Diane Crump: Run for the Roses by Linda Harris Sittig

Posted on June 1, 2019 by lhsittig@verizon.net

The year 2019 will stand out in Derby chronicles due to the controversy when Maximum Security was stripped of the win because of jockey interference. The only other horse to win, then lose the title was Dancer’s Image in 1968 who failed a post-race drug test.

The Kentucky Derby is considered to be one of the most famous horse races in the world. An estimated 18 million viewers watched it on television this past May. Over 150,00 spectators attended the race to see who would win the Run for the Roses with a purse of $3 million.

However, there is another controversy few people know.

In 1970, Diane Crump was the first female to ride in the Kentucky Derby, much to the dismay of several male jockeys and a multitude of male spectators.

Her story did not begin in 1970; it started in 1960 when Diane was 12 years old, and her family moved from Connecticut to Oldsmar, Florida. Like many young girls, Diane was fascinated with horses. She convinced her parents to let her have riding lessons at a nearby ranch, and in her spare time, she would go back to the stables and offer to help out.

Each experience around horses only solidified her passion for both the animal and the sport of riding.

This was the ‘60s. Think, Beatles, Bob Dylan, and protests against the Viet Nam War.

Diane did not set out to protest anything; she just wanted to ride, professionally. However, in 1961, women in America were not allowed to obtain a jockey license.

The rules, however, could not stop Diane from being around racehorses. During any free time, Diane would help to exercise horses at local stables or groom them. Eventually, she volunteered at the old Florida Downs track, where she could watch the magnificent animals run.

In January 1969, female trainer Mary Keim nominated Diane for a race, but the horse was not selected.

The following month Diane learned she could ride a horse named Bridle ’N Bit at the Hialeah Race Track, trained by Tom Calumet of Chicago. It was Tom’s wife, Catherine Calumet, who said that Diane Crump should be the jockey. Several male riders threatened to boycott the race, but that did not deter Diane.

The crowds were immense. Over 5,000 came to Hialeah to see the 20-year-girl who would be the first-ever female jockey to ride in a pari-mutuel (gambling-sanctioned) race at a major thoroughbred track.

Diane, wearing the silks, had to shield her eyes from the photographer’s flashbulbs. A full group of policemen escorted her to the track, due to the overwhelming numbers of hecklers in the large crowd; many of whom chanted, ‘Go back to the kitchen and cook dinner!’

As in any race, the air was electrified with possibilities of success. The Florida winter sun warmed the track under a brilliant blue sky. Her heart beating with anticipation, Diane lowered her goggles around her tousled brown hair and raced.

She didn’t win, but as she said later, “we rode well, and we beat two other horses.”

Her shot at the Kentucky Derby came one year later. She rode a three-year-old chestnut colt named Fathom and did not win; yet, in a way she did, becoming the first woman ever to ride in the Derby.

The Kentucky Derby is the longest running sporting event in America. It dates back to 1875 when Meriwether Lewis Clark (grandson of famous explorer William Clark from the Lewis & Clark expedition) procured both the land and the funds to establish a major race track similar to the mode of British racing.

During the inaugural race, 15 horses competed in front of a crowd of 10,000 spectators. Through the years the track would be called Churchill Downs, and in 1925 the race became known as the “Run for the Roses,” because of the garland of red roses worn by the winning horse.

It is still considered to be America’s most prestigious horse race.

When asked about the experience of being the first female jockey to ride in the Derby, Diane said it was a thrill. However, the true joy came from riding the horse, not because she was the first female to enter the event.

During her career of over 30 years of racing, Diane rode 300 winners, in addition to being only one of six women to ever ride in the Kentucky Derby.

After the birth of her two daughters, Diane had to juggle family life with racing. Then in 1992, a nightmare accident with a horse curtailed her riding career.

It had been a normal day, but the horse suddenly reared up and fell over backward, pinning Diane underneath. She had had accidents before, but not to this extent. Her ankle was broken, and her leg bone shattered in six places. It took the doctors over seven hours to pin the ankle, graft bone, and insert a rod into her leg.

Everyone said her riding days were over.

But they weren’t. Diane went on to help train horses and rode again until 1998; then she opened up an equine sales business where she helps buyers find the perfect horse.

What made her a champion? Paraphrased from her words:

“Live your dream. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t or that you’re not good enough. Life gives us something every single day – a chance.”

Strong women often open the door for others.

Thank you to blog-follower Holly Fontaine, who wrote in suggesting Diane Crump’s story. I loved learning about Diane.

Sign up on the right sidebar to become a follower of Strong Women. You can also catch me on Twitter @LHSittig or my webpage, www.lindasittig.com. My two novels Cut From Strong Cloth and Last Curtain Call are available in bookstores and on Amazon at www.amzn.com/1940553024.

~Linda

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A Mother’s Day Perspective by Linda Harris Sittig

Posted on May 2, 2019 by lhsittig@verizon.net

May is the month of Mother’s Day, an appropriate time to honor mothers everywhere. But I would like to pay special tribute to those Native American mothers whose children the federal government relocated for assimilation purposes.

To understand this travesty, one needs to begin back in 1830 when the Indian Removal Act forced Native Americans to move west of the Mississippi River so their homelands could be made available to white settlers. After the Civil War (1865), the government looked for a way to subdue Native American tribes in the west, while supposedly improving their chances of functioning within a white society. The officials of that time decided that if Indians could be re-educated, the ‘Indian problem’ would be eliminated.

How better to do that, than remove Indian children from their families, send them to government-established boarding schools, force them to renege their native language and dress and train them to become working members of society.

The experiment started with an Indian school built in the late 1860s on the Yakima Reservation in Washington state. Then, the first Indian boarding school was built in 1879 in converted military barracks in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Named the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, it became the model for all future government-run boarding schools. It was also the only boarding school east of the Mississippi River, but its students came from the native tribes that had been relocated out West.

Additional boarding schools were then built in rapid succession.

In 1891 federal officials were given the authority to forcibly seize Native American children until school quotas were filled. Native American parents were threatened with the withholding of food rations and subsidies on the reservation unless they relinquished at least one of their children.

How does a parent decide which child to give up?

In many cases, parents were led to believe that their children would have a better life if educated by the government. Agents from the Bureau of Indian Affairs took children as young as five and the family often did not see that child again for many years. From the time of 1892 forward, thousands of native parents wept as their children were pulled away, loaded into wagons, and driven off the reservations—often to a destination hundreds of miles away.

The anguish of a native mother or father is disturbing to imagine. Some fought back against the government and were promptly arrested. Their children were taken anyway.

Immediately upon arrival at a school, the children received short hair cuts, their native clothing disappeared, and they were assigned Anglo names.  By dinner on their first day, they were introduced to an institutionalized diet based largely on starchy foods. Many children became malnourished.

Packed into overcrowded dormitories with poor sanitation, scrutinized and punished for talking in their native tongue, children fell sick to the diseases of tuberculosis, dysentery, and influenza. Most schools contained a graveyard on the property. While exact numbers are not available, reports from 1926 show 350 Indian schools, with over 60,000 Native children.

In 1928 the Brookings Institute made formal visits to the Indian schools and issued the Meriam Report. Recommendations for badly needed changes were stipulated, including educating younger children at community schools near their reservation homes.

The government disregarded the report.

The boarding school programs lasted for 99 years; from 1879 to 1978. Yes, you read that correctly. It was not until 1978 that the Indian Child Welfare Act guaranteed Native American parents the right to deny their child’s placement in an off-reservation school.

For the children who survived the horrors and the abuse in Indian schools, they became children without an identity. No longer Indian, and never white, these children entered society with the invisible scars of what today would be called PTSD: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Now imagine for a moment that you are a Native American mother. The year is 1914, and President Woodrow Wilson has just signed a proclamation that the second Sunday in May will henceforth be set aside to honor and celebrate mothers.

What would you have to celebrate?

Strong women often grieve in silence.

~ Linda

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Anna Lloyd-Jones: the Woman Behind Frank Lloyd Wright

Posted on April 1, 2019 by lhsittig@verizon.net

Frank Lloyd Wright has been hailed the most innovative American architect of the twentieth century.

Few people realize that it was one woman, Anna Lloyd-Jones, who profoundly shaped his destiny.

Born in West Dyfed, Wales, Anna at age six, her parents and five of her ten siblings, emigrated to New York. By 1844 they had arrived in Ixonia, Wisconsin. The family bought and sold acreage until they finally settled on the lush prairie banks of the Wisconsin River, near Spring Green.

Anna’s brothers became farmers, and one studied for the ministry. Two of her sisters became teachers, as did Anna.

In 1866, Anna at age 28 was still unmarried. Characterized by a fiercely independent spirit and austere personality, she may have scared off potential suitors. However, she met William Cary Wright, a widower with three small children, and married him.

Frank Lincoln Wright was born on June 8, 1867, and from the start, Anna idolized him.

While she was not particularly fond of her three step-children, she was determined that her son would grow to become someone of importance. For whatever reason, she landed on the idea of architecture as his calling.

While Frank was still in a crib, Anna tore out pictures from Harpers Weekly and hung them on the nursery walls for inspiration. Each illustration showed in detail a famous European cathedral.

With Frank as a toddler, Anna and William transferred to Iowa and William became a local pastor. For the next eight years, Anna and William would move, again and again, always looking for better employment.

Anna did not trust any local teacher to properly educate her son, so she taught him herself. After discovering Froebel blocks, invented by the German educator who instituted the concept of kindergartens, Anna purchased a set for Frank.

He was nine years old and instantly became fascinated with arranging and rearranging the smooth Maplewood rectangles, squares, cubes, and cylinders. Along with the blocks, Anna purchased squares of shiny paper and long cylindrical rods so that Frank could buttress his creations.

As Frank experimented with the Froebel blocks, he soon realized that all construction was based upon geometric shapes.

Two years later, while his parents’ marriage began to deteriorate, Frank was sent to help out on the Lloyd-Jones farm back in Spring Green, Wisconsin.

Frank hated the drudgery of farm life but took great delight in studying the landscape around the farm. He soon began to notice that even nature was designed upon geometric patterns. This idea would influence his life career.

By 1885, Anna’s brother, Jenkin Lloyd-Jones had become a prominent preacher within the Unitarian church in Chicago, Illinois. He hired an architect, Joseph Silsbee, to draw up plans for a chapel in the Jones Valley, near the Lloyd-Jones farm.

No documentation exists about the construction, except that a young boy offered to work as an assistant. Frank would have been ten years old at this time.

Six years later, Anna and William were living in Madison, Wisconsin when William filed for divorce from his loveless marriage. He gave Anna and the children the house but expected her family to support her. He walked away, and Frank never saw his father again.

Anna now threw her energies into helping her son gain admission to college. While Frank did not possess a high school diploma, Anna worked with him on his application, and he was admitted as a ‘special student’ to the University of Wisconsin. He would enroll in an engineering course, which to Anna was the precursor to architecture.

Not used to the rigors of academia, Frank did not excel at college and left after two semesters. With Anna’s counseling, he headed for Chicago, with only $7.00 in his pocket and stayed with her brother, Jenkin. In a short time, he joined Silsbee’s Chicago firm and started life as a proper architect’s assistant.

From there he moved onto another firm and eventually became America’s best-known designer of organic architecture – using the shapes and colors of the natural environment to give a building its feel of being one with nature.

Frank changed his name legally to Frank Lloyd Wright. It was Frank’s nod to the pervasive influence of his mother. Anna must have been delighted.

As Frank Lloyd Wright gained fame with his architecture, and scandal with his three marriages and a mistress, Anna stayed in the background, never far away. When he moved into his first house in Oak Park, in the distant Chicago suburbs, Anna moved nearby.

His first marriage crumbled, and Anna gave him acreage back on her family farm in Spring Green, so he could build a new house. He did, and named it Taliesin, a Welsh term meaning ‘under the brow’ (of the landscape).

Frank would go on to design some of the most celebrated buildings, the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the iconic Fallingwater house in Pennsylvania.

 A larger than life figure, he wore a cape and pork pie hat in chilly weather, and always dressed monochromatically, with a splash of vibrant red for his accent.

I had the privilege of visiting his Arizona estate, Taliesin West, where the desert biome is present in every aspect of his home and studio. My favorite quote from that visit is: The bottom of the sky is the hem of heaven.

When he died on April 9, 1959, at the age of 91, he was buried back in Wisconsin, in a grave near Anna’s side. However, when Frank’s last wife passed away, she left instructions for his body to be exhumed, cremated, and his ashes mixed with hers and interred at Taliesin West in Arizona.

I’m sure Anna was not pleased.

If you like to read more in-depth stories of strong women, here are the links to my two novels, Cut From Strong Cloth www.bit.ly/2SWkCIN and Last Curtain Call www.bit.ly/2TFgOQG.

You can also catch me on Twitter @LHsittig, Facebook as Linda Harris Sittig, and Pinterest as LHSittig. In the meantime, sign up on the right sidebar to become a monthly follower of Strong Women in History!

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Alice Herz-Sommer: Saved by Music by Linda Harris Sittig

Posted on March 1, 2019 by lhsittig@verizon.net

As people age, they often comment on their aches and pains.

What magic would have to occur in your life to live past 100, joyful every day? Would that even be possible if you had lost almost all your family during the Holocaust and had been imprisoned for over two years in a Nazi concentration camp?

Alice Herz-Sommer lived to the age of 110, dying just a week before Lady in Number Six, won the Academy Award for best documentary of 2014. It was the story of her incredible life.

Would Alice have been impressed with the award? I’m not sure. She would have been pleased, but she derived her endless joy in life from her music.

Born in 1903 in Prague (Czechoslovakia), which was then still a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Alice grew up in a cultured Jewish family where music was revered. She started piano lessons at the age of five and became one of the best-known pianists in Prague.

March 1939, saw Hitler’s army invade and occupy Czechoslovakia, forcing Jewish residents to relocate inside the Prague ghetto. The Jews were forced to sign away their businesses and their belongings. The Nazi’s confiscated their radios, even the family pets. Alice’s family learned to subsist under Nazi rule.

But then in 1942, as Alice stood by her side, her mother was deported to a camp. Alice channeled her sorrow by studying Chopin’s 24 Etudes, the most technically demanding piano pieces she had ever attempted.

Those Etudes would later save her life.

Three years later when Alice was 39, she, her husband and young son, were all sent to Theresienstadt. Her husband was then transferred to Auschwitz, where he died. While in Theresienstadt, Alice became part of the camp’s orchestra.

For the Nazi’s, the musical concerts were pure entertainment. For the prisoners, the music was their only form of moral support. Alice began to play Chopin’s Etudes from memory—smart enough to realize that if the Nazi’s wanted to hear her music, she would be kept alive. During her two-year imprisonment, Alice performed in over 100 concerts.

Day in and day out she played the piano. At night she slept side by side on a thin mattress with her young son Rafi, murmuring to him that they would be all right.

Theresienstadt was liberated in 1947. While approximately 35,000 prisoners had been murdered at Theresienstadt, including 15,000 children—Alice and Rafi were rescued. With no family left, they moved to Israel. Alice took a job teaching at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and held that position for the next 37 years.

In 1986, Rafi, now an accomplished cellist, decided to move to London for a job opportunity; Alice moved with him. At the age of 86, she took a one-room apartment, No. 6, in north London, and continued to do what she loved most–playing the piano.

She played for three hours a day, every day, up until the age of 109. Her reputation grew, and people lined up in front of her building at 10 a.m. every morning to listen to the strains of classical music float out her window.

I watched a documentary about the Lady in Number Six. I loved how Alice wore a string of pearls, and black lace-up tennis shoes as she sat at her piano. A mischievous smile brightened her elderly face. Age spots and gnarled fingers did not diminish the sparkle in her eyes or the spirit of contentment that enveloped her. I asked myself how was that possible, given the circumstances of her life. Music, of course, was the answer. Her music was her purpose, her passion.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the documentary:

“Life should never be taken for granted.”

“What matters most in life…is life itself.”

“Every day, life is beautiful.”

“Even now, I am still full of joy.”

Strong women come from every corner of the globe, but all have the connecting element of passion.

Thank you to Joy Westfall who sent me an email saying I had to look into the story of Alice Sommer. I am so glad I did!

If you enjoyed this month’s blog, please sign up on the right sidebar to become a follower. Join with 800 other readers who believe that strong women’s stories deserve to be told.

You can also catch me on Twitter @LHsittig, my author Facebook page at Linda Harris Sittig, and my website LindaSittig.com where you can learn about my journey in becoming a writer.

Here is the link to my two novels featuring strong female protagonists:

Cut From Strong Cloth https: //www.amzn.com/1940553024.

Last Curtain Call https://www.amzn.com/1940553067.

~ Linda

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Mary Freeman Kelly Spitzer: For the Love of Swimming by Linda Harris Sittig

Posted on February 1, 2019 by lhsittig@verizon.net

I usually make it a rule only to profile strong women who have passed away.

But for this month I want to make an exception. I am telling the story of Mary Freeman Kelly Spitzer, because her accomplishments were extraordinary, and yes, she is very much alive.

Born in 1933, Mary started swimming at the age of fourteen. She learned and practiced her strokes in the pool at the Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington D.C. where her father was a chemist on the staff.

Almost from the beginning, a competitive nature led her to push herself. Each time she swam, she tried to beat her previous times. The backstroke became her specialty.

By 1950 many Americans were leaving cities and moving to the suburbs. With this relocation and the availability of the new Polio vaccine, public swimming pools and swimming clubs prospered. Mary now had other girls to swim with, and compete against for awards.

By age eighteen, in 1951, Mary Freeman won the AAU National Championship Title in the backstroke and was designated as an Olympic hopeful. That honor put her on the July cover of LIFE magazine. Her aquatic accomplishmenst were quite noteworthy, since this is a full twenty-one years before Title IX was passed allowing women to compete in collegiate sports.

One year later, Mary was on her way to Helsinki, Finland, representing America in the Olympics. She was the top seed in the backstroke, but did not win the medal.

It was at the Helsinki Olympics, however, that Mary met her future first husband, Olympian Rower John Kelly Jr. of Philadelphia. They married in 1954, two years before his sister, Grace Kelly, married Prince Rainier of Monaco.

Mary Freeman Kelly and her husband bought a home in Philadelphia; she continued to swim, but retired from competition.

It would have been plausible for Mary to settle into a country club life and continue her swimming in club pools. However, she thought about the girls who loved to swim but did not have the opportunity to swim competitively.

After being asked to coach a swim team in a summer league, she decided to form her own swim team where girls who wanted to compete could learn the rigors of serious competition.

In 1955 Mary established one of the first all-women swim teams in the country. She named her team the Vesper Boat Club, which was the same title as the rowing team in Philadelphia for whom her husband competed.

At first, Mary’s team rented space from the mid-city YMCA pool, but then progressed to the Kelly Pool in Fairmont Park, which provided them with 50-meter swimming lanes. Later, the Vespers would train at the University of Pennsylvania’s pool.

By 1958 Mary had a swimmer in the finals of the women’s national championship.

Within two years, six of her girls swam at the U.S. Olympic Trials, and two of them qualified to compete at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, Italy.

The following year Mary coached her Vesper team to the AAU National Championships in Philadelphia, and they won.

Like any sport, swimming incurs fees. Instead of taking a coaching salary, Mary used the fees paid by her amateur athletes to rent the pool space where the team practiced.

What makes Mary Freeman Kelly Spitzer stand out among coaches is that she encouraged her athletes to be ladies first, swimmers second. She enforced an innovative and rigorous program for her girls, yet the swimmers attest to this day that she made each of them feel a part of the team, regardless of their proficiency level. Vivacious, yet humble, Mary became a role model for hundreds of girls throughout the years.

In 1964 Mary was asked to be an Olympic swimming coach for the United States, but she declined. With a husband, and five children, she opted instead to continue coaching the women’s swim team at the University of Pennsylvania, close to home.

In 1968, at the age of 34, Mary retired completely from coaching to be more involved in her children’s lives. But in the 13 years that she coached, Mary produced 15 national champions who went on to win 26 national titles among them. Her girls set 10 world records and sent swimmers to nine Olympic Trial finals. Twelve of her swimmers went on to become coaches themselves.

She and Jack Kelly divorced in 1980, and after his death in 1985, Mary married university professor, Alan Spitzer.

In 2008 she was the first female coach to be inducted into the ASCA Coaches Hall of Fame. In her interview she espoused that her love of the sport drove her to excel and her tenacious (she said aggressive) spirit propelled her to provide a competitive swimming experience for girls.

It is of interest to note that out of 71 coaches named to the ASCA Hall of Fame, only seven have been women—starting with Mary Freeman Kelly Spitzer.

Considered to be one of America’s greatest swim coaches, Mary’s swimmers still speak of her with fondness. Was she tenacious? Absolutely. But she was also gracious, kind, and a lady to the core– a true strong woman.

A tremendous thank you to both Mary Brundage DeLashmutt and Mary Ellen Olcese who alerted me to Mary Freeman’s story and then provided pertinent information to flesh out the details. Both Mary and Mary Ellen swam for Mary Freeman.

If you enjoyed this story and are not yet a follower of this blog, please sign up on the right side-bar to receive once a month posts. And if you have an extraordinary woman whose story you would love to share, please contact me. I am on Twitter @LHsittig, FaceBook as Linda Harris Sittig and my website: www.lindasittig.com.

Interested in other strong women? My two novels, Cut From Strong Cloth and Last Curtain Call are available in print and Kindle from bookstores and on Amazon.

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2019

Posted on January 15, 2019 by lhsittig@verizon.net

By Linda Harris Sittig

When I first started this blog seven years ago, I wanted to highlight women from all different backgrounds who had lived extraordinary lives by giving of themselves to make this world a better place.

I envisioned that they would come from different races and ethnic backgrounds, different countries and eras. What would bind them all together was my concept of a strong woman, a female who struggles to follow her passion and perseveres, even though obstacles litter her path.

I didn’t know back then how many women I would find. Now, almost eight years later I have written over 90 entries about amazing women from all walks of life. Two of them, Ellen Canavan and Annie Charbonneau, led me to write my first novels, Cut From Strong Cloth and Last Curtain Call. They are Book 1 and Book 2 of my “Threads of Courage” series.

As I sit here working on my third novel, and at the same time researching women for the blog, I am struck by the sheer number of everyday women who led strong lives, and yet, often did not receive credit for their accomplishments.

Not wanting to slight men, I acknowledge there have been many strong men who also spent their lives in helping others. And we often read about them.

However, history has often overlooked strong women. It was a Massachusetts wife, Abigail Adams, married to President John Adams, who wrote some prophetic words to him in 1776 while he was helping to draft the United States Constitution.

“Dear John, Remember the Ladies.”

Strong Women in History attempts to do just that.

A happy and healthy new year to all readers of this blog.

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Anna Coleman Ladd: an Artist Who Gave Back by Linda Harris Sittig

Posted on January 1, 2019 by lhsittig@verizon.net

Walt Whitman once said, “Keep your face always turned toward the sunshine and shadows will fall behind you.”

But WWI forever changed looking toward the sunshine.

The new military trench warfare of 1914 – 1919 saw soldiers popping their heads up out of the trench to look ahead—only to have parts of their faces blown off by enemy machine gun fire. Many soldiers survived, but at what cost?

Eight million soldiers died in WWI, 21 million were wounded, and over 20,000 in France alone were so badly disfigured that their lives were virtually destroyed. Returning home without a nose, or lips, or half of their face made the veterans visual outcasts in their own homeland. And since plastic surgery was not yet an advanced science, there was little hope for them to ever resume a normal life.

Living in France toward the conclusion of WWI, Anna Coleman Ladd, a sculptress from Boston, Massachusetts, saw a way to use her artistic talents. She would create masks for the mutilés de la face, men whose faces had been horribly disfigured by shrapnel, bullets, and/or flamethrowers.

With funding from the Red Cross, she opened a studio in Paris that would produce facial masks to hide the deformities inflicted by war.

Her first task was to get to know the men and have them feel safe in her studio. She talked with each patient about his family, his siblings, his life before the war. If he had any pre-war photographs of himself, she studied those, too.

Next, she would construct a plaster mold of the man’s face, filling in the parts that had been blown away in combat. Knowing that she could only give the patient one expression, she tried to construct each mask to be as nearly a replica of the victim’s former face as possible.

Once the plaster mask was complete her next step was to use a thin sheet of galvanized copper to cover the sections of the mask which hid the deformities. Finally, after many adjustments, she would have the veteran wear the copper mask in the studio while she painted it with flesh-tone enamel hardened onto the copper. The last step was to glue on any needed hair that could be trimmed to look like eyebrows, eyelashes, or a mustache.

The veteran simply hooked the mask onto his face by means of eyeglasses. The result was life changing. One man told Anna that he had not returned to his family after his discharge because the lower half of his face had been so badly mutilated, he was afraid he would scare his wife.

Each mask took approximately one month to complete. By the time the Red Cross lost the funding for the studio, Anna Coleman Ladd in two years had changed the lives of over 185 veterans, giving them the gift of being able to be seen again in public and return to their families.

After the war, Anna returned to Boston with her husband and reestablished herself as a neo-classical sculptress, creating many famous works such as the Triton Babies sculpture in the Boston Public Garden fountain.

But the French never forgot her kindness. In 1932 she was awarded the Cross of Chevalier (Knight) of the French Legion of Honor.

Not one of her masks still exist, nor the records of the names of the men she treated.

Modern day soldiers still experience the tragedy of facial disfiguration from combat wounds. But, today, those veterans receive facial prostheses made of silicone and acrylic, designed on a computer and held in place with implants.

Back in 1919 Anna Coleman Ladd could not have conceived of a world where surgical reconstruction would reach the heights of medical expertise. All she knew was that thousands of brave soldiers had sacrificed their faces in the war, and that she, in her own small way, could help restore some of their lives.

Whoever said that one person can’t make a difference? They can. Ask the 185 French men who were treated by one strong woman, Anna Coleman Ladd.

Thank you to Ann Livoti for sharing Anna’s amazing story with me.

Happy New Year to everyone. If you enjoyed this month’s blog, please do two things: 1) become a follower by signing up on the right sidebar and 2) encourage a friend to become a follower as well. I’ll be hard at work researching other amazing women whose stories deserve to be told, and finishing my third novel. You can check out my other novels at: Cut From Strong Cloth www.amzn.com/1940553024  and Last Curtain Call www.amzn.com/1940553067.

Do you have a strong woman I should know about? Please leave a response and tell me!

Linda😊

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    Mary Titcomb: Bringing Books to the People by Linda Harris Sittig

    Posted on December 2, 2018 by lhsittig@verizon.net

    Before we had Kindle and Nooks and E-Readers, we had stand-alone bookstores and public libraries. Today, most of us take our easy access to books for granted.

    But a hundred and twenty years ago in America, public libraries existed mostly in cities and towns. If you lived in a rural area, there was little access to books.

    Enter Mary Titcomb, a young woman born in 1852 in Farmington, New Hampshire.

    Mary grew up in a home with parents who instilled in her the love of reading. As a young adult she was living in Concord, Massachusetts, when she read that her church was in need of a librarian. It seemed like a match made in heaven, someone who loved books could help bring them to other people.

    However, there was no established system in the late 1800s on how a person should go about becoming a librarian.

    So, Mary volunteered to work in the public library in Concord and learned the ins and outs of librarianship. Sometime later she applied for a job at the Rutland Public Library in Vermont and held that job for twelve years.

    Then in 1901 Mary moved to Washington County, Maryland to organize the Washington County Free Library, the second county library system to open in the United States.

    While working at the library in Hagerstown, Maryland, Mary was concerned that the supply of books was only available to patrons who lived in town. She came up with the idea to house small movable collections in various post offices and stores throughout Washington County where local people could check out books. But who would maintain those collections and oversee their distribution?

    Then Mary came up with the ingenious idea that she could design a book wagon and take it on the road, so to speak, driving out in the country and bringing rotating collections to rural families.

    She set about designing a wagon, similar to a city milk wagon or turn of the century tinker’s wagon. Mary’s blueprint showed where multiple shelves of books would sit firmly on both sides of the vehicle. An interior space held extra volumes. All told, 200 books would be available.

    Mary launched her book wagon in April of 1905. Joshua Thomas, the library janitor, hitched up two horses, Dandy and Black Beauty, and headed out of Hagerstown onto the rural roads of Washington County. Mary had given him strict directives that when he stopped at a farmhouse or rural cluster of homes, he should give patrons ample time to select a book of their choice. The books were free of charge and would be on loan for two weeks.

    In the first six months, the book wagon made a recorded total of 31 trips out in the countryside. The library wagon would continue these trips weekly for the next five years until it was involved in a significant accident. Neither Joshua nor the horses were hurt, but the wagon and most of the books were ruined.

    Washington County then decided to designate funds for the purchase of a motorized wagon to replace the old horse-drawn one. A year later, the new vehicle was called the Bookmobile—the first known mechanical vehicle in the United States to bring books into rural America.

    While bookmobiles struggled to keep their funding during the Great Depression of the 1930s, most of them did survive until the 21st Century when technology supplemented delivering books directly to neighborhoods. There are approximately 650 bookmobiles still in operation in America today, mostly in rural counties.

    Mary died at the age of eighty in 1932, but not before she had realized her life’s goal—to enrich people’s lives through reading.

    In her own words, “books bring people pleasure because through books they are lifted out of all routine of everyday life, their imaginations are quickened and in the brief space that the books hold them in thrall, the colors of life assume a bright tint.”

    I applaud the passion and perseverance of Mary Titcomb and thank her for her marvelous innovation. I was one of the kids who waited for the bookmobile each summer.

    If you enjoyed Mary Titcomb’s story, please sign up on the sidebar to become a regular follower of this blog.  You can also catch me on Twitter @LHsittig or lindasittig.com, my website. My novels that feature strong women in history, Cut From Strong Cloth and Last Curtain Call are available in bookstores and online through Amazon.  www.amzn.com/1940553024.

    ~ Linda

    Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments

    Clara Lemlich: Labor Activist by Linda Harris Sittig

    Posted on November 1, 2018 by lhsittig@verizon.net

    Image result for garment factory silhouette

     

    In November of 1909, she appeared as a will-of-the wisp young woman pushing her way to the front of the Union stage. Perhaps, she even stood a bit crooked, due to the uneven mending of bones previously broken by hired thugs.

    At twenty-three, Clara Lemlich hardly looked the part of a labor activist, although she had already been arrested seventeen times for unlawful picketing.

    Clara’s passion was to organize the other garment workers in New York City in a strike for more reasonable working conditions. At this point in time, female garment workers earned $6.00 a week. For that, they worked 11-hour workdays, six days a week.

    Ms. Lemlich’s rebellious attitude stemmed from an early distrust of officials. While living with her family in a Jewish community in the Ukraine, peace ended abruptly in 1903. A violent pogrom (campaign of violence) launched by local officials swept through the community. After watching loved ones and neighbors beaten and killed, Clara’s family emigrated to New York City and settled in a Jewish neighborhood on the Lower East Side.

    Clara, like many immigrant girls her age, got a job in the garment industry, working sweltering hours in a shirtwaist (blouse) factory. Disgusted with the humiliating way the female workers were treated, she repeatedly urged the Union to organize the women to strike.

    The male leaders of the Union were not in favor. They wanted to concentrate their efforts in raising the men’s pay.

    On November 22nd Clara stood with the massive crowd outside the Cooper Union building in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. While the Union organizers argued for control, Clara had herself hoisted to the stage and commanded the attention of the crowd as she spoke fervently that unless the women garment workers went on strike, their working lives would never improve.

    The women in the audience burst into spontaneous applause.

    The next day, 20,000 out of the 32,000 workers in the New York garment industry went out on strike. And they stayed on strike until Feb. 10, 1910, practically crippling the industry. It became known as The Uprising of the 20,000. As a result, almost every factory agreed to a Union contract.

    One factory did not.

    That was the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory that exactly thirteen months later experienced the worst disaster in garment workers’ history – the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. One hundred forty-six workers, mostly female, perished in the fire or jumped to their deaths on the pavement below.

    The tragedy left Clara heartbroken, but stronger in her resolve to help working-class women.

    As a result of all her activist activities, Clara became blacklisted in the New York City garment trade. That galvanized her to turn her energies to work as a suffragist, arguing that American women could only improve their lives if they had the chance to vote.

    In 1913 Clara married Joseph Shavelson, and together they had three children. The family moved first to East New York and then to Brighton Beach in Brooklyn. For several years, she kept a lower profile while raising her children.

    Then in 1929 Clara helped to launch the United Council of Working-Class Women, which eventually had affiliates all across America, addressing working women’s issues of housing, education, and fair consumer pricing.

    For the next several decades she worked tirelessly to promote the idea of improved labor conditions in American factories. With a charismatic presence, Clara roused working-class women to fight for their rights, battle unfair housing practices, and establish a control to rising rent and food prices.

    The last recorded activity for Clara was in the 1960s when, in her eighties, she became a resident of the Jewish Home for the Aged in Los Angeles, California. While living there, she persuaded the management to join the boycott of grapes and lettuce, in support of the United Farm Workers led by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta.

    Clara’s last activist effort was to encourage the staff of the Aged Home to organize together for better working conditions. She passed a few months late at the age of 96 years.

    Thank you to Ed Jahn for sending me Clara’s name to research.

    If you enjoyed Clara’s story, please sign up on the right side of the blog to become a regular follower. And if you know of a strong woman from the past whose story deserves to be told, please contact me.

    ~ Linda ~

     

    Posted in short biographies | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

    Emma Gatewood: Guardian of the Appalachian Trail by Linda Harris Sittig

    Posted on October 2, 2018 by lhsittig@verizon.net

    Emma Gatewood never considered that she was a remarkable woman.

    In 1955, at the age of 67, she hiked the entire Appalachian Trail—alone. And without a tent or sleeping bag.

    To truly appreciate her accomplishment, you need to read about Emma’s life.

    Before 1955, she had never ventured far from her rural upbringing in Gallia County, Ohio. Married at twenty to a husband who quickly turned abusive, Emma worked the farm with him and gave birth to eleven children, often becoming pregnant just three weeks after the birth of the last child.

    When I first read about Emma Gatewood, I wondered why she remained for forty-eight years in such an abusive marriage, even loosing teeth during the physical assaults.

    Born into a farm culture where children learn early the meaning of chores, Emma worked hard her entire life. But, she was trapped with no outside job skills, no savings, no higher education, and nowhere else to go.

    What she did have was a love for walking and spending time alone in the woods.

    When her youngest child turned twenty-six, Emma walked away from her home to find the solace of a place she had only read about: the Appalachian Trail. She knew the journey would take approximately five months to complete the entire 2,050 miles.

    She did not bother to inform her family that she would be gone for a while.

    Setting her sights on the southern end of the Trail, she took a bus to Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. Her provisions included a pasteboard suitcase in which she had packed an extra pair of dungarees (jeans), a dress, a pair of slippers, a blanket, a coat, a plastic shower curtain, a flashlight, a Swiss army knife, a notebook, and a bottle of water.

    On her feet she wore a pair of plain sneakers.

    Starting in the spring, she walked north, averaging fourteen miles a day. By day number two she left the pasteboard box behind and carried her provisions in a sack. No sleeping bag, no tent, not even a map; she simply followed the white paint on the trees that blazed the way.

    Wild berries and edible greens provided her with some nourishment. When she became very hungry, she walked into towns to purchase food she could carry.

    She often slept in shelters on the trail, or up on a picnic bench, sleeping in her coat with the plastic shower curtain under or over her. If the weather turned bad, she walked into a town, knocked on doors and asked permission to sleep on someone’s front porch. She quickly learned that the families living in small houses were usually the most willing to share. Sometimes, she was invited to dine with the family, even if they only had soup for dinner.

    As her sojourn continued, journalists would station themselves at strategic stops to ask her how the trip was going. Newspapers began following her journey.

    Although she had encounters with copperheads, hurricanes, and freezing temperatures, Emma also had days when the spectacular beauty of nature almost overwhelmed her.

    Once, after she had been on the Trail for months, she came to a swollen river. Emma did not know how to swim. She waited for hours, praying that someone would come to help.

    Two college boys hiking the trail found her. She explained her predicament. One carried her on his back across the river, while the other shouldered her supplies. Emma recorded their names in her notebook, and her gratitude. Decades later, those college boys, now men, recounted the story of how they had helped this amazing older woman hiking the Trail alone.

    When Emma finally arrived at Mount Katahdin, Maine, she had worn out seven pairs of sneakers and lost thirty pounds of body weight.

    But here is what she gained; respect for herself, freedom from abuse, and the knowledge that she was stronger than she could have ever imagined. She climbed to the top of Mt. Katahdin, held her head high, and sang “America the Beautiful”.

    When she returned home, she filed for divorce.

    In an amazing follow-up, she returned to the Trail and hiked its entirety two additional times in following years. Then she wrote letters advocating that the Appalachian Trail deserved to be preserved and maintained for all Americans to enjoy it.

    Emma Gatewood, alias Grandma Gatewood, alias Queen of the Appalachian Trail, died at age eighty-six, after completing her bucket list: to take a trip on a boat, and to take a bus trip to every state. She made it to the continental forty-eight.

    Hats off to you, Emma Gatewood, for your courage, your fortitude, and your unshakable spirit. You proved that strong women persevere.

    Thank you to Kathy Winters, who hiked in Emma’s footsteps, not just once, but twice and told me about Emma’s story, and Grandma Gatewood’s Walk by Ben Montgomery.

    If you liked this story, please sign up on the right-hand side bar to become a monthly follower of this blog.

    You can also follow me on Twitter: @LHSittig, or my website: lindasittig.com, or on Amazon where my two novels of strong women, Cut From Strong Cloth and Last Curtain Call, are available.

    ~ Linda ~

    Posted in short biographies, strong women | Tagged , | 13 Comments