LLLI is celebrating its 50th Anniversary

Read all about how the USA LLL Groups are celebrating the 50th Anniversary.

California
Illinois

California

Celebrating with an educational activity

by Cindy Howard, Area Coordinator of Leaders - LLL NCA/HI In northern California, we held our Leader Education and Applicant Development (a one day continuing education and enrichment seminar for Leaders and Applicants) in October, 2006. Linda Smith offered continuing education workshops in the morning. After a picnic lunch outside, we held a Leader resource fair in the afternoon. We closed with a trivia contest moving through the decades, recognizing Leaders in the decades when they were accredited, acknowledging the increasing rates of breastfeeding initiation and duration, and closing with recognizing our newest Leaders and Leader Applicants. Oh, and we ended with birthday cake, of course!

Illinois

Celebrating and Learning at the same time

Candy Davis, Leader LLL of Carbondale, IL

La Leche League of Carbondale held a Happy 50th LLL Anniversary Open House on Saturday, Feb. 3rd, from 1:00 – 5:00 PM at the Carbondale Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Hall. We invited every member and former LLL Leader from Southern Illinois we could track down! In addition to the 30 or so moms who showed up, we were delighted to have retired Leaders Mary Campbell, Laura Phillips-Zee, Juli Claussen, and Rhonda Kosmicki in attendance! Even more surprising was the arrival of two LLL moms from Southwest Missouri whom we’d never met. They had seen our publicity article in the Southern Illinoisan paper, were travelling through Illinois, and decided to stop and celebrate with us!

Our event was a mother’s mini-workshop with two speakers: Dr. Suzanne Daughton on birthing stories and Melissa Banz, nutritionist, on dealing with children who are picky eaters. Nana Wendt did a music-and-movement session for “children of all ages.” Members Rivanna Abel and Kirsten Miller helped our Leaders design a Jeopardy-style trivia question game about La Leche League. Candy Davis and Joyce Shepherd, Leaders (and musicians as well) provided some songs. Throughout the day, P.T. Assistant Student Bridget Shepherd (daughter of Leader Joyce Shepherd) and P.T. Assistant Jerry Phillips-Zee (husband of retired Leader Laura Phillips-Zee) provided free, on-site chair massages to pamper all who came. Our attendees provided healthy “snack-luck” food, and Gary Shepherd (husband of Joyce) brought two celebratory cakes.

Why TWO cakes, you might ask? Well, unbeknownst to Joyce, our party had a big surprise planned as well. Candy decided we needed to have as many LLL mothers (and former Leaders) together as possible to honor Joyce Shepherd, who has led our Carbondale group for 21 years. Her co-conspirators thought it was a great idea to combine the two celebrations. We surprised Joyce with gifts, cards, flowers, and congratulatory balloons. One cake was an anniversary cake; the other, a congratulatory one. Candy is proud to tell that not one single mom accidentally spoiled our surprise!

Last updated April 17, 2007 by mmm.

Page last edited Sun Oct 14 09:35:42 UTC 2007.