93-Year-Old Junior Leaguer Recalls 'Mad Men' Era

As nationwide anticipation for the July 25 season premiere of Mad Men reaches fever pitch, Westchester residents are tickled about tuning in to the fourth season of a show set in their backyard.

The AMC drama, based in the early 1960s, is about the world of advertising on Madison Avenue and features Ossining-based Don and Betty Draper as two of its main characters—Don, the successful ad executive who commutes daily to midtown Manhattan, and Betty, who raises their two children and devotes herself to the Junior League.

The show is infamously meticulous about historical details—from cocktail party chatter to civic causes of the day. And as Patch found out from 93-year-old Lucia Maloney, its portrayal of the culture of a 1960s Junior League chapter is spot-on.

Maloney may have never seen an episode of Mad Men, but the Chappaqua resident has been a member of the Junior League for 75 years. Maloney joined the organization in 1937 and became president of a new chapter, the Mount Kisco Junior League, in 1953.

"Women of the '40s and '50s had plenty of time to volunteer. Other than being homemakers, we did not have other professions," she said. Back then, the League was made up of mostly young, educated, married women with children. 

Maloney attended Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville for two years, where she studied psychology, sociology, history and French. When she graduated, she moved home with family and joined the Junior League. 

"It was a different era, I can't think of any of my friends that had a job," she said. "Since I didn't have to work, and none of my friends worked, it just didn't come up." 

Maloney soon married and had four children. Once a week, when a housekeeper came to clean, Maloney would take the opportunity to do her Junior League volunteering. Her favorite: pushing the book cart around Northern Westchester Hospital.

"Most of us were at home bringing up young children, if we wanted to we could join some outfit such as the Junior League," she said. "It was partly social. We were all the same age with young children, we liked to get out and do something useful and social." 

Maloney acknowledges that in her day, the League resembled an upper-crust social club. 

"It was like a sorority," she said. "Once you became a member, you could transfer to any other Junior League, to any other city, anywhere in the country."

This guaranteed a social network for women, who often moved around the country in the early stages of their husband's careers.

The modern Junior League has no trace of the elitism hinted at on Mad Men, says Jennifer Bancroft, president of the Northern Westchester Junior League, but still provides social benefits.

One notable difference: meetings moved from day to evenings as women entered the workforce. Today, many members are both raising families and working, with some even volunteering outside the League.

Lisa Hofflich, president of the Junior League of Bronxville, estimates that about 60 percent of members work outside the home, while the other 40 percent were professionals who now volunteer for various activities.

"When I think now of the current members that I know, how they manage to do any kind of volunteer work and have jobs and raise children is beyond me," said Maloney. "Obviously they can do it, and they do it." 

In the past, the League decided what issues to tackle and then handed the completed project over to the community, said Maloney.

Now, said Bancroft, community projects are developed in partnership and eventually run by the community served.

"We worked with the Boys & Girls Club in Mt. Kisco to develop Backpack Buddies, which provides a backpack full of food for the weekend to kids who may not eat between their Friday afternoon meal and Monday morning breakfast at the club," she said.

In Maloney's day, her chapter started the hospitality shop at Northern Westchester Hospital, volunteered at women's shelters and taught English as a second language through the library. 

And contemporary Junior Leaguers are just as politically engaged as they were then. Instead of protesting the construction of a water tank, they are lobbying Washington for the rights of domestic violence victims.

In fact, Hofflich explains that in 1981, the Bronxville chapter set up a task force to look into domestic violence—something she says was still very much behind closed doors at the time—and it set in motion the League's involvement and advocacy on the issue. 

 "Betty Draper got involved and she contacted the governor's office and we still do that," says Hofflich, who has been a member of the League since 2006 and became president on July 1.

As for Maloney, even after three-quarters of a century, she's still active in the organization, driving people to the food bank once every other week.

"It's sentimental that I still belong to it," she said. "It's very important to me."