sold for door
prizes. The prizes had been donated by Leaguers and their friends, and many
of them had considerable value. Too late, apparently, it was discovered that
there were more prizes than chances, and one guest at the party reports that
he won � for an outlay of one dollar � a handsome pair of Sheffield silver
candelabra, a radio-phonograph, a Waring Blender, and a woman's silver-fox
muff. It was later estimated that, though $I 500 had been raised for the
worthy cause at hand, the prizes given away to Junior Leaguers and their
friends had been worth close to $15,000 � a philanthropic circumstance that
might boggle the imagination of a Harvard economist.
Another dilemma, this one of a moral rather than a financial nature, was
faced by a well-to-do young Leaguer from New Jersey who must remain nameless.
At her Junior League function, it was decreed that door prizes should be
articles made by the Junior Leaguers themselves. "I kept trying to think of
something I could make," says this untalented but well-intentioned lady, "and
I couldn't think of anything. And I kept putting it off. At the last minute,
I knew I had to turn in something. So I dashed into New York and bought a
pair of artificial lemon trees made out of wire and ceramic fruit at a
darling little shop on Second Avenue." The handmade lemon trees, imported
from Italy, cost her three hundred dollars. "Then," says the lady, "at the
party the most awful thing happened. My lemon trees � which I'd had to say I
made myself, you see � were the absolute hit of the evening. People kept
saying they never dreamed I was so clever, and several of my friends asked me
if I'd please make some little lemon trees for them!" So far, the poor woman
has bought two more pairs of lemon trees at the Second Avenue shop. She is
the best-known lemon-tree-maker in her section of the state � all to support
the Junior League's reputation for integrity. If she keeps it up, according
to one friend who is aware of the costly deception, she may soon have to
apply to the Junior League for aid herself.
But, for all the Junior League does, it cannot seem to solve its personality
problem � whether it should be wholly chic, or wholly dutiful, whether it is
a collection of snobs or social workers, post-debutantes or do-gooders. So it
continues to be a little of each. Nowhere is the schizophrenia more apparent
than in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The Bridgeport Junior League starts out with
a special problem � its very name. "Bridgeport," says Mrs. Bradley Johnson of
that League, in a minor miracle of understatement, "isn't really the most
attractive city in the world." And, she quickly points out, "Most of the
League members, of course, live here in Fairfield." Why, then, can it not be
called the Fairfield Junior League? Well, Fairfield is a wealthy commuter
suburb, quite short of folk needy enough to require the ministrations of a
Junior League. So Bridgeport, a name redolent of brassworks and ferocious air
pollution, it must be.
One of the most important operations of the Bridgeport League is its Thrift
Shop, which the Fairfield ladies operate. The Thrift Shop is located "in a
very run-down section of the city" � Bridgeport, that is -but it is in that
sort of neighborhood that thrift shops find their customers. As the Fairfield
ladies say, rolling their eyes as if envisioning rapists and purse-snatchers,
"At least it's near a bus stop." It is hard work manning � or womaning � the
Bridgeport Thrift Shop. "We get all kinds coming in for bargains � people
from the lowest walks of life." Work there can be "depressing," but, when a
shopper's face lights up at the sight of a true bargain, it becomes
"rewarding." "They tell us all their problems," says Mrs. Johnson, "but, you
know, I really don't think they know one of us from another. I mean, to them
we all look alike! I suppose it's like what happens when an American goes to
China and thinks that all Chinese look alike. But don't misunderstand. The
League is not snobbish." (Later, a more candid member of the Bridgeport
League added, "She says the League isn't snobbish. Well, it is.")
Junior Leagues everywhere � and the AJLA itself � are aware that the League
has "image" problems, that it is often regarded as a group of rich women
whose chief activities are socializing and being exclusive. Such
well-publicized events as the New York League's great Mardi Gras Ball may
actually add to this reputation. (The Mardi Gras Ball is often televised and,
when it is, it earns excellent ratings.)[*] The Ball nets as much as fifty
thousand dollars for the League's welfare work. But its glamorous, dressy,
and champagne-sipping aspects are what the public notices. "The League has
many areas of interest," says a New York Leaguer. "Is it wrong if once a year
we turn out for a little fun? The rest of the time we try to help � wherever
we feel our volunteers can make a real contribution. The purpose of the
League is volunteer service, and each year our members contribute more than
three hundred thousand hours to New York City!"[ * In 1960, for instance, the
Mardi Gras Ball pulled an "Arbitron" rating of 25.2, compared with 7.8 for
Jack Paar in the same hour on a competing channel.]
"You see only one side of the League here in the Pine Room," one woman added,
sipping her Bloody Mary.
"We may not be drudges, but we get a lot accomplished," said another.
"And, furthermore, the women who belong to the New York League are � well,
just lovely, lovely people. Lovely ladies."
And it's true. The Junior League today continues to embrace the same double
purpose that Mary Harriman and Nathalie Henderson conceived for it in 1901 �
to toil honestly and well for worthwhile causes, and yet to be "amusing" and
"chic" at the same time. Filling those three hundred thousand woman hours in
New York are, among others, the Junior League Puppeteers � a beloved group
that has become a League institution � who present such favorites as Hansel
and Gretel and Nestor, the Talking Horse to the young in hospitals,
settlement houses, and child-care centers. Other volunteers work with Puerto
Rican and other immigrant youngsters to help them improve their reading and
mastery of English. ("In this program," one Leaguer explains, "we've found
that one of the tricks is to give a child reading matter that relates to his
surroundings. 'Farmer Brown went out to milk the cow' means nothing to a city
child. So our texts say things like. 'The bus roared down Columbus Avenue.'")
The League also trains junior high school boys and girls as junior aides in
after-school day-care centers and play centers for smaller children. Though
most Leaguers confess that they're fondest of working with children, the New
York League also works with the Swope Community Center, a housing development
for the elderly, and the League pays the salary of a professional director of
the program. The League has also offered a series of English-language courses
to exceptionally well-educated foreign-born arrivals in New York, and
Leaguers with language skills teach these classes themselves at the
clubhouse. "We've been criticized for offering these courses only to those
who have had superior educations or backgrounds in their own countries," one
woman says facing up, once again, to that old unpleasant word � "but the
reasons are not snobbish. Really. It's just because we feel that these
superior foreign people will learn English faster and, when they do, will be
able to fill more important roles in the community-"
"Still," said another woman, "we get some awfully peculiar-looking people in
here at night, even though they're supposed to be superior. Not to sound
snobbish, of course."
A tray of whiskey sours came bobbing across the Pine Room, and someone
exclaimed, "Look! Whiskey sours! Who are they for?"
"They must be for the New Jersey Leagues," someone said. "They're having a
meeting downstairs."
"New Jersey!" said still another woman. "What on earth are they doing here?"
"Well," said the second woman, "they asked to use our clubhouse, and, after
all, they're Junior Leaguers too. We couldn't really refuse fellow Junior
Leaguers, could we?"
"But New Jersey," the first woman persisted. "New Jersey
Perhaps the saddest Junior League story of all involves a newlywed young
woman whose husband's job required that the couple move from New York City to
Bluffton, Indiana. In New York, the bride bad been a member of the stately
Colony Club, and she was certain she would not find anything approximating
its equivalent in Bluffton. She decided, therefore, to settle on the Junior
League � if there was one. She had been in Bluffton only a few days when she
received a caller representing the Welcome Wagon. While the Welcome Wagon
lady was telling her all about Bluffton's shops and services, the newcomer
interrupted to ask, hesitantly, "Is there Junior League in Bluffton?"
The Welcome Wagon woman looked briefly uncertain, then brightened and said,
"Well, honey, I know they've got a Little League and a Midget League � but a
junior League? To tell the truth, honey, that's one I've just never heard of."
pps. 122-136
--[cont]--
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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