Inception and Subsequent History
Other cities' established debutante festivities, such as St. Louis's annual Veiled Prophet Ball, however, lived on. By the 1950s, many prominent Kansas Citians believed that Kansas City again needed some sort of debutante festivities. In 1954, Clara Hockaday and Enid Kemper, prominent Kansas City social matrons, founded the Jewel Ball with help from local businessman Alfred Lighton.
Since its inception, the ball has benefited the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the Kansas City Symphony. From 1954 until 2000, the ball was held in the main hall of the Nelson-Atkins. A large construction project at the museum forced a temporary move to Swope Park's Starlight Theatre (Kansas City). The Jewel Ball returned to the museum in 2008.
The debutantes, or debs, are freshmen in college and come from some of the most prominent Kansas City families. A person can only debut if a family member has debuted before them, or if the family makes a large donation.
Read more about this topic: Jewel Ball
Famous quotes containing the words inception, subsequent and/or history:
“Most of us don’t have mothers who blazed a trail for us—at least, not all the way. Coming of age before or during the inception of the women’s movement, whether as working parents or homemakers, whether married or divorced, our mothers faced conundrums—what should they be? how should they act?—that became our uncertainties.”
—Anne Roiphe (20th century)
“And he smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled up on the floor, And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more.”
—Francis Bret Harte (1836–1902)
“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)