Making A Difference The Junior League Of Spokane Has Been A Contributing Force In The Community For 70 Years

The stars shown in a midnight blue sky as the Junior League president snipped open a red plastic ribbon on the front porch of Ogden Hall’s new children’s center.

New provisional members of the Junior League streamed inside. They flashed straight, white smiles as speakers thanked them for renovating the old house. They had caulked, sanded and painted, earning their place in the volunteer organization.

The house stood dark when the Junior League took over, its orange shag carpeting stale and pet-stained. By the night of the ribbon-cutting, even the house’s smell had been transformed. The odor of fresh carpet glue mingled with the perfume scents of the Junior League members themselves.

For the last 70 years in Spokane, when many of the city’s social service and arts organizations needed a hand, the Junior League of Spokane was there. The Junior League was among the first supporters of the Community Mental Health Center, Crosswalk, the Vanessa Behan Crisis Nursery, KPBX and many others.

“There are women in this town who have had and continue to sustain a life-long romance with this community,” said Jahn Schmitz, an 18-year member of the league.

This month, as the Junior League celebrates its 70th anniversary, members are not only looking back to its 1925 beginnings, but ahead to an even more active future.

“In light of dwindling resources, organizations like the Junior League will have to step in and take up the slack in community programs,” said president Gail Stevenson.

On this anniversary, however, league members believe their organization is often overlooked and misunderstood.

“We want to be taken seriously by the public,” said Nancy Slack, public relations chairman. “Most of our friends don’t know what we do with our money.”

On that recent starry night at Ogden Hall, Phil Altmeyer of the Union Gospel Mission stood to thank the Junior League. He talked of the countless stars in the sky outside, about how some of them glow more brightly than others.

“You’re the bright, shining stars in our community,” Altmeyer said. “You’re making a difference not only today, but for a long time.”

Someone sniffled in the hushed crowd. Several women wiped their eyes.

Stevenson, the Junior League president, stood forward in her bright red suit, blinking back tears and beaming. “This does just exemplify what the Junior League is all about in the community,” she said.

The league began in 1925 by sending volunteers into the city’s social services clinic.

Sarah Porter’s grandmother was one of the 10 charter members. Another, Marguerite Keenan, is likely the league’s oldest living member at 104.

The league’s famous fall rummage sale, which raised $25,652 last year, dates way back. In Porter’s family, her grandmother’s rummage sale memories are the stuff of family lore.

One long ago sale day, Porter’s grandmother was folding used dresses. A shopper pulled out a used cocktail frock, inspected its saggy lines, and announced, “I can’t buy this dress, it’s been butt-sprung.”

The league survived the Depression, despite a dearth of rummage, and charged into World War II, turning into a fleet of Gray Ladies and Red Cross volunteers.

In the ‘60s, the league ventured into drug and alcohol education and became more businesslike. A major project was raising $15,000 to help start the Community Mental Health Center. Former league president Mary Higgins became its director in 1971.

The league has helped a long list of Spokane groups get their start, including the Spokane Children’s Theatre, Spokane Art School and SCAN (the Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect Center).

Over the years, membership restrictions fell away. New members formerly were required to be under 40. Now any age may join.

Although the league is still largely white, its minority membership now mirrors the percentage of Spokane’s ethnic population.

The incoming president, Candi Morton Gilchrist, will be the league’s first leader who also works full time. She’s a teacher at Mead High School.

New members are trained as volunteers. When they leave the league, they often take on big jobs in the community.

“If you look at the boards of organizations all over Spokane, the number of Junior League trained volunteers is mind-boggling,” said Mary Joan Hahn, a Junior League member who now serves on the board of Women Helping Women.

The league has sharpened its focus. In the future it will work exclusively to provide support to families. A current project is a mentoring program with teen parents.

The league’s newest fund-raiser will be a cookbook called “Gold’n Delicious.” It’ll be out this fall.

With 81 percent of its new members working - CPAs, businesswomen, a chiropractor - time constraints have forced the league to change.

“They have to be doing a project that they have a passion for,” said Gilchrist.

This year’s new members discovered that passion at Ogden Hall. They renovated the main floor, painted the exterior, ripped out dead bushes and laid sod.

“It’s immediate gratification,” new member Wendy Griffin said at the reception. “I’m a stay-at-home mom. I have two young children. I don’t get to have immediate gratification very often.”

After the reception, Chloma Carell and several other women from Ogden Hall wandered over to take a look at the renovated house.

Carell, an African-American woman with a broad smile and a Southern accent, stood on the front porch and beamed. Soon her daughters, Jasmine, 4, and Maria, 2, will play at this house while Carell looks for a new place to live.

“You have more time to look for housing,” Carell said. “You don’t have to drag your babies on the bus and drag them off the bus and by the end of the day, they’re tired and you’re tired.”

Carell called the Junior Leaguers “sweet ladies.” “It’s like they have kids. They know what they want for their kids so they’re giving it to someone else’s kids that need it,” she explained.

Betsy Wilkerson, one of the league’s few African-American members, also has warm feelings for her fellow Junior League members.

“I have met some incredible women that I would not have met otherwise,” she said. “Our paths would not have crossed.”

But at the same time, she would like the league to work harder on behalf of Spokane’s ethnic population.

She wants the league knocking on the doors of The N.A.T.I.V.E. Project, the Martin Luther King Center or East Central Community Center to offer help.

She believes the league could do more.

“It’s a lot of powerful women in the organization,” she said. “If they were ever to throw their clout behind something in Spokane, they could truly move mountains.”

Other observers say that the league, unlike others in the state, rarely takes a position of advocating politically on behalf of women and children.

Stevenson pointed out that this year the league took a stand supporting a new juvenile detention center.

“We do try to be involved, but we try to be careful about which issues we represent,” Stevenson said. “We’re non-partisan. I certainly have friends of both parties in the league.”

At a gathering of league spokeswomen recently, the women mused about the possibility of Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” making deeper cuts in the social programs that serve Spokane’s poor.

They were undaunted.

“We know our community because we live here and I think we can do it cheaper than the government because we’re volunteers,” Stevenson said.

“As the needs appear and bloom, we’ll be there,” said Schmitz.