March is National Women of History Month. In 1980 President Jimmy Carter was successfully lobbied by a coalition of women’s group to issue a proclamation recognizing National Women’s History Week. It took until 1987 for Congress to pass a law designating March as Women’s History Month.
It is a time to honor all the achievements and contributions that women of all backgrounds have made throughout the history of the United States.
So today, I am going to introduce you to some friends and acquaintances of mine that you may never have heard of, but have forged the way ahead for the rest of us, back in the day.
Virigina, or Gina, as she is known to her friends, graduated from college in New York City in the late 60’s during a period when plum jobs in the publishing world were being handed out. She quickly landed a job at Mc Calls Magazine and later at the Saturday Evening Post as poetry editor.
She left the publishing world after being repeatedly told she would never rise above this position because only men knew what women wanted to read. She went on to gain a master’s degree in special education and a second master's in educational children’s psychology, where she worked for school districts before retiring. She also wrote some textbooks on the subject.
Kathleen is Gina’s sister and was the first female associate producer for ABC’s Wide World of Sports. She, too, hit the glass ceiling quickly, returned to college, and went to work at NBC in their Human Resources Department. She retired after a successful career in public relations.
In East Berlin, MaryAnn Rogers awoke one morning, in the 60’s, to the sound of furniture being smashed in her home. Her family was quite wealthy at the time, and her mother collected antiques from all over Europe.
Mary Ann was a member of the East Berlin Olympic Swim Team and was due at the airport to fly to Tokyo at 10 a.m. that morning. Instead, she and her family quietly crossed over the wall between East and West Berlin to safety, bringing with them the jewelry her mother had sewn into their clothes.
Friends later told them that at 10:05 a.m., the guards were at their home, and they immediately raced to the Berlin Wall crossing point.
Twenty-four hours later, East Berlin closed the wall. The destruction of their beautiful home, her father explained, was so no communists could steal and enjoy their belongings when they discovered they had escaped.
Today, Phyllis is a Professor Emeritus of Education, at the California State University at Hayward.
A GLIDE volunteer and Board Member for over three decades, Dr. Phyllis Kaplan is an ardent supporter and advocate of children with special circumstances and challenges. She consults numerous school districts and community projects and voluntarily serves students in many corners of the world, such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Guatemala, and Bolivia. Dr. Kaplan received her Ph.D. in special education from Wayne State University and has written eight books and numerous professional articles.
During the fall of Saigon, in 1975, she worked with World Airways and businessman Robert Macauley to fly into Saigon to evacuate a total of 300 orphans before it became too dangerous to go back for more.
is the author of three stereotype-challenging oral-history-based books, her latest being "Indian Voices: Listening to Native Americans," a survey of what a wide variety of Native people have to say about contemporary life, and say with passion and humor
Before writing books, Alison wrote television news, most memorably for CBS anchors Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Roger Mudd, Bob Schieffer, Ed Bradley, Hughes Rudd, and Charles Kuralt.
She was also the first woman to wear a pantsuit to work at CBS and was promptly suspended when she refused to go home and change. Three days later, after a very public picket line protest, the women at CBS, NBC, and ABC were all allowed to wear pantsuits to work if they were not on camera.
Her work preceding Indian Voices was "Hey, Waitress! The USA from the Other Side of the Tray," is comprised of profiles of American waitresses across the country, from high ends to low ends, from Chez Panisse to the Great American Waffle House. Hey, Waitress! begins with a chapter, Slices of American History, that includes an interview with one Ima Jean Edwards, a waitress at the Greensboro, NC Woolworth’s on the day the 1960 sit-in began, and later on, a small paragraph or two about me.
Now, what do all these women have in common? I met them all in my tiny little one-block-long hometown in Sunol, California.
So, I can just imagine what undiscovered treasures are in our own communities. Let me know who they are and what their stories are.
This is the month to blow our own horns! Email me or leave your info in the comment section below. I know you are out there…
Kathleen Anderson writes this column each week from her home in Olympia. Contact her at kathleen@theJOLTnews.com or post your comment below.
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