Walking through the Junior League of Little Rock Building in downtown Little Rock, one can’t help but be struck by the blend of old and new. The freshly painted walls, the buffed wooden floors, the elegant chandeliers. And, in the first-floor boardroom, two old-fashioned electric fans, mounted like sconces on the north wall.
“I wish they functioned,” muses Lindsey Gray, league president. “Those light switches underneath them, I feel like they should turn them on. They don’t. But I’m glad they’ve never been taken down.”
In a way, the building is a metaphor for the league itself: an old (93 years) institution with a proud past but one that has been updated and adjusted for the times so it can continue to serve the community and its members. But even with the changes, pieces of the history remain.
The fans survived an extensive renovation project that included painting, reflooring, redoing the building’s parking lot, converting the third floor from a storage space to a suite of offices and, in what ended up being the most contentious part of the process, redoing the windows.
Now the organization has a home base that is beautiful, with a parking lot that’s pothole-free and with space and resources to help nonprofit agencies grow and thrive.
Gray is the president who guided the Junior League through the final stages, who was at the helm when it all came to an end.
“The hopes are that people find this building an even more desirable location to hold events, to use our facilities,” Gray says. “It’s aesthetically pleasing, just a better location now.”
There’s an image of the Junior League as a collection of upper-class and upper-middle-class housewives, immaculately groomed, hosting luncheons and polite fundraisers. “I think that we have definitely veered away from that,” says Gray.
More than 80 percent of the members work outside the home, and many of these aren’t married. Many don’t have children.
“We’re a lot more flexible now where we have the two-meeting structure so people can come either on their lunch break or at night. We have placements that can either be at night or during the day. So [we’re] really trying to get the most women involved that we can.”
Gray herself is a blend of the old stereotype and the new Junior League woman: a married mother of three small boys with a deep family connection to Little Rock, but who also owns and runs a business (Eggshells Kitchen Co.).
Her connection to Little Rock is deep and strong enough that sorority sister Mary Carole Crane says Gray’s nickname at Ouachita Baptist University at Arkadelphia was “‘Lindsey Little Rock,’ because the area was so much a part of who she is.”
“I don’t know anything other than Little Rock,” Gray says.
Gray was born in the capital city in 1980, the youngest child and only daughter in a close-knit family with three children. Her mother was a teacher and, in 1986, her parents started Ace Glass Co. They were always active in the community and in Calvary Baptist Church, which Gray still attends.
“We grew up going to all the activities like Riverfest,” she says. “Every time the church doors opened, we were there. That was kind of our routine.”
Volunteer work, she says, was also a part of that upbringing, as her parents were very much involved in giving money and time to mission work. Gray began to volunteer as a middle-school student, visiting nursing homes.
Service and commitment to the community goes farther back than that in her family. Her grandmother was president of the Woman’s City Club. One great-grandfather was mayor of Fort Smith. Another, Benjamin Travis Laney Jr., was governor of Arkansas. She never met either great-grandfather and while she doesn’t think their legacy had a cognitive impact on her desire to be involved in the community, it may have influenced her on a subconscious level.
“I think there’s something in the blood that just makes us want to do,” she says. “It’s something I’m proud of now.”
Her involvement and dedication to organizations and groups she cares about continued at OBU, where she was the social chairman for her sorority, the EEE Social Club.
“She was in charge of throwing the parties,” Crane recalls. “Everything just magically got done. We never knew where she had the time to do it but she was capable of handling so many tasks at once and doing it well and never complained about it.”
After graduating from OBU with a degree in accounting, Gray returned to Little Rock and, in 2006, joined the Junior League.
“I was looking for a place to get connected in Little Rock,” she explains. While many college friends were also living in the capital city, “I was looking to expand my friend base but also a way to be active in this community and see kind of what opportunities there were to be involved.”
That first year, she says, was probably her favorite year in the organization, when she “got to see a glimpse of everything we do.”
Because the presidential process (which involves nominations, interviews and then a year as president-elect, training for the role) is prolonged, Gray found out in 2012 that she had been selected as the league’s 2014-15 president. It was, she says, a bit of a surprise.
“I’ve always been a worker bee and kind of been the behind-the-scenes person. I just want to get the task done. I’ve never been in the forefront or been the person at the microphone.”
It may not be a position she’s used to taking, but according to people who’ve worked with her, the leadership role is a natural fit for Gray, something she proved in a year that saw a good deal of change and even some controversy.
‘INFORMED ON ALL SIDES’
When the Junior League bought the former Woman’s City Club Building at Fourth and Scott streets in 2001, they had a plan in mind: to turn it into a desirable venue for events and transform the third floor into an office space for nonprofit organizations.
The renovations have continued over the years since then and finally came to an end in March, just three months after the projected December 2014 completion date.
“The timing ended up working out perfectly for us, but it’s not what you anticipate when you’re planning,” Gray says. “Then I think it’s just for every wall you open, you find something else you could be doing. The task list grows.”
And there are also the unexpected bumps in the road.
“For us, it was the windows for the third floor.”
The master plan had always included a budget for replacing the third-floor windows. The group had an easement with the city of Little Rock that required city board approval for any changes to the building’s facade. Since most of the renovations had been interior ones, the easement hadn’t come up and when the ballroom windows were replaced in 2009, there were no problems. Then in 2014, it was time to tackle the third floor’s windows.
Gray explains, “Because we had done it then and spoke to the same people, we thought that we were good to go for doing it this time. That was not the case.”
A series of conversations, meetings and hearings at City Hall followed, with Mayor Mark Stodola and the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program getting involved.
“The whole window issue was such a surprise,” says sustainer Cindy Feltus. “It just took so much more energy to deal with it than anyone had planned on.”
But throughout the meetings and negotiations, Feltus says, Gray was “very calm, very cool.”
“She’s one of those people,” Junior League sustainer Barbara Hoover says, “that the rest of us can be very upset about something and she’s very calm, very deliberate in her reactions to things. She was given this issue that she knew nothing about. She grabbed hold of it and she followed through.”
In the end, the organization and the city came to a compromise, with the league keeping the frames in place so the windows still look the same. After the difficulties, the league bought the easement back from the city for $34,196.16.
“She doesn’t make hasty decisions,” Marisha DiCarlo, the president-elect who has shadowed Gray all year, says. “[She] makes sure she’s informed on all sides. That is a unique strength. More people could really benefit from that.”
Feltus, Hoover and former president Mary-Margaret Marks agree that Gray’s calm, even-handed leadership allowed the league to come to an agreement that satisfied the league and the city while keeping what could have been a chaotic situation firmly in check.
‘UNDER-PROMISES, OVER-DELIVERS’
At the newly renovated headquarters, the third floor has been transformed from a storage area with decoupage and slogans all over the walls — left over from the space’s days as an artist colony — into a clean, bright, modern space with offices, shared kitchen, bathroom, meeting room and greeting area.
The tenants, including AR Kids Read, Opera in the Rock, Reach Out and Read and Rural Community Alliance, are already moving in. They were chosen by application and interview process and are given the office space at below-market rates.
The hope is that the shared space will allow the groups to collaborate and that the Junior League will be able to provide them with resources to grow and eventually outgrow the space.
The building renovation also involved redoing the old parking lot, a space pocked with potholes and buckled asphalt.
“It was really hazardous back there,” Gray says.
Now it’s flat and smooth, with an attractive fence around it, providing much safer, more aesthetically pleasing parking for the proms, weddings, parties and meetings the league will host.
The money for the renovations came from capital campaigns and was not taken from league service projects, which will benefit from money raised by renting the renovated facilities.
Those projects are the heart and core of the Junior League and a valuable part of members’ experience in an organization whose mission is to promote volunteerism in the community.
For Gray, her involvement has “really opened my eyes to different areas of Little Rock that I don’t typically get to see and to a group of people that aren’t in my day-to-day path but ones that I’m really pleased to get to serve.”
When speaking of her own experiences with the league, Gray says she has gained confidence and speaking and writing skills but focuses on the contributions she’s able to make through their programs such as Stuff the Bus and Little Readers Rock, in which members distribute school supplies and books to children.
“It makes you feel like that’s what you put the time in for, is for those moments.”
Marks says, “I’d love other people to just be able to appreciate how much of a perfect example of a JLLR member [Gray] is to me and just embodies the spirit of service and the work-life balance. We can’t do it all, but we can pick bits and pieces and give it our all and go out and make a difference.”
With her duties at the Junior League, her family and her own business, Gray has a lot on her plate. But, according to Cindy Hedges, a regular customer at Eggshells, Gray’s busy schedule doesn’t show.
“She’s upbeat. There’s never any ‘Oh, my boys and the Junior League .…’ There’s none of that. One could easily go there if they had a lot of balls in the air.”
Crane, Gray’s college chum, says her gift to the people who count on her is this: “She under-promises and over-delivers.”
Now, with renovations complete, the league has a suitable home base that is moving the organization forward and keeping it rooted in history. For Gray, the changes to the group and its building will help the organization thrive as it moves toward its 100th anniversary.
“Anybody can be a member of the Junior League now,” she says. “I run a business. I have three small children and I do this full time. I say it’s my third full-time job. And I wouldn’t trade it. I feel like we’re a growing organization that’s meeting women where they are and I’m really proud to be part of that and to see it continue.”
SELF PORTRAIT
Lindsey Gray
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: Sept. 27, 1980, Little Rock
FAMILY: husband Brandon, and sons Ethan, Charlie, Harrison
MY PERFECT DAY: Sleeping in late, brunch and a DVR marathon
FAVORITE TV SHOWS: Nashville and The Ellen Degeneres Show
FAVORITE LEISURE ACTIVITY: Dining out, particularly patios
FAVORITE VACATION SPOT: The beach anywhere. We just did Jamaica last year. It could be my contender for favorite.
TALENT I COVET: There are lots. Probably dancing. THE HOUSEHOLD CHORE I DISLIKE THE MOST is cleaning the bathrooms — having three boys.
MY HOBBY: Cooking
AND MY SPECIALTY? My favorite thing to make is my grandmother’s pound cake. Everybody in the family dresses it up differently. My husband goes with chocolate syrup. My dad goes with strawberries and whipped cream.
WHEN I WAS A LITTLE GIRL, I WANTED TO BE an elementary school teacher.
WHAT DRIVES ME UP THE WALL? Laziness, or people giving up on themselves too easily.
MY PERSONAL HERO is my mom, because she’s done it all. I just feel like she knocks everything out of the park. SOMETHING PEOPLE DON’T KNOW ABOUT ME: I’m really an open book.
ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP: Compassionate