The Boca Raton Junior League marks its 50th year
The old trope of the Junior League’s white-gloved approach to community service may have held true across America in the 1950s—but that was then. Today’s League is still all about community, but the projects are serious life changers. And the impact is deep.
The League is an outgrowth of what was in the 1970s the old Junior Service League in Boca, which 27 women formed in 1971, just a few years after IBM arrived in Boca Raton, the Boca Raton Community Hospital was dedicated, the 26-story pink tower at the Resort went up and Marymount College became the College of Boca Raton.
“We started the League because Boca was expanding, and a number of Junior League members moved to Boca [from Fort Lauderdale and other places],” recalls Jeanne Bauer, now 89, who is one of the three original founders of the Junior Service League, along with Joan Moseley and LeeAnn Burns. “We would have to drive to Fort Lauderdale and the League to do our volunteer things. We felt that Boca should start a League,” she says.
“Joan flew to New York to get the bylaws for us to start our own league, but it couldn’t be a Junior League till it had a number of members under the age of 35. And that took us 20 years to finally get it all together—but we did start the Junior Service League.”
Bauer says back then most women were “housewives,” and the league was very different than it is today.
“It was so different then,” she says. “You had to be ‘known’ by so many people [before you were accepted into membership], and it was all the white-glove-and-reception-line thing. I am so glad it’s changed.”
In those early years, the Junior Service League focused on creating a Boca Raton Historical Society (under its “first motivator” Patsy Chamberlain, according to Baur) and organizing fundraisers to support it from the Front Porch Consignment Shop (1975) to traveling puppet shows, tennis tournaments and more. A campaign was also launched to relocate and restore the old Myrick house (ca. 1917) into the Singing Pines Children’s Museum (1976-1979), and along the way, the Fruit Mart (1976) emerged, distributing 20,000 pounds of fruit to community agencies. By 1977, there were 85 members; by 1984, it became an official Junior League.
“In the 1970s and ‘80s the majority of our members were stay-at-home women,” says current League President Cristy Stewart-Harfmann. “The Junior League was almost their career. When the children went to school, they volunteered.
“Today, the majority of our members are working women trying to balance their volunteer work with working full-time and being a mother and a wife or best friend. It’s a lot more of a juggle these days than it was in the ‘70s,“ Stewart-Harfmann says.
This year, the Junior League of Boca Raton is celebrating its 50th anniversary and numbers almost 800 diverse members. Its focus has expanded to issues related to education, children, women’s issues, underserved populations, alcohol awareness, abused and neglected teenagers, and children and adults with disabilities.
It monitors and advocates for legislation. Along the way, it won a James Beard award for its 1999 cookbook and established the annual Woman Volunteer of the Year luncheon, which has bestowed a highly prestigious award to a notable volunteer for 33 years now.
The pandemic has presented the League with plenty of challenges this year, like everyone else. It has galvanized the League to start a diaper bank at Boca Raton Innovation Campus. The luncheon was replaced by a virtual celebration of the league and volunteerism.
Stewart-Harfmann says, “The word is flexibility right now in these COVID times. It’s trying to figure out how we can still make the greatest impact in the community. And we have three different focus areas: child welfare, nonprofit support and hunger—feeding our community. We continue to partner with nonprofits in the area to continue to make an impact in all of those areas.”
This story is from the January 2021 issue of Boca magazine. For more content like this, subscribe to the magazine.
