2000s: Remaining Relevant in our Second Century

“Swing open the door to your future as you celebrate,” Clotilde Perez-Bode Dedecker, the then-Association President, told Junior League members preparing for their centennial anniversary. “Embrace all the opportunities that change brings. Remember the League is all about change—changing communities for the better and changing women for the better.”

A Cuban immigrant who became the first Hispanic woman to lead the Association of Junior Leagues when she was elected in 1998, Clotilde’s story tells just how much the League itself has changed. Clotilde’s family came to the United States in search of a better life in 1967. Clotilde was a third grader clutching a doll, the only toy she was allowed to bring from Havana. Although her father had been a dentist and her grandfather a prominent surgeon in Cuba, the family had volunteers to thank for clothing, public housing, and emotional support in the two years her father studied to revalidate his degree. From those roots grew Clotilde’s commitment to voluntarism. She joined the Buffalo Junior League in 1983 and by 1993, when that League celebrated its 75th anniversary, she was president.

“We’ve made it to the ripe old age of one hundred by balancing traditions and change… We will remain vital and relevant because we will always try to find new ways to serve and new solutions to the challenges facing our communities.” -Deborah Brittain, AJLI President, 2000-2002