Margaret Hutchinson Rousseau: Bringing Penicillin to the Masses

Posted on November 2, 2020 by lhsittig@verizon.net

By Linda Harris Sittig

When you’ve developed an infection and the doctor prescribes penicillin, what image comes to mind?

A needle, some pills, perhaps the pink medicinal liquid?

How about a cantaloupe?

Penicillin was discovered in 1928 by Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming. However, because the antibiotic was so difficult to extract from the mold that created it, only a handful of people received the antibiotic within the first decade of its availability.

The creation of penicillin was one of the greatest medical creations of the 20th century. Before, people with life-threatening bacterial infections did not survive: like one of my grandfathers.

But it would take the groundbreaking work of Margaret Hutchison to enable the pharmacology companies to mass-produce this life-saving drug.

Margaret’s Story

Born on October 27, 1910, in Houston, Texas, Margaret’s father was a clothing store owner, and her mother was a housemaker. Even from childhood, Margaret showed a vivid interest in science. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science from Rice Institute (Texas) in 1932 and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from M.I.T. (Boston) in 1937. At the age of 27, Margaret was the first American woman to earn a Ph.D. in chemical engineering. Decades later, she would become the first female member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

After finishing her Ph.D., she married William C. Rousseau, whom she met while working in Boston for E.B. Badger, a design company in the chemical engineering industry. While working for Badger, Margaret designed a production process for synthetic rubber. Next, she helped to develop the process of high-octane gas for aviation fuel—a boon for the American military in WWII.

Intrigued by the challenge of mass-producing penicillin, she turned to the research showing how mold from cantaloupes was an effective source for extracting the necessary ingredients to produce the anti-bacterial drug.

First, her research team revised a fermentation process with Pfizer Pharmaceuticals. Then, she took her team to Brooklyn, N.Y. where they converted an old ice factory into a penicillin production facility.

The challenge and the difficulties were enormous, but they successfully developed a deep-tank fermentation process that could generate large quantities of mold, readily available to be made into penicillin.

Margaret continued to collaborate with other scientists using her research on fermentation coupled with the petrochemical process of engineering to help companies mass produce penicillin under the auspices of the U.S. War Production Board.

The Legacy of Margaret’s Work

In the first half of 1944, her research led to the production of almost 2.3 million doses of penicillin. Just a few weeks later came the invasion of Normandy that Americans call D-Day. Penicillin saved countless lives of the injured.

The estimate of how many soldiers’ lives were saved by penicillin in WWII is fifteen percent. Compare that to the American Civil War, where 3/5 of the Union troops and 2/3 of the Confederate troops died from infectious bacterial disease.

After WWII, penicillin was made available to the general public on March 15, 1945.

Scientists Alexander Fleming, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Medicine for developing penicillin. Dorothy Hodgkin received a Nobel Prize later for her discovery of the structure of penicillin.

But it was the legacy of Margaret Hutchinson Rousseau that brough penicillin to the people.

While we wait in anticipation for a vaccine for Covid 19, remember Margaret and the lowly cantaloupe. Sometimes sought-after results come from surprising sources.

Thank you to Cort Johns, a blog follower from the Netherlands who alerted me to Margaret’s story.

If you are not yet a follower of this blog, join the other 1167 subscribers by signing up on the right sidebar. You can also follow me on Twitter @LHsittig, Instagram @Lhsittig, my webpage www.lindasittig.com, and on Amazon www.amzn.com/1940553024.

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Susie Baker King Taylor: Caring to Make a Difference

Posted on September 30, 2020 by lhsittig@verizon.net

By guest blogger Millicent H.B. Hughes

While many people may associate St. Simons Island, Georgia, with laidback southern beach living, the island played an important role in the Civil War.

In April 1862, when the Union Army reclaimed the Sea Islands of Georgia from the Confederate forces, Susie Baker was a slip of a 13-year-old girl. Her family, enslaved on a plantation near Savannah, somehow, sent Susie to live with her grandmother. While Georgia had strict laws against the education of freed or enslaved African-Americans, her grandmother enrolled Susie in secret lesson programs.

Then the Civil War exploded, and Susie’s uncle took the young folk of the family on a Union gunboat headed to St. Simons Island. Onboard, Susie sat near the captain, who discovered that she could both read and write.

When the boat docked at St. Simons Island, the captain suggested to Union officials that they employ young Susie Baker as a teacher for the African-American children on the island. As unlikely as this might sound today, St. Simons Island saw religious northern abolitionists and the U.S. Treasury Department cooperate to make the abandoned cotton plantations profitable, as well as a source of support for rescued Blacks.

Why hire a teenage girl to be the teacher? Susie knew Gullah, the impenetrable local dialect. Thus, at age 14, Susie Baker became the first African-American to teach at a school in Georgia. Her class at Gaston Bluff consisted of 40 children, but numerous adults would show up each evening to also receive lessons.

In October 1862, the Union evacuated St. Simons and headed to Beaufort, South Carolina, on the mainland. Susie was asked to accompany the First South Carolina Volunteers, an all-Black troop. Her title? Laundress.

By this time, Susie had married Sergeant Edward King, a non-commissioned officer in the First South Carolina Volunteers, and in truth, she did not perform many laundry duties. Instead, she became the camp nurse and part-time teacher. Once, when food stores ran low, she had only cans of condensed milk and turtle eggs, Susie concocted turtle custard to feed the men. The hungry do not complain.

At the end of the Civil War, Susie Baker King had worked for close to four years for the Union Army. What was her compensation? Nothing. As an official nurse, she would have been eligible for a stipend, but her title of laundress did not qualify her for any payment.

When the Civil War ended, Susie and Edward moved to Savannah. A few months later, Edward died in a dock accident, and Susie became a widow. With a small son to take care of, she opened her private school for African-American children in Savannah. The government then set up free Freedmen’s Bureau schools, and she could not compete against the free education programs.

By 1879 Susie was working as a domestic. Her employer’s family spent the summers in Boston, Massachusetts, and the winters in Georgia. While in Boston, she met and married Russell Taylor and helped organize the Woman’s Relief Corps for disabled veterans of the Civil War.

Then, in 1902 Susie Baker King Taylor wrote a book, Reminiscences of my Life in Camp. It was the only recounting of the Civil War by an African-American female.

Today, the area on St. Simons where Susie Baker King Taylor’s school existed is called Gascoigne Bluff and sports trendy houses. But in 1862, it hosted an innovative school for African-American children, thanks to Susie Baker King Taylor.

~ A gracious thank you to Millicent H. B. Hughes for guest blogging this month on Strong Women. Millicent is the author of 1777 Danbury on Fire! a story of the American Revolution told from a 13-year-old boy who became swept up in the turmoil. The book is available upon request in bookstores and through Amazon.

If you are not yet a follower of the Strong Women blog, sign up on the right-hand side!

~ Linda Harris Sittig

Author of Cut From Strong Cloth, Last Curtain Call, and Counting Crows – available in bookstores and online.

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Oseola McCarty: Pennies to Philanthropist by Linda Harris Sittig

Posted on September 1, 2020 by lhsittig@verizon.net

There is no way that Oseola McCarty would ever have dreamed that one day she would become the woman who financed college educations for others.

You see, Oseola dropped out of school at the age of twelve and never stepped back inside a classroom again.

Her Story Begins

Born in 1908 in rural Mississippi, Oseola was raised in Hattiesburg by her grandmother and aunt. From an early age, Oseola learned the principles of a strong work ethic. When she returned home from school each day, she worked helping her grandmother and aunt with the piles of laundry they took in as their means of employment.

To her grandmother and aunt’s credit, they paid Oseola a small weekly sum and encouraged her to save that money. Week in, week out, Oseola would stow the pennies, dimes, nickels, and quarters inside her doll buggy.

But when Oseola was in the sixth grade, her aunt fell seriously ill and could no longer work. Oseola immediately dropped out of school to help take care of her aunt and take over her aunt’s share of the laundry workload.

At the age of twelve, Oseola became a professional washerwoman.

 But unlike other folks who might become bitter about the circumstances, Oseola took great pride in her work and derived a sense of satisfaction from a job well done.

Oseola’s Work Ethic

By 1920 Oseola’s world revolved around washing laundry by hand on a hard wooden washboard. According to Oseola, she would “go outside early in the morning and start the fire under the wash pot. Then I would soak, wash, and boil a load of clothes. Then they would have to be rinsed, wrenched, starched, and hung out on the line.” A workday for Oseola would often end around 11 pm after she finished all the ironing. Her skill as a laundress became legendary in Hattiesburg, and she did not retire until the age of eighty-six.

Her Legacy

So how did she become a philanthropist?

Remember the money in the doll buggy? Within a year from stashing cash in the doll buggy, she opened a savings account in a local bank. AND NEVER WITHDREW A SINGLE PENNY.

As the years went on, her savings grew.

In 1995, at age 86, when her hands swollen with arthritis made handwashing clothes impossible, she decided to withdraw all her savings and do something with the money.

The amount had grown to $280,000, more than enough for Oseola to live comfortably for the rest of her life. Instead, she withdrew $150,000 and donated it to the University of Southern Mississippi to start a scholarship for needy Black students.

Oseola lived a few blocks from the university, but because of segregation, she had never stepped foot on the property.

At first, several neighbors and friends chided her for giving her money to a school that had been whites-only. She replied, “Well, they let colored people in there now.”

The first student to receive a McCarty scholarship was Stephanie Bullock, president of the senior class in Hattiesburg. She had a twin brother, and her family could only afford to send one child to college. With Oseola’s help, they both were able to attend.

As word spread throughout Hattiesburg of Oseola’s generosity, many town residents began to contribute to the scholarship fund, eventually tripling the total sum.

For the rest of her life, Oseola continued to live frugally, walk everywhere, and started every day with a prayer to God, thanking Him for her bountiful life.

Towards the end, she commented that her only regret was that she did not have more money to give away.

Ripples

Here is a perfect example of how one person can impact the world. With only a sixth-grade education, her act of generosity spread far beyond Mississippi. When billionaire Ted Turner heard Oseola’s story, he told the New York Times, “if that little woman could give away almost all she had, I can certainly give a billion (to charity).”

To date, 44 students have received the full-tuition McCarty Scholarship.

Strong women send out ripples that can change the world.

Thank you to blog-follower Ann Paciulli for sharing Oceola’s poignant story with me.

Image by Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay

~ Linda

If you know of a strong woman who did not get the credit she deserved, please email me her name. My email appears at the top righthand corner of the blog. And please share the blog with others and urge them to become followers of Strong Women. You can sign up on the lower right side of the blog to receive monthly alerts to my posts.

You can also catch me on Twitter @LHsittig, my web page lindasittig.com, FaceBook at Linda Harris Sittig, and read my novels about Strong Women: Cut From Strong Cloth, Last Curtain Call, and Counting Crows – available in bookstores and online.

Peace and health to one and all.

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Phoebe Burn: Tennessee Strong by Linda Harris Sittig

Posted on August 1, 2020 by lhsittig@verizon.net

Before I share Phoebe’s story, I need to tell you it was a story 72 years in the making.

THE BACKGROUND

The narrative begins on July 19, 1848, in Seneca Falls, New York. You might recognize the town as the setting for the Hollywood Christmas classic, “It’s A Wonderful Life,” starring Jimmy Stewart.

But for over 8 million American women who were the first ever to vote in a national election, Seneca Falls holds far more importance than a Hollywood movie set.

On July 19, 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton stood in the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in Seneca Falls and offered her Declaration of Sentiments: “We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Elizabeth Stanton was a housewife, soon to be an activist. Her Declaration of Sentiments was modeled after the Declaration of Independence but addressed discrimination against women. At that time in history, American women could not own property, claim their working wages, sue for divorce, serve on a jury, or vote.

Elizabeth was held to ridicule by many in the crowd, but one notable man – Frederick Douglas rose to defend her and stood by her side.

The issue of suffrage (voting) would be hotly contested state by state for the next 21 years until 1869 when Wyoming issued women the right to vote. However, to make the change happen for all women, there would need to be a U.S.Constitutional Amendment.

As the women suffragists were campaigning for an amendment, many marched in protest parades, others were arrested for picketing in front of the White House, and still more were holding political rallies that urged Votes for Women. For a Constitutional Amendment to become law, it must pass by a two-thirds majority in Congress and then be ratified by three-fourths of all the states.

Now fast forward to 1918, just one month before the end of the Great War (WWI), the Senate defeated the proposed Amendment – two votes shy of passing. Then comes early 1919, and the suffragists ratcheted up their campaign. This time the Senate defeated the proposed Amendment by only one vote.

Finally, in June 1919, the 19th Amendment passed both the House and the Senate. And you would think that hurrah, a great feat accomplished!

However, many individual states still opposed the Amendment, especially in the South. By the spring of 1920, only 35 states had approved the Amendment, one state short of the required three-fourths.

PHOEBE BURN

Phoebe Burn now enters into the story.

Born in 1873 in McMinn County, eastern Tennessee, Phoebe Ensminger, known by her nickname of Febb, was by all accounts feisty, strong-willed, and incredibly well-read. After graduating from U.S. Grant Memorial University (now Tennessee Wesleyan), Phoebe became a teacher and then married James Lafayette Burn.

She helped run his farm and became adept at milking cows, churning butter, raising crops, and raising four children. And, oh yes, subscribing to and reading four different newspapers and a dozen magazines.

She educated herself on both local and national politics. And although McMinn County was conservatively anti-suffrage, Phoebe thought of how the illiterate, uninformed male tenants on her farm were allowed to vote, but she could not.

On August 17, 1920, she was reading a barrage of bitter anti-suffrage letters to the editor in the local paper when she felt compelled to write to her son, Harry T. Burn, the youngest Senator from Tennessee. Her seven-page letter started with family and local news but progressed to the real heart of the matter.

THE HISTORIC LETTER

“Dear Son,… Hurray and vote for suffrage and don’t keep them in doubt. I have read the bitter speeches and have been waiting to see how you stood (on the issue) but have not seen anything from you yet. Don’t forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. ‘Thomas Catt’ with her “Rats.” Is she the one that put ‘rat’ in ratification? Ha!”

Her son received the letter the next day in Nashville, and as the Honorable Harry T. Burn sat in the state capital with the other politicians in the Tennessee House. He conspicuously sported a red rose in his lapel. The red rose was the symbol of those opposed to suffrage, where a yellow rose signified being pro-suffrage.

Today was the special session of the state congress to vote on the proposed suffrage amendment. Harry knew that if passed, it would mean that the 19th Amendment would become law for the entire country. With his mother’s letter tucked in his pocket, he considered how hard she had worked her entire life. The day was already hot and muggy, and the room packed with supporters of both sides. Harry continued thinking about his mother.

One by the one, the votes were cast. When Harry stood to cast his vote, the anti-suffrage people wore jubilant smiles because of the red rose in his lapel.

And then, in a history-making moment, Harry pulled the red rose out of his lapel and voted for the 19th Amendment. Pandemonium broke out, but the die had been cast. With Harry Burn’s vote, urged by his mother, Phoebe Burn, Tennessee ratified the 19th Amendment, and it became constitutional law.

There would be difficult years to come. The Jim Crow laws would deny women of color voting privilege, and the fight for women’s equality in the workplace has continued for decades. August 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of women getting the right to vote. November 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of women voting for a President of their choice.

There are approximately 39.5 million women in America old enough to vote for the first time, and every single one of us should remember that it is an honor that was hard fought for by our women ancestors.

Remember Phoebe’s words: Hurray and Vote!

If you’d like to learn more about strong women, watch me on this YouTube clip AND become a follower of this blog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuTOr2CvZ_Y

~ Linda

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Book Women by Linda Harris Sittig

Posted on July 1, 2020 by lhsittig@verizon.net

One positive aspect of COVID 19 is that people are reading more. And while reading is always an excellent pastime, please take a moment to consider ordering your books from independent bookstores, whose very existence must compete with the online sites of mammoth distributors.

In 2019 there were 2,524 independent bookstores in America. I hope that they all survive.

One of my earlier work fantasies was to run a bookstore. Like many other bibliophiles, it seems like the perfect existence, just be surrounded by books, book lovers, and cozy spaces.

However, it takes way more than that to run one successfully, as both Elizabeth Timothy and Mary Katherine Goddard soon found out.

Elizabeth Timothy is often credited as the first female publisher in America to own and operate a bookstore. As with many of the colonial bookstores, it was a part of Elizabeth’s printing business. At age 36, in 1738, she found herself a widow and took over her husband’s printing business in Charleston, S.C. On the side, she also printed and sold books, and oh yes, raised her six children.

If we jump ahead to 1775, we find Mary Katherine Goddard. She worked as a postmistress in Baltimore, Maryland, and ran a printing business with her brother. In addition to printing, she also offered books for sale. Her other claim to fame is that she printed the second copy of the Declaration of Independence with all of the signers’ names.

It seems that through the ages, women ran bookstores alongside men.

Of course, without writers, there would not have been any books to sell.

The first female writer to have a secular book published was Anne Bradstreet from Massachusetts in 1650. Her brother-in-law took her book of poems and had them published in London, then returned with the copies to the colony of Massachusetts.

In 1682 Mary Rowlandson wrote of her experiences as a captive of the Wampanoag tribe of Rhode Island. It was a captivating story (yes, an intended pun) because it went through 30 editions.

Within the next one hundred years, poetry from free African-Americans such as Phyllis Wheatley was published and in popular demand. By 1833 anti-slavery books were coming into print, alerting the nation to the evils of slavery in our own country.

One might think that libraries and bookstores would be competing against one another. But that was not the case. Readers who wanted to own a particular book could only do so through a bookstore, and free public libraries were few and far between.

John Harvard bequeathed his 380-book collection to the new college at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1638, establishing the most extensive library in colonial America. In 1731 Benjamin Franklin started a subscription library in Philadelphia. If a patron wanted to borrow a book, they paid a small fee to do so.

And as early as 1731, women were running small businesses where they would loan books, sell books, publish a newspaper and run the local post office—often while managing a family full of children.

The large public libraries in Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York were established in the second half of the nineteenth century.

What about stand-alone bookstores?

Elizabeth Peabody started one of the early ones in the parlor of her Boston home in 1839 and named it The West Street bookstore. The earliest African-American bookstore seems to have been operated by David Ruggles in 1834, New York.

By 1913 more and more bookshops were being opened by women, perhaps coinciding with the women’s movement for voting rights and equality with men.

In 1916, Madge Jenison and Mary Horgan Mowbray-Clark opened a bookstore in New York City called the Sunwise Turn Bookshop. They would go on to become founding members of the Women’s National Book Association started in 1917 after female booksellers were denied membership in the all-male American Booksellers Association.  

One of my favorite quotes is by educator Horace Mann who said, ‘a house without books is like a room without windows.’ This adage rings even more poignant to me with the many controversial issues now in America. We need books to educate ourselves more than ever before.

Thank you to Jilann Burnett, co-owner of Second Chapter Books in Middleburg, VA, who was the inspiration behind this month’s blog. Also, a hearty thanks to the Women’s National Book Association. Their invaluable work, Women in the Literary Landscape, provided the bulk of the research for me this month.

The photo credit for this month is Sierra Maciorowski, photographer from California.

And I would be remiss without thanking the following indie bookstores who carry my three novels: Cut From Strong Cloth, Last Curtain Call, and Counting Crows. In alphabetical order:

G.J. Ford Bookshop – St. Simons Island, GA

Main Street Books – Frostburg, MD

Second Chapter Books – Middleburg, VA

The Book Center – Cumberland, MD

Winchester Book Gallery – Winchester, VA

Stay healthy my friends, curl up with a good book, and pass my blog onto a friend!

~ Linda

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The Women of World War Two by Linda Harris Sittig

Posted on June 1, 2020 by lhsittig@verizon.net

The Women of World War II by Linda Harris Sittig

In 1942, when thousands of American men marched nobly off to war, thousands of American women made an important decision—they gallantly joined the war effort on the home front.

You’ve probably heard of the Rosie Girls, the women who joined the air industry, riveting military airplanes that would go overseas. But other women built ships, worked as cryptologists, journalists, nurses, entertainers, aviators, and spies.

Countless women, both black and white, stepped up to the challenge of protecting freedom.

One of those women was Ruth Erickson.

Born and raised in Virginia, Minnesota, Ruth became a navy corps nurse and counted her good fortune to be stationed near beautiful Pearl Harbor. She arrived in Hawaii shortly before December 1941.

Then, close to 8:00 AM, on December 7th, 353 Japanese airplanes swooped down out of the calm Sunday morning sky, targeting the U.S. ships lying in the blue waters of Pearl Harbor. Before the day was over, 1,143 servicemen would be injured and require medical intervention.

Ruth treated her first patient within twenty minutes of the initial attack and worked with the hospital staff continuously throughout the day and well into the night, stopping before midnight only when complete exhaustion took over.

For the next ten days, the medical team, including Ruth, did all they could to ease the pain and suffering of the wounded.

After Pearl Harbor, Ruth decided to continue her career as a naval nurse. Eventually, she became Captain Ruth Erickson, director of the U.S. Naval Nurse Corps.

Another Minnesota woman, Mary Welsh, parlayed her journalist talents to become a correspondent for the London Daily Times.

Headstrong and with a keen eye for detail, she was dispatched in September 1938 to Munich, Germany, to cover the visit of the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, with Adolf Hitler, the German Führer.

Mary obtained a suite at the Grand Regina Palast Hotel and settled in to cover whatever story unfolded. She soon witnessed the arrival of Benito Mussolini, Edouard Daladier, Neville Chamberlain, and Adolf Hitler—the four most potent leaders in Europe.

The historic meeting became known as The Munich Agreement in which Great Britain, France, and Italy permitted Germany to annex the Sudetenland of western Czechoslovakia. Neville Chamberlain held a short press conference announcing the news.

Mary quickly wrote her story, then went to the hotel lobby where she had paid a young boy to read continuously to a London Daily operator, thus ensuring an open telephone line. Mary breathlessly dictated her story via the free phone line and snagged one of the first published accounts of what would become WWII.

Mary continued her stellar journalist career throughout the war, and eventually became the fourth and final wife of Ernest Hemingway.

Charity Adams Early had grown up in Columbia, S.C., and earned a college degree, but wanted to join the military at the outbreak of the war. Since women were not yet allowed to enlist, Charity applied for a position in the newly formed WAAC, the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps.

Thirty thousand women applied for the 440 slots for the first officer training class. Determined, Charity knew she had to be better than best because she was an African-American. The U.S. Army had predetermined that only 10.6% of the WAAC could be black. This was to coincide with the approximate percentage of African-Americans in the U.S. population.

On July 20, 1942, Charity arrived at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, to begin her training. By 1944 she had become Major Adams, the first African-American training supervisor and instrumental in the formation of the first and only Army all-black female band.

Under the guise of ordering recreational equipment, Charity procured the musical instruments. The band had a time order—be prepared within eight weeks for their concert. Most of their members had no formal musical training, and in the act of solidarity, the white female band offered to teach anyone how to read sheet music.

The African-American women’s band performed with rousing success and went on to play together until the end of the war. These were the women to bolster the spirits of the black soldiers far from home and spur the American public to support the war through war bonds.

By the end of WWII, 6,500 African-American women served in the renamed WAC, Women’s Army Corps. After the war, 855 black servicewomen followed now Major Charity Adams overseas to England. Their assignment was to organize the warehouse of stockpiled Army mail. Within months they redirected the stagnant mail to over 7 million soldiers.

Charity had been the first black woman to become an officer in the WAC and ended her career as a Lieutenant Colonel. After the war, she devoted the rest of her life to community service and civil rights awareness.

How about Betty Crocker?

While Betty was fictional, the real woman behind the brand was yet another Minnesota woman, Marjorie Child Husted.

Born in Minneapolis, she earned a degree from the University of Minnesota in home economics. When WWII broke out, she took a job with the Red Cross. Next, she became a home economist for the Washburn-Crosby Company, the producers of Gold Medal Flour.

Marjorie created the Betty Crocker’s Cooking School, a radio program where she broadcast cooking tips, kitchen-tested recipes, and advice to American women faced with food rationing and victory gardens.

So astute was Marjorie’s marketing expertise that she propelled the Betty Crocker brand to ensure that Gold Medal Flour would be a staple in American kitchens for generations yet to come.

Thank you to Virginia M. Wright-Peterson, whose book, A Woman’s War, Too, inspired this month’s blog. Another thanks to Carrie Hagen, a Philadelphia writer, whose research on Charity Adams Earley, allowed me to learn about the African-American women who served in WWII.

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

Sign up to become a follower, and look for my newest historical fiction novel, Counting Crows, on Amazon at www.amzn.com/1940553091.

~ Linda EVERY WOMAN DESERVES TO HAVE HER STORY TOLD

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June Hart Almeida: Coronavirus Scientist

Posted on May 1, 2020 by lhsittig@verizon.net

June Hart Almeida rose above her humble Scottish roots, and, discovered the coronavirus in 1964 when she was 34 years old.

Yes, you read that correctly. June discovered the coronavirus back in 1964 – the same virus that has brought our modern world of 2020 to its knees.

Born in 1930, June lived with her parents in a stark tenement apartment complex in the east end of industrial Glasgow.

What the apartment complex lacked in curb appeal became tolerable because of the beautiful Alexandra Park, only a short walk away.

The park allowed June to wander its meandering pathways, enjoy the blossoms of its rhododendrons, and trail her fingers in the ornate Saracen Water Fountain. Children and adults alike were drawn to its 40-foot-high showering plume.

For years, her teachers had told her she was an outstanding student with stellar grades. But smart wasn’t enough. In 1946 her four years of secondary school (high school) ended, and her father explained that his bus driver’s salary couldn’t cover university expenses.

June could have sulked, she could have indulged in a pity party, but she did neither.  She was a Scot, and strength ran in her blood.

Scanning the newspaper, she saw the possibility of applying for a job at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary (hospital). She started as a lab technician in histopathology, where she would examine tissue samples for evidence of disease. This might not have been the job of her dreams, but the salary of 25 shillings a week (approximately 83 pounds sterling today) helped with her family’s expenses.

In a short period, June was pleasantly surprised that she found the lab work interesting. Studying tissue samples peeked her curious mind.

Within a few years, she moved on to a job in London, England, at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, where she continued studying tissue samples. Then, in 1954, while working in London, she met and married Enrique Almeida, a Venezuelan artist.

The following year they moved with their young daughter to Toronto, Canada, and June found laboratory work at the Ontario Cancer Institute working as an electron microscopy technician. Toronto would have been a welcomed change. Most of Europe had sustained substantial bombing during WWII, but Toronto was modern and clear of destruction.

Her new job became her gateway to scientific recognition. By 1963 she began to co-author several articles in prominent scientific publications, which without a degree would have been impossible back in Britain. Most of her writings centered around the structure of viruses, which before the electron microscope had not been clearly visible.

June might have stayed with this job, but in 1964 Professor A P Waterson, the chair of the microbiology department of St. Thomas’s Hospital Medical School in London, met her on his visit to Toronto.

They talked about science and viruses and innovative techniques for identifying new diseases. Struck by June’s intelligence, work ethic, and her impressive skill with an electron microscope, Professor Waterson invited her to join him professionally at St. Thomas Hospital Medical School.

While this meant moving back to London, St. Thomas’ was one of the most prestigious schools in England, and June knew she would have opportunities she could not find elsewhere.

Within two years, she was working on the hepatitis B virus and the virus that causes the common cold. She then began to collaborate with Dr. David Tyrell, director of research at St. Thomas. She shared with him her original technique, called immune-electron microscopy, which allowed doctors to obtain better images of viruses.

She then earned her DSc, Doctor of Science, and was now Dr. Almeida. Together, she and Dr. Tyrrell searched to identify new viruses.

They hit upon a virus known in the lab as B814. Obtaining the sample from a nasal washing of a schoolboy, they thought he had a common cold. But under the electron microscope, Dr. June Almeida recognized the pattern of his virus was unlike any other human virus she had studied. June commented that what made B814 distinctive was the crown-like appearance of tiny spikes surrounding the rim of the virus. Together, Dr. Tyrrell and Dr. Almeida named the new human virus, coronavirus.

The year was 1964. June Hart Almeida was 34 years old.

June spent the rest of her scientific career researching and teaching other virologists. In time, her innovative techniques helped to identify many viruses.

In late 2019 the Chinese government used her electron microscopy techniques to identify a unique virus that was spreading through the Chinese population at an alarming rate.

It was the coronavirus, the same one that Dr. June Hart Almeida had discovered fifty plus years ago.

You may be asking yourself, ‘how does a young Scottish girl without any higher education go on to become a prominent scientist?’

The answer would be persistence.

I hope you have enjoyed June Hart Almeida’s story. If you are not yet a follower of Strong Women, please sign up on the right side of the blog. In the meantime, look for my newest novel, Counting Crows, that tells the story of how New Yorkers dealt with the Flu Pandemic of 1918 as it ravaged their city. So many parallels to today! www.amzn.com/1940553091.

~ Linda

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Frances Oldham Kelsey: Medical Advocate by Linda Harris Sittig

Posted on April 1, 2020 by lhsittig@verizon.net

With everyone anxious about getting a coronavirus vaccine, I thought I would highlight a very different scenario. One that tells the story about Frances Oldham Kelsey, a Canadian pharmacologist who came under intense pressure to sign off on a new drug in the early 1960s.

Born in 1914 on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Frances came to the United States in the 1930s to pursue medical training. She received her Ph.D. in pharmacology from the University of Chicago in 1938 and her M.D., also from Chicago in 1950.

Along the way, while in medical school, she married Dr. Fremont Kelsey and later gave birth to two daughters.

Continuing to carry dual citizenship, the now Dr. Frances Kelsey was hired by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1960 to review the drug licensing program.

Meanwhile, in Germany, a pharmaceutical company had synthesized a new sedation drug to be used as a safe alternative to barbiturates. The drug, known as thalidomide, did not appear to be toxic or have any detrimental side effects.

Although the drug’s intended use was as a sedative, it also seemed to quell nausea in pregnant women, thereby alleviating the issue of ‘morning sickness.’

At first, the drug was marketed as an anti-flu medication and could be procured in Europe without a prescription. Thousands of free samples were distributed to doctors in Europe, Japan, and the United States.

In a rush to get the drug approved, sufficient long-term studies were lacking.

Thalidomide seemed to be a miracle drug, and although the German pharmaceutical company had no reliable evidence to its complete safety, the marketing campaign was successful.

Frances and her family had moved to Washington D.C. and it was her first month on the job for the Food and Drug Administration. The German pharmaceutical company attempted to woo the American agency in the hopes of receiving the go-ahead for licensing in the United States. Frances hesitated because there was a lack of clinical evidence about potential side effects.

She studied the research, then put her new career on the line, not willing to compromise, and flatly refused.

Within months of her refusal, disturbing reports began to surface that babies born to mothers who had taken the thalidomide were born with severe deformities. By November 1961, the United Kingdom pulled the drug from their markets, and then Germany followed suit.

But it was too late for thousands of unborn babies, some of whom would be born to American mothers who had received the thalidomide samples from their doctors.

As 1961 turned into 1962, American magazines picked up the thalidomide story and published heartbreaking photos of the babies born with deformities.

Over 10,000 children worldwide were born with thalidomide defects, missing arms and or legs, fingers and toes, extra fingers and toes, partial hearing and or vision loss, and even paralysis of facial muscles. Many thalidomide infants died within days of birth.

The United States government quickly advised all doctors to stop dispensing the drug.

On August 7, 1962, President John F. Kennedy awarded Frances Kelsey the President’s Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service. In his speech, he praised Frances’s diligent efforts that helped to minimize the thalidomide tragedy in America.

She was the second female ever to have been given this award.

Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey spent the remainder of her 45-year career with the F.D.A. and, in 2000, was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. She died in 2015, at the age of 101, secure in the knowledge that she had made the right decision in 1960.

Sometimes, strong women are those who do not rush to agree with the popular ideas of the day.

If you enjoyed Frances’s story and are not yet a follower of Strong Women, do sign up at the bottom right side of the blog with your email. If you would like the addition of a small one-page newsletter once a month from me, please contact me, linda@lindasittig.com.

Till next month, you can catch me on Twitter @LHsittig or Instagram @LHsittig or Facebook at Linda Harris Sittig. The links to my three novels of historical fiction, featuring strong female protagonists are:

www.amzn.com/1940553024        Cut From Strong Cloth

www.amzn.com/1940553067        Last Curtain Call

www.amzn.com/1940553091        Counting Crows

~ Linda – please everyone, stay healthy!

Posted in short biographies, strong women, women | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Amazon Warrior Women: Then and Now by Linda Harris Sittig

Posted on February 28, 2020 by lhsittig@verizon.net
image by Christian-mts0 from Pixabay

Mention Amazon Warrior Women, and you may think I am referring to Wonder Woman of the DC Comic Series.

However, recent archeological evidence now substantiates the previous existence of such a group.

The Amazon women were profiled in stories told by the Greeks in approximately 700 B.C. and described as fierce horseback riding warriors who rode undaunted into battle while wielding their war bows. Their fame was further cemented when the Greek poet Homer included them in his epic, The Iliad.

Within the last month, archeologists unearthed a grave filled with the remains of four female warriors buried with their cache of spears, arrowheads, and horseback riding equipment – almost identical to the descriptions of the Greek stories.

The location of the burial site is in present-day western Russia, on the steppes, very near to where the Greeks believed the Amazons lived.

The remains have been identified as female Scythian nomads buried approximately 2,500 years ago. The women range in age from early teens to women in their forties, indicating that girls were trained young to become warriors.

But today, there is a new category of Amazon Warrior Women.

There are indigenous women warriors in the Amazon rainforest of Brazil fighting to preserve the legacy of the forest.

This effort is being spearheaded by Ajareaty Waiapi, a female chief, working to alert the world of alarming deforestation and the critical need to preserve the health of our planet.

Ajareaty Waiapi’s village lies in the remote northeastern region of Brazil, in the state of Amapa, close to French Guiana. Her people, who only in recent times have come in contact with outsiders, have lived for countless generations as stewards of the Amazon.

With knowledge passed down from elders, Ajareaty knows the medicinal value of the Amazon plants that surround her. She also possesses the acute understanding that as outsiders come to burn off the trees for illegal cattle farming and push the indigenous people off their ancestral lands for profitable mining, the rainforest is in great peril of survival.

Not formally educated as a child, Ajareaty enrolled in school at age 59 to learn Portuguese, so she could converse in the language of the white man and appeal to them about the plight of the forest.

Lest you think that this is Brazil’s problem, might I remind you that the Amazon Rain Forest produces 20 percent of the oxygen for our planet and is often referred to as the ‘lungs of Earth.’ Without the trees of the rain forest, our climate change could become truly catastrophic.

According to the renowned biologist, Mark Horn, the Amazon forest helps maintain Earth’s water cycle by producing large quantities of rainfall every year. Moisture from the Amazon influences rainfall as far away as Central America and the western United States.

And, the Amazon is home to more plant and animal species than any other terrestrial ecosystem on the planet, including at least 40,000 plant species, 2.5 million insect species, 2,200 fishes species, and 427 mammal species. One in five of all bird species lives in the Amazon rainforest.

But the land of the Amazon is lucrative for hunters, cattle farmers, loggers, and miners.

And no one knows that better than the current Brazilan government.

Ajareaty has spent the last few years traveling outside the forest, speaking to influential groups in Germany and the Netherlands in the hopes of raising support to save the Rain Forest. Male chiefs from her area have also traveled abroad to the United Nations in New York City to ask for international assistance.

While back home, Ajareaty dons the traditional red skirt of her village, rubs her face and arms with a paste she makes from seeds of the achiote bush to protect her from the sun and insects.

She travels throughout the jungle, checking on neighboring villages and teaching her adult daughter and other women the importance of saving the trees.

“If the forest is gone, people will also end. I am fighting for future generations.”

A true warrior.

If you enjoyed this month’s story and are not yet a follower of the blog, please sign up on the right side so you can be counted as a follower of Strong Women. In addition to blogging about Strong Women, I have three published novels about the Strong Women of the Canavan family from Philadelphia. The link is www.amzn.com/1940553091. The titles are Cut From Strong Cloth, Last Curtain Call, and Counting Crows.

~ Linda

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Cockacoeske: an Early Virginia Politician by Linda Harris Sittig

Posted on February 1, 2020 by lhsittig@verizon.net

You may be aware that the state legislature of Virginia recently voted to finalize passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, better known as the ERA.

Virginia is now the 38th state to ratify the amendment that would guarantee equal rights for American women.

Whether this will occur or not, rests on the former time limit imposed for ratification of Constitutional amendments.

In the meantime, the capital city of Richmond has started an ambitious project: the Virginia Women’s Monument: Voices from the Garden. The project will ultimately include 12 bronze statues of notable Virginia women, many of whose names you would not necessarily know. An additional 230 women’s names will be inscribed on the monument, which will rest on Richmond’s Capitol Square.

The chosen women came from all walks of life and represented multiple races. They were selected because they persevered against overwhelming odds and their contributions helped to change the course of Virginia and American history.

In alphabetical order: Sarah Garland Boyd, Adèle Clark, Cockacoeske, Laura Lu Scherer Copenhaver, Mary Draper Ingles, Elizabeth Keckley, Anne Burras Laydon, Virginia E. Randolph, Clementina Rind, Sally Louisa Tompkins, Maggie L. Walker, and Martha Washington.

Here is the story of Cockacoeske, the only Native American woman among the twelve statues.

While there were numerous tribes in Virginia when the English landed at Jamestown in 1607, the native peoples all hailed from three distinct language groups. The Algonquian, the Siouan, and the Iroquoian. The formidable Powhatan Confederacy belonged to the Algonquian language group and their 8,000 members lived on the land where the English wished to settle.

The area controlled by the Powhatans was bounded on the north by the Potomac River, the west by the Fall Line, the south by the present-day North Carolina border, and the east by the Atlantic Ocean.

From the onset of the attempt to colonize, clashes, often fatal, occurred between the native peoples and the English.

Ill-equipped to forge a life in the wilderness the 500 English colonists who populated Jamestown in the spring of 1609 quickly began to succumb. By the spring of 1610, only 60 remained alive. Seen as invaders, the local Indians did not provide the colonists with needed food.

By the time that Cockacoeske was born in approximately 1646, the number of colonists had rebounded but their relations with the native peoples had further deteriorated.

Cockacoeske grew up in the Powhatan Confederacy in the Pamunkey Tribe and was the grand-niece of Pocahontas. Cockacoeske married a tribal leader whose name was Totopotomoi and they lived on land that would be considered the Middle Peninsula of Tidewater Virginia, today. When Cockacoeske’s husband was killed in 1656, she succeeded him as the leader of the Pamunkey Tribe.

At sixteen years of age, she became the Pamunkey Queen.

One of the most undisputed historical facts is her tireless effort to support her people as the leader of the Pamunkey Tribe. Her thirty-year reign ended only with her death.

Another remarkable fact is that she was an astute politician.

In 1676, during Nathaniel Bacon’s Rebellion, Governor Berkeley of Jamestown requested Cockacoeske’s assistance in providing him with armed men who could help quell the rebellion.  Bacon retaliated by massacring 50 of her people.

The following year, Cockacoeske signed the Treaty of Middle Plantation in Williamsburg, with the caveat that several of the local tribes would be reunited under her authority, hopefully ending hostilities between the English colonists and the Virginia Indians. In return for proclaiming her loyalty to King Charles II of England, she negotiated that the tribes over which she had dominion were granted title to their lands, access to their waterways, and protection from enslavement.

Those lands today are the Pamunkey Indian Reservation not far from Colonial Williamsburg.

Tattooed on her chin, arm, and wrist to denote her royal rank, she was by all accounts an imposing figure when she journeyed to Jamestown to negotiate with the Governor. Not to be outsmarted due to a language barrier, she brought along an interpreter and her son, John West.

Queen from age sixteen to age forty-six, Cockacoeske ruled as an unmarried matriarch and died sometime in 1686, leaving behind her son, John West, fathered by an English colonel. Her legacy ensured that her people’s land would be protected long after she was gone.

Move over Pocahontas, Cockacoeske deserves her rightful fame.

If you enjoyed this month’s story and are not yet a follower of the blog, please sign up on the right sidebar. If you would like to read full novels about Strong Women from the past, check out my titles: Cut From Strong Cloth, Last Curtain Call, and Counting Crows – all available in bookstores and online through Kindle and Amazon.

~ Linda

Every woman deserves to have her story told.

Posted in history, short biographies, strong women | Tagged , , | 6 Comments