NEW MEMBERS PARTY

Junior League grows

Mixer offers recruits sustenance, pep talk before their service begins

The Junior League experience is what you make it, organizers of Tuesday's new member party and active members would have told each prospect, given the chance. But the Little Rock civic group's party started at 6:30 and wrapped before 8.

President Lindsey Gray announced this year's slogan is "women of impact," and asked those gathered to join the effort to "train volunteers, serve our community and lead by example," whether by delivering supplies to the seven schools in the Little Rock School District through Stuff the Bus or mentoring middle school girls in the league's GROW (Girls Realizing Opportunity Within) program.

Erica Moore, now in her eighth year of active membership, remembered her new member party. "Nervous, anxious, excited ... honored to be among these women," she recalled.

As a little girl, she was shown new members' pictures in the paper, and says she thought, "Oh, I want to be like them!"

Has it been everything she ... "and more!"

She didn't expect to meet "some of the really great women" whom she counts today as friends, and not just friends but close friends, the kind of friends who request your presence at their weddings and their baby showers.

Her first year as an active member, the league organized a tour of the city, the city Moore had grown up in. This graduate of J.A. Fair High -- Class of what year ... "excuse me?" Wouldn't that reveal her age? -- went to places in Little Rock she didn't know about, says the Central High School guidance counselor.

About 90 new members, most in sundresses but some in business jackets, for it was unseasonably cool that day, feasted on items from a Mexican food bar and had their portraits taken.

-- Story and photos by

Bobby Ampezzan

High Profile on 07/20/2014

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