Eleanor Jackson Piel: Defender of the Downtrodden

Posted on March 1, 2023 by lhsittig@verizon.net

by Linda Harris Sittig

Eleanor Jackson Piel might owe her amazing law career to 8 words uttered to her by an immature college boy who said, “You’re not smart enough to be a lawyer.”

Her reaction? She promptly applied to law school.

Born in 1920, Eleanor experienced prejudice against minorities at an early age when her mother told not to tell anyone she was Jewish. It didn’t seem fair. Her father was Jewish and she saw nothing wrong with that part of her heritage. From an early age she became aware of how prejudice and injustice can go hand in hand.

In college she studied journalism for three years at UCLA. Then in her senior year she decided to transfer to UC-Berkeley. It was at Berkeley that those 8 words changed her destiny. The year was 1940 and she was denied admittance to Berkeley Law because the dean told her that females always had nervous breakdowns.

Did that stop Eleanor? Absolutely not. She applied to law school at the University of Southern California. Not only was she accepted, she made the law review there and then transferred to Berkeley’s Law School after one year. Eleanore received her law degree in 1943.

After law school, Eleanor became a law clerk for Judge Louis Goodman in San Francisco. The following year Judge Goodman was asked to preside over a case in Humboldt County and he took Eleanor with him. The case was United States vs. Masaaki Kuwabara.

In this case 27 young men, born in America, but of Japanese ancestry had been arrested because they refused to sign up for the draft. All of them, and their families, had been taken from their homes after the tragedy of Pearl Harbor and incarcerated behind barbed wire at the Tule Lake Internment Camp. Even though they were all American citizens, they were held as prisoners.

When they received orders to register for the draft, they refused.

Eleanor was shocked that the 27 men were facing felony charges from their own country who had allegedly found these men to be disloyal to America based solely on their heritage. She urged Judge Goodman to find an impartial lawyer to represent the men. This event was the watershed that would define her.

in 1945 Eleanor took a job in Washington D.C. She quickly became dismayed with all the back room politics. By 1948 she had returned to California with the realization that the only law firm that would meet her high standards would be one she started herself. And she wanted to do criminal law.

For the several years she worked solo. Then at a party she met Gerard Piel, the publisher of Scientific American. They married in 1955 and moved to New York City where Eleanor reestablished her law practice.

Although best known for her criminal practice, Eleanor also represented many civil rights cases, like defending white teacher Sandra Adickes who had accompanied six Black students to a segregated lunch counter in Mississippi. Eleanor argued the case all the way to the Supreme Court and won.

One of her more famous cases was the Death Row Brothers. She represented the two high school dropouts who had been charged with a murder, even though there was no hard evidence to support the conviction. The prosecution’s case was plagued with so many errors that Eleanor was finally able to persuade a judge to issue a stay of execution. He agreed – 16 hours before the execution was scheduled. Five years later the brothers were released, still maintaining their innocence.

Eleanor went on to defend a convicted rapist and used DNA technology to prove his innocence, after the man had spent 17 years in prison for his supposed crime. She took on a gender discrimination suit of a 13 year old prodigy girl who was denied admission to Stuyvesant High School because of her gender. And later Eleanor represented 50 women professors at Albert Einstein College who all alleged that they were receiving less salary than their male counterparts.

Eleanor Piel didn’t always win, but she did always give her best try. She took cases well into her 90s, and died recently at the age of 102. May we all take a cue from her and follow our convictions with passion and perseverance.

Thank you to blog follower Rick Rice who suggested I learn Eleanor’s story. I am so glad I did!

Linda:)

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Fanny Eyal Ben-Ami: Tenacious Holocaust Heroine

Posted on February 1, 2023 by lhsittig@verizon.net

by Linda Harris Sittig

January was Holocaust Remembrance Month, paying homage to the 11 million victims of the Holocaust. It was almost seventy-eight years ago, in 1945, the death camp of Auschwitz was liberated, and the world at large learned about the horrors of the concentration camps.

All of the stories of the Holocaust are emotional on so many levels, but every once in a while, a story emerges that graces us with courage, triumph, and hope. Fanny Ben-Ami is that story.

I rarely write about Strong Women who are still living, but Fanny’s story is so compelling that I chose her for this month’s Strong Woman.

BEFORE THE WAR

Born into a Jewish family in 1930 in Baden-Baden, Germany, Fanny was five years old when her parents and two younger sisters fled to Paris, France, due to Adolf Hitler’s increased power. When WWII broke out in September of 1939, Fanny’s father was promptly arrested by the French secret police. Eight months later, Fanny’s mother sent her three young daughters into hoped-for safety at Chateau de Chaumont, an orphanage aligned with the O.S.E. – Children’s Aid Society.

Under their protection, Fanny watched over her little sisters in the orphanage for three years and tried to cheer up the other children, all of whom missed their families.

Then in July of 1942, a villager alerted the Gestapo that Jewish children were being harbored in the orphanage. The children were quickly scattered to other safe havens inside Vichy, France.

The following Spring, Fanny and her sisters reunited briefly with their mother in Vichy. However, with the Gestapo drawing closer, the O.S.E. decided the children would be safer in the Swiss Alps. Holding her daughters’ hands, Madame Eyal tearfully told the children they would all be together again as she watched them board the bus bound for the train to Switzerland.

THE DANGEROUS JOURNEY

A seventeen-year-old girl was in charge of the children on their journey but panicked when, close to the border, Nazi soldiers boarded the train. She refused to go on. In an instant, Fanny led the children off the train and helped the group climb inside a postal railcar instead.

After the postal train, the children were discovered by French police, who imprisoned them for several days without food in the hopes that the children would give up the names of their parents. None of the children cooperated. The group numbered 28; the youngest child was four, and Fanny was only thirteen.

Fanny finally managed to smuggle the children out a bathroom window. Once in the village, she led them in line, all singing, posing as children on a camp excursion. When they reached the outskirts of the town, Fanny ran with the children into the forest. Knowing that Switzerland lay to the east, Fanny encouraged the children not to lose hope, even as they grew weaker due to a lack of enough food.

After several days, the group was suddenly only 5 km (3 miles) from the Swiss border. They were now close to freedom. They ran as fast as they could, dashing across a vast open meadow and helping each other through a break in the chain fence into the demilitarized zone. But Margalit, the youngest, had fallen behind. It was Fanny who ran back to retrieve the young child and carried her while Nazi soldiers fired at them.

As they finally made it to the freedom of Switzerland, Fanny collapsed on safe ground. All twenty-eight children, including her two sisters, were safe at last.

AFTER THE WAR

For the remaining years of the war, Fanny stayed in Switzerland, helping send messages to French Resistance members. After the war, Fanny learned that her mother had died in Auschwitz and her father in Lubin.

When the war ended in 1945, Fanny returned to France, working with an aunt in the fur business. In 1955 she went to Israel to visit her sisters Erica and Georgette. Once in Israel, Fanny felt as though she had come home. She met and fell in love with a musician, and they married and raised a family in the suburbs of Tel Aviv. Once her children were grown, Fanny became a watercolor artist and eventually a writer, penning her memoir of that dangerous journey so long ago. Her memoir is Le Journal de Fanny. In 2016 her book was made into a movie, Fanny’s Journey.

Still alive at this writing, Fanny has spoken to groups of children and adults in Europe and America. She is truthful that she never intended to be a heroine, she only wanted to save her sisters and herself, but then she couldn’t abandon the other children.

She ends every speaking engagement with this last sentence: “Be careful, it could all happen again.”

Sobering words for our time.

I hope you enjoyed Fanny’s story. If you are not yet a follower of this blog and would like to receive the blog once a month, sign up with your email on the right sidebar.

I am eagerly awaiting the debut of my newest book, a children’s book titled Opening Closed Doors, which will be available on May 9, 2023. It is the story of a strong woman, Josie Murray, whose courage forced the desegregation of public libraries in Virginia in 1957.

~ Linda

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Belle Jennings Benchley: Animal Rights Champion

Posted on January 1, 2023 by lhsittig@verizon.net

by Linda Harris Sittig

Long before we had Hollywood stars campaigning for animal rights, there was Belle Jennings Benchley.

BEFORE THE ZOO

Born in August 1882 to a strait-laced Victorian family in rural Kansas, Belle’s future was mapped out to become a teacher, a wife, and a mother. The family moved to a different rural area outside of San Diego, California, when Belle was five years old, and she flourished in the school housed inside her house.

In 1906 she married Henry Benchley, and they had a son, Edward. The marriage, however, did not thrive; by 1925, she was a single mother.

Then, as the fates would intervene, a group of five forward-thinking men comprised the San Diego Zoological Society. Together they had gathered up a few abandoned circus animals to open a zoo with the primary goal of teaching children about wildlife. And they needed a bookkeeper.

Never mind that Belle had no experience or training in accounting; she somehow landed the job. And that event would change her life and American zoos forever.

In the 1920s, zoos worldwide had one main goal– to make money. Food was whatever was the cheapest to provide, and the life expectancy of a wild animal thrust into a zoo was abysmal – often less than a month. The welfare of the animals was a distant thought. Going to a zoo back then, you would have seen the animals kept in tight metal cages where the audience could jab objects at them.

BELLE AND THE ANIMALS

From the beginning, Belle became more than a bookkeeper. Day by day, she went cage by cage to learn the feeding procedures and upkeep of each creature inhabiting the still very small San Diego Zoo. She fielded phone calls from the public about the zoo, checked on the welfare of the animals each day, and began to make suggestions on how to improve the animals’ lives while in captivity.

As time passed, Belle assumed more and more duties at the zoo, and she never stopped making suggestions on how the animals could be treated better. She was the first to suggest they do away with cages entirely and build open-air habitats instead. This was unheard of in her day, and all the experts were aghast – think of the cost!

Within two years, Dr. Wegeforth, the head of the Zoological Society, named her as the executive secretary of the zoo while she acted as the full-time director. She was the first woman in the world to hold that kind of position. And Belle thoroughly used her title; she researched how the zoo could build open-air habitats surrounded by moats and feed the animals the same diet they ate in the wild. Then she hired a full-time zoo veterinarian to take care of the animals and set up an animal hospital on-site.  

Survival rates at the San Diego Zoo shot skyward, and Belle’s programs were instrumental in having successful zoo breeding and live births. Not stopping there, she also developed a zoo nursery so the female animals could safely give birth and have their offspring nurtured. She continued her discipline by walking the zoo at least once a day and inspecting how the animals were treated. Any zoo worker caught being cruel to an animal was fired on the spot.

THE GIRAFFES

Then came 1938, and the rest of America was still reeling from the Great Depression. Belle learned that there were two African giraffes that she could obtain for the San Diego Zoo. And back then, as now, giraffes were awe-inspiring creatures.

While her colleagues looked on, Belle arranged to have the giraffes shipped from Africa to New York and then hired a man with a specialized outfitted rig to drive the giraffes from New York to California. So many problems could have sabotaged the trip, but the two giraffes arrived at a heady celebration within the zoo gates.

After her much-heralded success with the giraffes, Belle instituted a school program where children were bused to the zoo for what today we would call a field trip. Once at the zoo, they were accompanied in groups to learn about the different animals, their native habitats, and how we, as humans, can protect animals from possible extinction.

And always, the visitors marveled how the animals would perk up when Belle approached a habitat. It was as if they could sense her extreme love for everyone. And she did care for every species, although she professed that the primates were her favorites.

Belle went on to write and publish informative publications to teach the public about the happenings at the zoo. She penned memoirs of her remarkable life and often appeared on radio and television to encourage visitors to see the latest exhibition. And for Belle, the animals’ welfare always trumped the visitors’ wishes.

Even throughout WWII, The San Diego Zoo flourished under Belle’s visionary leadership. In 1949 she became the first female president of the Zoological Society, but when she finally retired in 1953, she retained her simple nickname of The Zoo Lady. What had started as a small group of cast-off circus animals had become the bellwether of zoos worldwide.

HER LEGACY

Belle Jennings Benchley died in 1973, and on her gravestone is engraved, The Zoo Lady. At the top is the etching of a gorilla.

I learned about Belle from blog follower Mary Lou Muller who suggested I read West with Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge. The book is based on the 1938 adventure of bringing the giraffes to San Diego. After reading the book, I wanted to learn all I could about Belle Benchley and how her legacy was to transform the concept of zoos.

A few months ago, I found myself at the North Carolina State Zoo next to the open-air exhibit for giraffes. The next thing I knew, I had climbed a platform and fed Romaine lettuce to a 3,000-pound giraffe, who was delighted to reach out his enormous tongue and pluck the lettuce from my hand. It was an amazing experience, and now I know I owe it all to the vision of Belle Benchley.

I hope you enjoyed Belle’s story. Please pass this month’s blog on to friends who would also enjoy reading about another unusual Strong Woman. If you are not yet a follower, sign up with your email on the right sidebar, and you will automatically receive the blog once a month.

Right now, I am watching the birds at my back feeder and ready to research my next Strong Woman.

Wishing you the best in the new year and a happy, healthy 2023!

~ Linda

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Hedwig Kiesler: More than Just a Pretty Face

Posted on December 1, 2022 by lhsittig@verizon.net

By Linda Harris Sittig

Do you use Wifi or GPS, or a cell phone?

Then you should know the story of one strong woman whose research and inventions were the precursor to much of our day-to-day technology. But I bet the name Hedwig Kiesler is not familiar to you.

She did go by another name, one you might recognize, and she did become famous, but not for her brilliant mind.

Hedwig Kiesler was born in Vienna, Austria, in November 1914. She was an only child, adored by her father and criticized often by her mother. Much of her later interest in tinkering came from long walks with her father, who often pointed out objects in Vienna and explained to young Hedwig the technology behind them.

Hedwig might have grown up to become a serious scientist, but she was endowed with incredible beauty and a desire to act on stage. Because of her stunning looks, wavy dark hair, sultry green eyes, porcelain skin, and hourglass figure, by age 16, she had procured a part in a play in Vienna.  Within a few years, her beauty and acting set her on her life’s course.

But Europe was on the brink of turmoil in 1933 when Friedrich Mandl saw Hedwig performing in a play. He was smitten by her beauty and launched a one-person ploy to win her heart. Although he was older, he was also one of the wealthiest men in Austria. Her parents encouraged Hedwig to accept Mandl because of his power and wealth. Hedwig’s father hoped that Mandl would be able to take care of Hedwig as politics were becoming unstable due to the rise of both Adolf Hitler and Mussolini.

The marriage became a disaster due to Mandl’s obsessive desire for control and his mandate that Hedwig gives up the theater and devotes her entire time to being his wife.  Because he owned a lucrative munitions company, the Mandls often entertained the most powerful men in Austria, Germany, and Italy. Although miserable in her marriage, Hedwig decided to act as a dutiful wife while listening intently to the men complain about the failures in weaponry, especially the technical problems with submarines.

After the death of her father and her mother’s insistence that Hedwig learn to be a ‘proper wife,’ Hedwig takes a bold leap and escapes from her husband, fleeing first to Paris and then to London. While in London in 1937, she met the famous Hollywood movie producer Louis B. Mayer – head of MGM studios. He was on a talent-searching trip, and Hedwig was on a search of her own – a way to get to Hollywood.

Mr. Mayer, impressed with her outstanding beauty, offered her a job at $125.00 a week. She turned him down because she believed she was worth more. This is in the day when a loaf of bread only costs 9 cents. Hedwig then sold some of the jewelry from her marriage and booked a one-way ticket on the same ocean liner that Mr. Mayer was traveling back to the United States. By the end of that trip, Hedwig convinced him to offer her a more lucrative contract. He offered $500.00 a week, and this time she accepted.

Hedwig’s move to Hollywood was the escape and artistic opportunity she craved. And while Germany was beginning to succumb to the charisma of Adolf Hitler and Jews were facing the beginning of what would eventually become the Holocaust, Hedwig’s mother refused to leave her lifestyle in Austria.

Hedwig shot to fame after Mr. Mayer changed her name to Hedy Lamarr and cast her in films with famous co-stars like Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, James Stewart, and William Powell, among others. Her ability to lose herself in her character made her performances outstanding and her beauty unforgettable. But Hedwig, now Hedy, needed more. She needed to make a difference in helping her fellow Europeans back home.

In 1940 German torpedoes sank a civilian transport ship, the SS City of Benares, carrying 90 children fleeing worn torn Britain for safety in Canada. Horrified and outraged, Hedy turned her inexhaustive energy to inventing a device that would enable radio communications from ship to torpedo to ‘hop’ and thereby eliminate the jamming of signals by the enemy. She drew upon her memory of tinkering with her father and the conversations of the Mandl’s dinner parties. Working tirelessly with musician George Antheil, Hedy and George did invent a radio frequency hopping system and were issued a U.S. patent number 2, 292, 387 on August 11, 1942.

Although they were unsuccessful in selling the technology to the United States Navy (who turned them down with the reputed comment that an invention by a woman would not be reliable), their invention led the way later for other scientists to develop Bluetooth and GPS technology.  

Hedy Lamarr went on to act in Hollywood in many famous films and was eventually voted into the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame in 2014 and earned a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. She would go on to marry six more times. Once her eyesight began to fail in the 1980s, she moved to Florida almost as a recluse and died in 2000 at age 85. Her estate at death was $3.3 million.

Austria issued a stamp in Hedy’s honor, and the face looks similar to the face of Wonder Woman. Perhaps because Hedy was a true wonder woman.

If you enjoyed Hedy’s story and would like to read more Strong Women in History stories, please sign up on the right sidebar. You will then receive the blog once a month.

Wishing you and yours a lovely holiday season and peace in the new year.

~ Linda

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Alice Guy-Blaché

Posted on November 1, 2022 by lhsittig@verizon.net

By Linda Harris Sittig

photo courtesy of Gerd Altmann with Pixabay

While my husband and I lived in rentals for 90 days this year, waiting for our new house to be finished, we watched films every night.

A lot of films.

We revisited old favorites and fascinating documentaries and tuned into new releases. And I did not pay much attention to the directors until it hit me that most names were male.

So, I searched to see if there had been any female directors in the early days of cinema. And that is how I stumbled across Alice Guy-Blaché.

The Young Alice

Born in Paris in 1873 after her parents escaped a smallpox epidemic in Chile, Alice grew up surrounded by books. When her parents decided to return to Chile, Alice went to live with her French grandmother.

Throughout her childhood, she lived in both Chile and France. But when her father died in1891, Alice suddenly needed to support her mother. She trained as a typist and, by 1894, was working for a French camera company. The company’s manager was Leon Gaumont, who became involved in France’s fledgling motion picture industry and chose Alice as his secretary.

The following year Gaumont invited Alice to accompany him to the Lumière event, the first demonstration in France of a filmed screen projection. Alice was fascinated but decided that a narrative film with a story would be more enjoyable.

In a bold move, she wrote a screenplay and convinced Gaumont to let her direct it on the screen. That movie, La Fée Au Choux (The Fairy of the Cabbages), earned Alice the fame of being considered the first filmmaker to develop narrative filmmaking systematically. And she was probably the only female director from 1896 to the turn of the twentieth century. Sadly, that first 1896 film of hers no longer exists.

Alice Begins Her Extraordinary Career

From 1896 – 1906, Alice became the head of the production for Gaumont’s company. She went on to direct, produce, or supervise approximately 600 silent films with him, each lasting anywhere from one minute to 30 minutes, but all were narrative dramas or comedies.

Then in 1907, Alice Guy resigned from her position with Gaumont and married a Gaumont employee, Herbert Blaché. Gaumont sent them to America to open an American arm of the Gaumont Production Company. And after a rocky start, the couple went to Flushing, Queens, New York, and helped launch the Gaumont Chronophone company to have Gaumont’s silent films distributed as licensed films.

Their most significant competitor was Thomas A. Edison.

In another bold move, in 1910, Alice decided to start her own company, Solax. She continued to make silent films using the Gaumont studio and distributing them through Gaumont. By 1912, Solax was making enough money that Alice built her own $100,000 studio for Solax in Fort Lee, New Jersey. It was the largest pre-Hollywood studio in America, and she became the first American woman to own a film production studio.

To give you some perspective on the $100,000, a loaf of bread in America in 1912 cost 7 cents.

Several of the Solax films that stand out today are the ones where the hero was a woman. However, Solax as a company only thrived financially for two years, and once the popularity of short films ceased, Alice and Herbert then worked as directors for other film companies.

In 1918 Alice almost died from the Spanish Flu, and Herbert moved her to California, mainly because he wanted to be a part of Hollywood. They divorced in 1920, but both continued to direct films. After Herbert died in 1953, Alice returned to France, where she lectured on filmmaking and continued to write scripts.

Alice’s Legacy

She directed, produced, or supervised about 1,000 films in her lifetime—an astonishing accomplishment. And even if you’ve never heard her name, she became a legend in filmmaking. So much so that Alfred Hitchcock often quoted her.

She died in New Jersey at age 94 and is buried in Mahwah, New Jersey.

However, in September 2019, Alice Guy-Blaché was included in The New York Times series titled “Overlooked No More.”

I love it!

The next time you watch a movie, pay attention to who directed it.

If you enjoyed this month’s blog and want to become a Strong Woman follower, sign up on the right sidebar with your email. You will be notified only once a month for each new blog post.

Meanwhile, you can read more about me on my website: www.strongwomeninhistory.com. And stay tuned. My newest book, Opening Closed Doors, should be out by the first of the year with a strong young woman you won’t forget.

~ Linda

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Virginia Estelle Randolph: Keeping the Dream Alive

Posted on October 1, 2022 by lhsittig@verizon.net

by Linda Harris Sittig

Traditional One-Room Schoolhouse in Rural America, photo from Pixabay, Roy Harryman

In the early 1900s, Virginia E. Randolph’s dream was for every Black child in the South to get a decent education.

She was not the only one to hold fast to that dream. Today, the names of many educators from rural Black schools are only vaguely remembered in their small communities. And the one-room schoolhouses they ran during the Jim Crow Era of American history have also mostly disappeared.

The Rosenwald Schools

From 1917 to 1932, thousands of these one-room schools, the Rosenwald Schools, sought to provide at least an elementary education for Black children in the South. The Rosenwald Schools resulted from a unique collaboration between two visionary men. One man, a Jewish German immigrant, Julius Rosenwald, made his fortune establishing the Sears Roebuck Company.  The other was famed educator Booker T. Washington. Together they formed a foundation that allocated funding to develop over 5,300 schools serving over 700,000 Black students across the South.

The schools were staffed by teachers trained at historically Black colleges, but the supplies like chalkboards and maps were castaways from the segregated white schools. The buildings were often white clapboard and faced north or south so a substantial amount of sunshine could flow through the windows, providing light. Each front door was wide enough to accompany a passel of children dashing back in after recess held open by the teacher as they rang the bell for students to return to their seats.

And even though the Rosenwald schools continued operating into the 1950s when Brown vs. Board of Education struck down segregation in public schools, the Rosenwald Schools continued to function without electricity or indoor plumbing.

Now for Virginia D. Randolph.

The child of formerly enslaved people, Virginia Estelle Randolph, was born in Virginia in 1870. Her birth coincided with the formation of the public school system in Virginia, a segregated system where Black students could not attend schools with whites. At twenty-two, Virginia had completed her formal schooling and took a job teaching in Henrico County, Virginia. She taught at the one-room Mountain Road School. The building and grounds were unsightly, so Virginia whitewashed the school, planted flowers in the yard, and even bought gravel with her savings. She organized a Willing Worker Club and visited the community to encourage parents to support her efforts in improving the school. Next, she developed a unique teaching style that combined academic instruction with practical lessons in cooking, weaving, and gardening.

In 1908 the Superintendent of Schools in Henrico County approached the Board of the Jeanes Teaching Fund, asking that they supplement Virginia Randolph’s salary. Virginia then became the first Jeanes Supervisor Industrial Teacher and the supervisor of all the Black schools in her district. There were 20 Black schools in Henrico County, and for forty years, she traveled weekly to each of them to train teachers and build community support. As the success of her program grew, she also trained educators throughout Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia.

Not content for Black students to only have access to elementary education, Virginia began to champion for Black high schools to be built. In 1917, the Virginia Randolph Training Center (later called the Virginia Randolph High School) was established on Mountain Road, Glenn Allen, Virginia. The money to construct the school came from the Rosenwald Fund. 

Although Virginia never married or had children of her own, she cared for over 50 foster children in her lifetime. She retired from teaching in 1949 and passed in 1958 at age 88.

Throughout all the years of her life, she kept the dream alive.

Finding Virginia and Other Strong Women

~ People often ask me where I find my strong women. I keep my eyes and ears open. And I always stop at historical markers to read about the importance of that location. The markers are short history lessons in themselves. This was how I discovered the Rosenwald Schools.

https://www.historicrussellschool.org

Then I read that a former Rosenwald School was still standing in Durham County, North Carolina. A road trip ensued.

I stood in the yard of the Russell School and gazed up at the windows and the front door. I could almost hear the singing voices of students and imagine all the windows open to fresh air.  And I saluted the countless individuals like Virginia E. Randolph who worked tirelessly so that all children in America could become educated fairly.

If you enjoyed this month’s blog and are not yet a follower, please sign up on the right sidebar.  Although the blog is published only once a month, I am busy writing on other days. You can find my three published novels, Cut From Strong Cloth, Last Curtain Call, and Counting Crows, in bookstores, on Kindle, and online. My non-fiction book, B-52 DOWN, pays tribute to a five-person USAF crew, the community who searched for their downed plane, and the five wives who had to deal with the tragedy.

~ linda

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Pearl Kendrick and Grace Eldering: Saving Children’s Lives

Posted on September 1, 2022 by lhsittig@verizon.net

by Linda Harris Sittig

While there is a current controversy over vaccinations, there was a time in our not-so-distant past when a vaccination could mean the difference between life and death for a young child.

EARLY HISTORY OF VACCINES

We currently think about the Covid vaccine, but vaccines have a much longer history. One of the earliest was Edward Jenner’s vaccine against smallpox in 1798. Louis Pasteur’s vaccine against rabies followed in 1885. Diphtheria, cholera, and typhoid vaccines came around the beginning of 1900. By the late 1920s, vaccines existed against tetanus and tuberculosis. And the list went on well into the 1950s when Jonas Salk developed the vaccine against polio.

If you look at the list of lifesaving vaccines and their inventors, you will notice that all the scientists were men.

Until Pearl Kendrick and Grace Eldering.

They spent their careers studying bacterial infections and one in particular, the Bordetella Pertussis, more familiarly known as whooping cough.

Many of us have had the DPT vaccine against Diphtheria, Pertussis, and Tetanus. But in the early 1930s, Pertussis killed almost 7,000 Americans a year – mostly young children and infants. And it was a horrible disease where the victim coughed violently, fought to breathe, gasping for breath, and desperately gulped air into their lungs, producing a barking type sound –whooping cough.

And there was no cure.

PEARL AND GRACE

Pearl Kendrick was born in 1890 in New York and attended college at Syracuse University and Columbia. Her main area of interest was the study of bacteriology. After college, she tried her hand at teaching but did not feel drawn to that as a career.

At the end of World War I (post-1918), significant strides in controlling infectious diseases were making medical leaps and bounds. As a result, state public health departments began searching for educated men and women with science degrees who could staff their labs. But most men with health science degrees took research positions at universities where the pay was more lucrative than in state public health departments.

Whom did that leave? Women with science backgrounds.

Pearl Kendrick applied and worked for the New York State Department of Health. Then before 1926, she was recruited to work for the Michigan State Department of Health, headed by visionary Cy Young. By 1926 he had named her director of the newly opened laboratory in Grand Rapids.

Pearl received a doctorate in Public Health from Johns Hopkins and returned to Grand Rapids with the singular goal of eradicating Pertussis, which was in full throttle at the time.

Grace Eldering was born in 1900 in Montana, and after college graduation, she took a job as a teacher. Like Pearl, Grace soon realized that a career in education held little appeal, and in 1928 she relocated to Michigan to work in the state laboratory in Lansing. After a year, she transferred to the laboratory in Grand Rapids and met Pearl Kendrick.

The two women became a workhorse duo working with a team of doctors, nurses, and other researchers. At first, their goal was to develop procedures to diagnose Pertussis and limit its contagious possibilities sooner and more quickly.

But then, in November 1932, their laboratory identified a Pertussis specimen. They worked day and night and, by January, had developed their first experimental Pertussis vaccine. Then came the months and years of clinical trials to prove the worthiness of the vaccine and eliminate any potential dangers. They conducted study after study but were always short on funds.

It took the help of Eleanor Roosevelt, who paid the laboratory in Grand Rapids a visit in 1936. Funding for additional staff soon came from the Federal Works Progress Administration, and by 1944 the American Medical Association added Kendrick and Eldering’s Pertussis vaccine to the list of recommended immunizations.

THEIR LEGACY

Deaths from this dreaded childhood disease dropped dramatically. Where Pertussis once claimed 7,000 lives in one year, the statistics showed only ten deaths in the early 1970s.

Today approximately 85 percent of children worldwide now receive the Pertussis vaccine, usually in the combo of a DPT shot.

Neither Pearl Kendrick nor Grace Eldering became famous for their remarkable achievement. They used their scientific knowledge gained from their Johns Hopkins doctorates plus all their years in the field to continue researching how to eradicate infectious diseases.

Neither woman married, and they continued their professional and personal relationship until Pearl died in 1980. They had lived quiet lives, content with the knowledge that their efforts had saved thousands of children.

Unfortunately, Pertussis isn’t dead. It has again raised its ugly head in areas where people decline to take advantage of the vaccine.

 I am indebted to fellow writer Richard Conniff, whose excellent March 2022 Smithsonian Magazine article prompted my curiosity to research Pearl and Grace for Strong Women’s status. Here is the link to his article: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/unsung-heroes-ended-deadly-plague-180979547/. That article is excerpted from Conniff’s upcoming book, Ending Epidemics: A History of Escape from Contagion.

If you enjoyed learning about Pearl Kendrick and Grace Eldering and are not yet a follower of this blog, please sign up on the right sidebar. My Strong Women in History stories are published on the first of each month.

You can also find my novels about Strong Women and Strong Men in local bookstores and online. Cut From Strong Cloth, Last Curtain Call, Counting Crows, and B-29 DOWN. I am working now on a new novel set during World War II. Find updates on my website: www.lindasittig.com

~ Linda

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Joye Hummel: Ghosting Warrior Writer Invisible No More

Posted on July 27, 2022 by lhsittig@verizon.net

by Linda Harris Sittig

Ghostwriting is nothing new; it has probably been in practice since the days of ancient history. And the large majority of ghostwriters never receive proper credit for what they wrote because it was often attributed to someone else. In the annals of literature, one writer taking advantage of another writer’s penned, but perhaps unpublished papers is also nothing new. Controversy still lurks about William Shakespeare and John Steinbeck.

So, it did not surprise me years ago when I read about the controversy over the creators of Batman, supposedly created by Bob Kane, but in reality, co-created by fellow comic strip author Bill Finger. Bob Kane went on to earn fortune and fame from Batman, while Bill Finger died in obscurity. Then enter Marc Tyler Nobleman, who, with the urging from the comic book community, researched the life of Bill Finger and then wrote Finger’s biography so the world would finally give him his due.

Today the Bill Finger Award is given annually to two recipients whose work has made a significant contribution to the comic book industry, even if their names are not well known.

JOYE HUMMEL

This is where we pick up the story of Joye Hummel.

Born in April 1924 to middle-class parents on Long Island, NY, Joye attended college for only one year and then enrolled instead in secretarial school in Manhattan. Shortly afterwards, one of her instructors, William M. Marston, pulled her aside and complimented her on her writing style, which had shown through in several of her essays.

He offered her a unique job. In addition to being an instructor at Katherine Gibbs Secretarial School, Mr. Marston ran an art studio where he had previously created a strong female comic book character three years ago. This character, dubbed Wonder Woman, was drawn weekly by artist H.G. Peter. True success seemed imminent when Marston received a contract for Wonder Woman to be featured in a syndicated comic strip.

He needed two things. One, he needed an assistant who could help with the promotion of Wonder Woman; two, he needed a young woman who could write contemporary slang and who also had a vision of what a strong Amazonian woman with supernatural powers could do.

WONDER WOMAN

Joye Hummel was 19, and the job sounded fascinating. She started the next week and soon began writing scripts for the comic. Shortly after her start, William Marston contracted polio, and Joye took on more and more of a share in the writing of the scripts. For the next three plus years, Wonder Woman continued her burst upon the comic book stage as Americans were emerging from World War II. The Wonder Woman comic provided hopeful escape for many readers.

Joye continued writing the script as a ghostwriter, which meant she received a salary but never any recognition as the actual writer. She continued from 1944 until almost 1948 when she gave up her career to stay home and raise her infant daughter.

DC Comics hired other writers to complete the Wonder Woman saga. Eventually, the character of Wonder Woman changed, showcasing less and less of the original idea of a strong, courageous woman not afraid to fight for what she believed in.

It would take until 2018, four years after Joye donated her Wonder Woman archives to the Smithsonian Libraries, for Joye to achieve the public recognition she had never sought but so richly deserved. Joye was the 2018 recipient of the Bill Finger Award. She accepted the award at age 94 for her uncredited body of work on the Wonder Woman comics of the 1940s.

Even today, you have to dig into the research to find out the large part that Joye Hummel played in the success of those early Wonder Woman years.

As Wonder Woman herself might have said, “Believe in yourself. You are stronger than you know.”

And, may I add, wear your silver bracelets on both arms.

I hope you enjoyed hearing Joye Hummel’s story. Until next month you can still catch me on my website, https://www.lindasittig.com. And check out my three novels of strong female protagonists in history and my narrative non-fiction.

CUT FROM STRONG CLOTH, LAST CURTAIN CALL, COUNTING CROWS, and B-52 DOWN are available from your favorite bookstore or on line.

~ linda

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Kalpana Chawla: Fearlessly Aiming for the Stars

Posted on July 1, 2022 by lhsittig@verizon.net

by Linda H. Sittig

Image by NASA-Imagery from Pixabay

Many of us will gaze up in the night sky and try to locate a particular star or planet or follow a moving satellite. But once upon a time, there was a young girl in India whose dream was to leave the bounds of Earth and travel into space.

That young girl was Kalpana Chawla.

The first thing you notice about Kalpana in photos is her broad smile. It is almost as if she is living her life’s dream and can’t stop grinning.

Perhaps not as well-known as Sally Ride, Kalpana Chawla was the first Indian-born American woman to travel into space after becoming an astronaut at age 35.

HER STORY BEGINS

Born in India, the youngest of four siblings in March 1962, Kalpana became fascinated with airplanes from an early age. It wasn’t long before she asked her father to take her to a local flying club so she could see the planes up close.

Her parents encouraged her in her studies, and Kalpana excelled in school. When further education was still a luxury for girls, Kalpana’s mother supported the idea that her daughter should apply to Punjab Engineering College.

In college, she pursued a degree in aeronautical engineering, even though her professors tried to explain it would be a limited career path. Nevertheless, she persevered.

Because there was not a viable space program in India, Kalpana emigrated to the United States in 1982 and, by age 26, earned a Masters’ Degree from the University of Texas and then a Doctorate in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Colorado. Three years later, she was sworn in as a U.S. citizen and applied to NASA. Along the way, she also became a certified pilot.

LIFE WITH NASA

By 1994 Kalpana was chosen to be an astronaut candidate with NASA. It would take three rigorous years of training before she embarked on her first space flight. That flight was on board the space shuttle Columbia STS-87. The shuttle orbited the Earth 252 times in just over two weeks. One of her jobs as a mission specialist was operating the shuttle’s prime robotic arm. Five other astronauts were with her as the historic November 1997 mission concluded its last orbit and returned to Earth.

Believing that Indian girls deserved to learn about space flight, Kalpana asked NASA to invite two girls from her secondary school each summer to attend the Summer Space Experience Program. Since 1998 two Indian girls have arrived in Houston, Texas, as participants.

What is it like to travel aboard a rocket? Kalpana says, “When you look at the stars and the galaxy, you feel that you are not just from any particular piece of land, but from the solar system.”

In 2000 Kalpana was chosen for a second voyage into space, this time on the Columbia space shuttle STS-107, but repeated delays occurred. Finally, on January 16, 2003, a crew consisting of Kalpana, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Laurel Clark, Rick Husband, William McCool, and Ilan Ramon shot into space.

Together they completed nearly 80 experiments studying space science, including astronaut health and safety.

However, during their launch, a section of foam insulation broke free from an external tank and struck the port wing. Although foam shedding had occurred on previous launches, no one could know that it would prove fatal this time.

As Columbia began its return and re-entered Earth’s atmosphere, hot gases penetrated the internal wing structure, causing immediate aircraft disintegration.

At age 41, Kalpana Chawla died instantly alongside her crew.

ONE WITH THE UNIVERSE

Today there is an asteroid that carries her name, a lunar crater named after her, a series of satellites dedicated to her memory, a street in New York City now bears her name, and perhaps the most poignant – the Kalpana Chawla Award was instituted in India to recognize young Indian women scientists.

If you ever go hiking in Zion National Park in Utah, USA, that is where Kalpana’s ashes were scattered, as per her wishes. And the next time you gaze up into the night sky, whisper her name in remembrance.

Thank you to blog follower Eileen Rice, who suggested I learn about Kalpana. I’m glad I did.

Please forward this month’s blog to friends and share Kalpana’s story. My three books of historical fiction and my narrative non-fiction book are all available in bookstores and on line.

Happy Reading!

~ linda

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Dorothy Kenyon: Early Advocate for Social Justice

Posted on June 1, 2022 by lhsittig@verizon.net

by Linda Harris Sittig

I have long admired Ruth Bader Ginsburg, lawyer, Supreme Court Justice, and champion of women’s rights.

But before Ruth, there was Dorothy Kenyon.

Never achieving the same fame as Ruth B. Ginsburg, Dorothy Kenyon never-the-less left an indelible mark upon our legal system.

Born in 1888 to a well-to-do family in Manhattan, New York, Dorothy spent most of her younger life as a social butterfly.

Then a trip to Mexico changed everything.

Mexico

Possessing a degree in economics from Smith College, Dorothy spent a year living in Mexico and seeing firsthand the effects of poverty on families, particularly women.

Mexico altered her life path. She returned to New York and enrolled in the New York University School of Law, graduating in 1917 and passing the New York Bar the same year.

 From 1917 to 1929, she worked tirelessly in various law firms championing cases for social injustice, focusing on women. However, hindered in advancing her career, she decided to make the bold move and open her own law firm.

In 1930 the law firm of Straus and Kenyon took on clients where equal rights under the law were in question. Dorothy never formally joined any women’s rights organizations but preferred to fight the battle on her own. She penned numerous articles for various New York City newspapers to foster an awareness of how the legal system failed American women.

In 1938 Dorothy was selected as the U.S. representative to the League of Nations for the committee study on the legal status of women internationally.

Dorothy vs. McCarthyism

She made headlines again in 1950 when Senator Joseph McCarthy put forward her name for the first person in America to be investigated for her supposed relationship with the Communist Party.

She confronted McCarthy, denying any association with Communism, and called him a liar. Although the Senate subcommittee cleared her of the charges, her career in public service was tainted.

One of her most notable cases came a few years later, in 1957 when an all-male jury in Florida convicted a woman named Gwendolyn Hoyt of murdering her husband. The defense argument was based on Mrs. Hoyt’s testimony that her husband had been beating her for years.

In 1957 in Florida, all juries were male-only. Women could volunteer to become a juror, but the process was so complicated and lengthy that it rarely occurred. Dorothy took up the challenge and represented Gwendolyn Hoyt, stipulating that Mrs. Hoyt had been denied her constitutional rights by denying her a jury of her peers. An all-male jury did not qualify as her peers.

Hoyt vs. Florida

Hoyt vs. Florida made it to the U.S. Supreme Court (which at that time in history had all-male justices) and lost. The male judges ruled that women were the center of the home and family life and should not have to be considered for jury duty.

Dorothy was furious and frustrated by the loss, but her case would inspire future lawyers championing social justice.

After Hoyt vs. Florida, Dorothy began preparing legal briefs for the NAACP and the ALCU, and she joined the forces seeking to pass the Equal Rights Amendment.

Dorothy was a trailblazer, and as such, she often rebelled against societal norms. She never married, preferring to have a series of intense romantic relationships with several prominent men. Her streak of personal independence did not fit the confines of marriage.

Diagnosed with stomach cancer in her early 80s, she refused to stop working and continued participating in President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. Up to the very end, she worked as an advocate for the poor.

Her Legacy

Dorothy died five days short of her 84th birthday. The year was 1972, and a young female lawyer had just volunteered as an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, focusing on gender equality and women’s rights. She had read extensively about Dorothy Kenyon’s career.

That young lawyer was Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

If you enjoyed Dorothy Kenyon’s story and are not yet a follower of this blog, please sign up on the right hand side.

Passionate about strong women’s stories from history, check out my three novels, Cut From Strong Cloth, Last Curtain Call, and Counting Crows. My non-fiction book is B-52 DOWN. All of my books can be ordered from your favorite bookstore, or found on line and available on Kindle.

Watch for my news this fall for my newest book, Opening Closed Doors, where the courage of one woman helps to end segregation in a small Virginia town.

~ Linda

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