Where Everybody Knows You're Numb

nesea · Senior Member

RE: NOTABLE WOMEN

Nightowlhoot3 · Guru

Anonymous wrote:

I spent more time this year than usual reflecting and, observing. One program I watched had this remarkable woman. It's also nice to want to fly a flag again. Gator

The following is a Woman of Courage profile written and produced by the St. Lawrence County, NY Branch of the American Association of University Women.

Mary Edwards Walker
Civil War Doctor

Woo HOO!!! WAY cool! And I'm REALLY diggin' that tux and top hat! My former partner's brother lives on Oswego ... I'll have to send her this. What a PERFECT Memorial Day posting! WTG!!!
Thanks!

-- Edited by Nightowlhoot3 on Monday 25th of May 2009 06:12:04 PM

Date: Mon May 25 3:42 PM, 2009

I spent more time this year than usual reflecting and, observing. One program I watched had this remarkable woman. It's also nice to want to fly a flag again. Gator

The following is a Woman of Courage profile written and produced by the St. Lawrence County, NY Branch of the American Association of University Women.

Mary Edwards Walker

Civil War Doctor

Mary Edwards Walker, one of the nation's 1.8 million women veterans, was the only one to earn the Congressional Medal of Honor, for her service during the Civil War. She, along with thousands of other women, were honored in the newly-dedicated Women in Military Service for America Memorial in October 1997.

Controversy surrounded Mary Edwards Walker throughout her life. She was born on November 26, 1832 in the Town of Oswego, New York, into an abolitionist family. Her birthplace on the Bunker Hill Road is marked with a historical marker. Her father, a country doctor, was a free thinking participant in many of the reform movements that thrived in upstate New York in the mid 1800s. He believed strongly in education and equality for his five daughters Mary, Aurora, Luna, Vesta, and Cynthia (there was one son, Alvah). He also believed they were hampered by the tight-fitting women's clothing of the day.

His daughter, Mary, became an early enthusiast for Women's Rights, and passionately espoused the issue of dress reform. The most famous proponent of dress reform was Amelia Bloomer, a native of Homer, New York, whose defended a colleague's right to wear "Turkish pantaloons" in her Ladies' Temperance Newspaper, the Lily. "Bloomers," as they became known, did achieve some popular acceptance towards the end of the 19th century as women took up the new sport of bicycling. Mary Edwards Walker discarded the unusual restrictive women's clothing of the day. Later in her life she donned full men's evening dress to lecture on Women's Rights.

In June 1855 Mary, the only woman in her class, joined the tiny number of women doctors in the nation when she graduated from the eclectic Syracuse Medical College, the nation's first medical school and one which accepted women and men on an equal basis. She gratuated at age 21 after three 13-week semesters of medical training which she paid $55 each for.

In 1856 she married another physician, Albert Miller, wearing trousers and a man's coat and kept her own name. Together they set up a medical practice in Rome, NY, but the public was not ready to accept a woman physician, and their practice floundered. They were divorced 13 years later.

When war broke out, she came to Washington and tried to join the Union Army. Denied a commission as a medical officer, she volunteered anyway, serving as an acting assistant surgeon -- the first female surgeon in the US Army. As an unpaid volunteer, she worked in the US Patent Office Hospital in Washington. Later, she worked as a field surgeon near the Union front lines for almost two years (including Fredericksburg and in Chattanooga after the Battle of Chickamauga).

In September 1863, Walker was finally appointed assistant surgeon in the Army of the Cumberland for which she made herself a slightly modified officer's uniform to wear, in response to the demands of traveling with the soldiers and working in field hospitals. She was then appointed assistant surgeon of the 52nd Ohio Infantry. During this assignment it is generally accepted that she also served as a spy. She continually crossed Confederate lines to treat civilians. She was taken prisoner in 1864 by Confederate troops and imprisoned in Richmond for four months until she was exchanged, with two dozen other Union doctors, for 17 Confederate surgeons.

She was released back to the 52nd Ohio as a contract surgeon, but spent the rest of the war practicing at a Louisville female prison and an orphan's asylum in Tennessee. She was paid $766.16 for her wartime service. Afterward, she got a monthly pension of $8.50, later raised to $20, but still less than some widows' pensions.

On November 11, 1865, President Johnson signed a bill to present Dr. Mary Edwards Walker with the Congressional Medal of Honor for Meritorious Service, in order to recognize her contributions to the war effort without awarding her an army commission. She was the only woman ever to receive the Medal of Honor, her country's highest military award.

In 1917 her Congressional Medal, along with the medals of 910 others was taken away when Congress revised the Medal of Honor standards to include only actual combat with an enemy She refused to give back her Medal of Honor, wearing it every day until her death in 1919. A relative told the New York Times: "Dr. Mary lost the medal simply because she was a hundred years ahead of her time and no one could stomach it." An Army board reinstated Walker's medal posthumously in 1977, citing her "distinguished gallantry, self-sacrifice, patriotism, dedication and unflinching loyalty to her country, despite the apparent discrimination because of her sex."

After the war, Mary Edwards Walker became a writer and lecturer, touring here and abroad on women's rights, dress reform, health and temperance issues. Tobacco, she said, resulted in paralysis and insanity. Women's clothing, she said, was immodest and inconvenient. She was elected president of the National Dress Reform Association in 1866. Walker prided herself by being arrested numerous times for wearing full male dress, including wing collar, bow tie, and top hat. She was also something of an inventor, coming up with the idea of using a return postcard for registered mail. She wrote extensively, including a combination biography and commentary called Hit and a second book, Unmasked, or the Science of Immortality. She died in the Town of Oswego on February 21, 1919 and is buried in the Rural Cemetery on the Cemetery Road.

A 20¢ stamp honoring Dr. Mary Walker was issued in Oswego, NY on June 10, 1982. The stamp commemorates the first woman to have been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and the second woman to graduate from a medical school in the United States.

Special thanks to Theresa A. Cooper, President of the Town of Oswego Historical Society and Town Clerk for supplying additional information for this Profile.

Psych Lit · Guru

Nightowlhoot3 wrote:

and that certainly rings true. and what a great photo. i wonder what the rest of us would do if we knew that we would live to 100 and be sipping a nice white and celebrating a still sharp mind?

That's about the ONLY way I'd want to do it.

lol. i dunno think of the morning headaches on top of the creaky bones. id love to live to 100 or even 120 with a few givens
that i could live independently, drive, eat spaghetti and fall in love:)

Nightowlhoot3 · Guru

Psych Lit wrote:

Nightowlhoot3 wrote:

"Above all, don't fear difficult moments," she said. "The best comes from them."

and that certainly rings true. and what a great photo. i wonder what the rest of us would do if we knew that we would live to 100 and be sipping a nice white and celebrating a still sharp mind?

That's about the ONLY way I'd want to do it.

Psych Lit · Guru

Nightowlhoot3 wrote:

"Above all, don't fear difficult moments," she said. "The best comes from them."

and that certainly rings true. and what a great photo. i wonder what the rest of us would do if we knew that we would live to 100 and be sipping a nice white and celebrating a still sharp mind?

Nightowlhoot3 · Guru

Italian scientist, turning 100, still works

AP Italian neurologist and senator for life Rita Levi Montalcini, Nobel Prize winner for Medicine in 1986,

Sat Apr 18, 6:32 pm ET

ROME Rita Levi Montalcini, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, said Saturday that even though she is about to turn 100, her mind is sharper than it was she when she was 20.

Levi Montalcini, who also serves as a senator for life in Italy, celebrates her 100th birthday on Wednesday, and she spoke at a ceremony held in her honor by the European Brain Research Institute.

She shared the 1986 Nobel Prize for Medicine with American Stanley Cohen for discovering mechanisms that regulate the growth of cells and organs.

"At 100, I have a mind that is superior thanks to experience than when I was 20," she told the party, complete with a large cake for her.

The Turin-born Levi Montalcini recounted how the anti-Jewish laws of the 1930s under Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime forced her to quit university and do research in an improvised laboratory in her bedroom at home.

"Above all, don't fear difficult moments," she said. "The best comes from them."

"I should thank Mussolini for having declared me to be of an inferior race. This led me to the joy of working, not any more unfortunately, in university institutes but in a bedroom," the scientist said.

Her white hair elegantly coifed and wearing a smart navy blue suit, she raised a glass of sparkling wine in a toast to her long life.

Psych Lit · Guru

Nightowlhoot3 wrote:

Lillian Cross

Ever heard of her?

Naw, didn't think so, but you should know of her, know her name, because ... I cannot imagine where the United States would be right now, were it not for her, if, indeed, there would even still be a United States of America.

nope id never heard of her and what an interesting woman! and a great story. there are so many stories like hers that will never be heard. stories that have disappeared behind history.

Nightowlhoot3 · Guru

Lillian Cross

Ever heard of her?

Naw, didn't think so, but you should know of her, know her name, because ... I cannot imagine where the United States would be right now, were it not for her, if, indeed, there would even still be a United States of America.

Lillian Cross was sitting in a viewing stand in Florida the evening of Feb 15, 1933,
and happened to glance up to the row behind her, and saw something terribly wrong. She first told to stop, and then stretched her 100 pound frame up to the man standing there, and, after five shots were fired, wrestled the pistol out of Giuseppe Zangara's hands.

The bullets struck various people, though none fatally, but not one so much as glanced its intended victim -- the dignitary being honored in the passing motorcade, and the man upon whom this country was pinning its hopes, the new president-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt.

After the shots, a secret serviceman told the driver of FDR's car to take off, but Roosevelt said no, and insisted they go back and get the wounded people and take them to the hospital in his car, and that's what happened. I've even read accounts where he held one guy's head in his lap during the ride to the hospital and told him to not worry or move, speaking to him the whole time, and keeping him calm. Roosevelt stayed at the hospital with the wounded for four hours.

A few weeks later, on March 4, Roosevelt was inaugurated, and in what was his first inaugural address noted that it was his firm belief that the only thing we have to fear, is fear its self. I cannot help but wonder if that was always intended to be a part of the speech, or if perhaps the event of February 15 had contributed in some small way to that assertion.

There was, among the wounded that day, a detective (William Sinnott) who was shot (though not the man so critically injured that Roosevelt attended to directly) briefly hospitalized, and later returned to work, and died many years later.

Detective Sinnott was awarded the highest civilian medal which may be bestowed in the US, the gold congressional medal in 1940 for his action that terrible evening, although what he specifically did, other than take a bullet, is unknown. Since the beginning of this country, the presentation of the medal has been made something like 139 times. Of those 139 ceremonies about five were for women who weren't also combined with their husbands (who happened to be president.) Mother Teresa is one of the five ... can't recall the rest. Bob Hope, and Walt Disney are some of the recipients, but not Lillian Cross.

Lillian Cross died without honor, without medals, in 1962.

Lillian Cross: IMO, A Notable Woman

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update:

Did some research and found the list of the women recipients. My original thought that it was five, was accurate, but I'll include here the list of ALL the women who have (out of something like 300 recipients) been awarded the medal.

Again, I mention that of note are the women who have recieved this alone, and as individuals.

"Mother Teresa, of Calcutta, received her medal in the summer of 1997. She, of course, was selected as a recipient because of all of her humanitarian work in the poorest sections of India. She taught many to read and write.

Betty Ford was given this honorable, gold medal in 1998. She was recognized for her faithful service to the people of this great United States. Her husband, President Gerald Ford, received the same honor.

Rosa Parks was the next female Congressional Gold Medal recipient, accepting her award in early 1999. She is very well known for her involvement in the civil rights movement and her historic arrest when she would not give up her bus seat to a white man.

The next six women to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal were all members of the Little Rock Nine. They received the medals in November 1999 for their efforts in the civil rights movement in regard to the prevention of integrating Little Rock Central High School. Thanks go to: Elizabeth Eckford, Carlotta Walls Lanier, Minnijean Brown Trickey, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Thelma Mothershed-Wair and Melba Pattillo Beals.

First Lady, Nancy Reagan, received a gold medal on July 27th 2000 because of her distinct public service record. Among other things, she worked very hard campaigning against drug use and the youth of America.

Dr. Dorothy Height received this prestigious award on her 92nd birthday, in December 2003. She was honored for a lifetime of achievements namely civil rights and AIDS awareness.

The most recent female recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal is Eliza Briggs who received it on September 8th 2004, along with her husband Harry. They were both involved in the civil rights movement and school desegregation."

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Oddly missing from the above list is Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. Not sure why the source missed her, but they did.

Also Mary Lasker in 1987. So? Of the five women honored, three were American women, and two weren't. Not ONE woman was so honored until 1982, when Queen Beatrix got the medal.

Strange to think that of all which has happened in the last 230 plus years in this country, only five women have made contributions worthy of this distinction without being attached to a man, and only two of them were American women. Robert Frost has recieved the honor, but not Maya Angelou. Both Lindberg and the Wright Brothers were honored with this award, but not Amelia Erhardt.

And I'm sorry, but you kinda have to wonder about a list like this which lists BOTH Nancy Reagan AND Betty ford, but Not Eleanor Roosevelt. disbelief

OK, the list of "all" the women completely sucks. Ignore it, please. I know for a fact Coretta Scott King was awared the medal along with her late husband, and so was the wife of Billy Graham, so who knows who else is missing. But other than that... the individual women recipients list is still accurate.

-- Edited by Nightowlhoot3 at 20:37, 2009-03-02

Nightowlhoot3 · Guru

Ya know, when BD mentioned RBG's entrance into the what-I-presume-was-a joint gathering of house and senate for Obama's most recent speech, it got me to thinking about RBG, and other extraordinary women in our midst.

I thought about the "w00t" thread, and how my two postings there had been of women, and it just seemed that maybe extraordinary women deserve their own thread.

What better start than Ruth Bader Ginsberg? Other strong contenders, to be sure, including Sandra Day O'Connor, from my state who was the first appointee to the high court, but at present, RBG is the only woman on (in?) that august body, and ... I dunno ... I guess I just wished I was wearing a hat, that I might tip it to her.

Inasmuch as I'm not, posting her bio seemed an acceptable second.

It's good, too, I think, to, as you read the following, to reflect upon the plight of women in recent history -- notice how many times she was uniquely a woman in a male-dominated arena. Truly, she traversed unfamiliar frontiers, and one may hardly suggest her participation various places prior to her appointment to the Supreme Court was in any way insignificant to the advancement of all women in the workplace.

On a personal note, I'm sorta thrilled too, that she was an ACLU attorney for a while. smile

I apologize for not having available to me the name of the author of the following -- it simply wasn't listed.

FWIW, enjoy Ruth Bader Ginsberg:

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Born: March 15, 1933
Brooklyn, New York
American Supreme Court justice and lawyer

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the second woman ever to sit on the United States Supreme Court and is known as the legal architect of the modern women's movement. She, more than any other person, pointed out that many laws encouraged gender discrimination; that is, they led to better treatment of men than women instead of guaranteeing equal rights and opportunities to all as was intended by the United States Constitution.

The search for equality in the law begins

Ruth Joan Bader was born March 15, 1933, to Nathan and Cecelia (Amster) Bader in Brooklyn, New York. Her mother was a role model in Ruth's life at a time when women had to fight for the privileges and rights that men took for granted. "I pray that I may be all that she would have been had she lived in an age when women could aspire [seek to reach a goal] and achieve and daughters are cherished as much as sons," the New York Times quoted Ginsburg as saying of her mother after she was named to the Supreme Court. Cecelia Bader had once hoped to attend college but instead went to work in a garment factory to help pay for her brother's education. This was a sacrifice many women made in the early decades of the 1900s.

Ruth Bader loved to read and learn. Her interest in the law started in grade school, when she wrote articles for her school newspaper about the Magna Carta, a document that represented the first step toward freedom in English-speaking lands. She attended Cornell University, where she graduated with high honors in government. She then married Martin Ginsburg, a law student. She went on to Harvard Law School, where she served on the Law Review.

In the male-dominated world of law, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was told that she and her eight female classmatesout of a class of five-hundredwere taking the places of qualified males. She transferred to Columbia University after two years when her husband, who would become one of the country's top tax lawyers, took a job in New York. Here she continued to encounter gender discrimination; although she graduated at the top of her class, law firms, which normally welcome talented graduates, refused to hire her.

Teaching and practicing law

After working for District Judge Edmund L. Palmieri in New York, Ginsburg joined the faculty of Rutgers University, where, in order to keep her job, she wore overly large clothes to hide the fact that she was carrying her second child. She was only the second female professor at Rutgers and one of only twenty women law professors in the country. In 1972, after teaching a course on women and the law at Harvard University, she was appointed the first female faculty member in the law school's history.

Ginsburg also served as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), an organization that works to protect and ensure the constitutional rights of all persons and groups. She devoted most of her attention to women's rights. A former ACLU colleague was quoted as telling the Legal Times, "We were young and very green. She had it all so carefully thought through. She knew exactly what she needed to do." In a 1973 case before the Supreme Court, Ginsburg successfully argued against a federal law that gave more housing and medical benefits to male members of the armed services than to females. However, she did not argue only cases in which women were the victims of discrimination. She believed that the law must give equal rights to all groups. For instance, she convinced the court that a portion of the Social Security Act (a law that provides protection for people against loss of income due to old age, disability, or death) favored women over men because it gave certain benefits to widows but not to widowers.

After winning five of the six cases she argued before the Supreme Court, Ginsburg was named a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia by President Jimmy Carter (1924). She brought a cautious, thoughtful style to the court, and most people were pleased with her performance. Conservatives, who for the most part like things to stay as they are, agreed with her view that courts should only interpret laws and leave their creation to politicians. On the other hand, liberals, or people who are usually more open to change and reform, were pleased with her votes supporting broadcasting access to the courts.

Supreme Court justice

With the retirement of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron White (1917) in 1993, President Bill Clinton (1946) wanted a replacement with the intellect and the political skills to deal with the Supreme Court's top conservatives. He chose Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Court observers praised her commitment to the details of the law, her intelligent questioning of lawyers arguing before her, and her talent for using calm and sensible arguments to win over her fellow judges.

The Senate Judiciary Committee hearings to approve the choice of Ginsburg were unusually friendly. Committee Chairman Joseph Biden (1942) said, according to the Boston Globe, that Ginsburg had "already helped to change the meaning of equality in our nation." Ginsburg was confirmed by the Senate in a vote of ninety-six to three, becoming the 107th Supreme Court Justice and its second female jurist after Sandra Day O'Connor (1930). She was also the first justice to be named by a Democratic president since 1967. President Clinton said in a statement quoted by the Detroit Free Press, "I am confident that she will be an outstanding addition to the court and will serve with distinction for many years."

Women in the judiciary

Since taking office, Ruth Bader Ginsburg has written thirty-five significant opinions (formal statements written by a judge), two important concurring (agreeing) opinions, and three selected dissenting (opposing) opinions. Ginsburg was seen as a stronger voice in favor of gender equality, the rights of workers, and the separation of church and state (the belief that neither the church nor the government should have any influence over the other) than many of the other judges on the Supreme Court. In 1999, she won the American Bar Association's Thurgood Marshall Award for her contributions to gender equality and civil rights.

As more and more women became judges throughout the country, Justice Ginsburg gave former president Carter credit for changing the judicial landscape for women forever. Appearing at a program entitled Woman and the Bench at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, she said, "He appointed women in numbers such as there would be no going back." Ruth Bader Ginsburg deserves equal credit for surviving and fighting through the discrimination of the past to help bring about change.

For More Information

Ayer, Eleanor H. Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Fire and Steel on the Supreme Court. New York: Dillon Press, 1994.

Bayer, Linda N. Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2000

Bredeson, Carmen. Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Supreme Court Justice. Springfield, NJ: Enslow, 1995.

Italia, Bob, and Paul Deegan. Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Minneapolis: Abdo & Daughters, 1994.
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