Women: In Memory
We remember those we have known who have made a significant contribution to women’s lives and well-being. With honor and respect for their work and effort, we will not forget.
 Grace Paley
1923 - 2007
The acclaimed writer, poet, feminist, and peace activist Grace Paley died on Wednesday in her home in Vermont at the age of 84 after a long struggle with breast cancer. As a writer, Paley is best known for her short stories examining the ordinary lives of women. Her Collected Stories, published in 1994, was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and in 1993, she received the Rea Award, referred to as the Pulitzer Prize for short story writers. Paley also published several volumes of poems, and served as a poet laureate of Vermont and the first official New York State Writer. Paley was known as much for her political activism on behalf of peace and women’s rights as her literary accomplishments. In 2003, she contributed an essay called “Why Peace is (More Than Ever) a Feminist Issue” to the anthology Sisterhood Is Forever.
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/grace_paley
 Beverly Sills
1929 - 2007
With her brilliant runs and trills, Sills became one of the most beloved and respected sopranos in the 20th century. A famous coloratura soprano singing in opera roles worldwide, she became the general manager of the New York City Opera after retiring from performing. She became the first woman, the first performing artist and the first former head of an arts company to become chair of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and then, of the Metropolitan Opera. Sills used her celebrity to further her charity work for the prevention and treatment of birth defects. Her daughter was born profoundly deaf and her son born with severe birth defects. Barnard College awarded Sills its highest honor, the Barnard Medal of Distinction. She will be inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2007 and is a recipient of the highly prestigious Kennedy Center Honors.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverly_Sills
 Ruth Bell Graham
1920 - 2007
Ruth Graham was an American philanthropist, poet and writer, and the wife of Christian evangelist Billy Graham. She was born at Qingjiang, Kiangsu, China, as Ruth McCue Bell. Her parents, Dr.L. Nelson Bell and Virginia McCue Bell, were American medical missionaries at the Presbyterian Hospital. Ruth and her sister Rosa grew up in a deeply religious household. Ruth studied for three years high school in Pyongyang, now in North Korea, before graduating from school in Montreat, North Carolina. In 1937 she went to Wheaton College, outside Chicago, Illinois, where she met and married Billy Graham in 1943. In 1945 he became an evangelist for Youth for Christ and the Grahams moved to Montreat near Ruth’s parents. Despite being married to one of the world's most famous Baptists, Ruth Graham remained a Presbyterian. In 1996, the Grahams were each awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for "outstanding and lasting contributions to morality, racial equality, family, philanthropy, and religion." She helped establish the Ruth and Billy Graham Children's Health Center in Asheville, North Carolina, and the Billy Graham Training Center.
en.wikipedia.or/wiki/Ruth_Graham
 Jane Matilda Bolin
1908 - 2007
Judge Jane Bolin was sworn in to the bench in 1939 as the first black female judge and the first African-American woman to graduate from Yale Law School. Fiorello LaGuardia, mayor of New York appointed Bolin as judge of the Domestic Relations Court where she served for forty years as an activist in children’s’ rights and education. She was born in Poughkeepsie, New York to a white Englishwoman, Matilda Emery and Gaius Bolin, the first African-American to graduate from Williams College in Massachusetts.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Bolin
 Barbara Gittings
1932 - 2007
Barbara Gittings was an unusual lesbian activist: she pre-dated feminism. An early leader of the New York Chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, she edited its publication The Ladder, and moved it to a more militant stance. Throughout decades as an activist, she worked along side gay men to achieve equality. During her time with the American Library Association’s Gay Task Force, she worked successfully to remove homosexuality from the list of disorders of American Psychiatric Association.
dykestowatchoutfor.com/barbara-gittings-1932-2007
 Tillie Olsen
1912 - 2007
Labor activist and author Tillie Olsen was born to Jewish Russian immigrants seven years after the Russian revolution. She wrote from her own experience about the lives of working-class women and was a great influence on young women writers. In 1934 she organized the packinghouse workers’ union. She and her life partner, Jack Olsen, raised four daughters and lived in San Francisco’s Mission District.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tillie_Olsen
 Wilma Dykeman Stokely
1922 - 2006
Wilma Dykeman was a fiction and nonfiction writer about the land and people of Southern Appalachia. She was reared north of Asheville, North Carolina in the Beaverdam community, as the only child of Bonnie Cole and Willard Dykeman. She graduated in 1938 from Biltmore Junior College (now UNCA). Over her career she wrote a total of eighteen books, some co-authored with her husband James R. Stokely Jr. Her first book The French Broad published in 1955 was a part of the Hold Rinehart series Rivers of America.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilma_Dykeman
 Tee A. Corinne
1943 - 2006
Native Floridean and former North Carolina resident Tee Corinne forever changed the lesbian and women's communities through her forthright visual presentation of sexuality. Originally creating a sensation through her release of the Cunt Coloring Book (1975), she went on to create timeless photographs through the use of solarization and mandala presentation. Shortly thereafter, she found her voice in print as well, writing both fiction and nonfiction. She was a driving force in the presentation of women of all races, and disabled as well as able-bodied. In her later years, when her lover was diagnosed with cancer, she strove to find a way to incorporate cancer into her visual images. Her papers and photographs were bequeathed to the University of Oregon, which holds copyright on all images, including this one, used with permission.
libweb.uoregon.edu/speccoll/mss/tee.html
 Ann Richards
1933 - 2006
Dorothy Ann Willis Richards, Governor of Texas 1991-1995
During her governorship, Richards appointed the first black University of Texas regent, the first disabled person on the human services board, the first teacher to lead the State Board of Education, the first crime victim on the state Criminal Justice Board, and the first black and female Texas Rangers.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Richards
 June Jordan
1936 - 2002
One of the most widely published African-American writers. she provided a constant challenge to oppression. Poet, essayist, journalist, dramatist, academic, teacher, cultural and political activist. Among African-American writers, she was undoubtedly one of the most widely published, the author of well over two dozen books of non-fiction, poetry, fiction, drama and children's writing. She emerged onto the political and literary scene in the late 1960s, when the movements demanding attention were for civil rights and women's liberation, and anti-war. Her battles were for freedom, whether that involved planning a new architecture for Harlem with her mentor Buckminster Fuller, or speaking out on the Palestinian cause. She spoke out against, or did something about, oppression wherever it was to be found.
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/JuneJordan
 Kay Louise Gardner
1941 - 2002
Kay was a musician, composer, author, and musical producer involved in using music for creative and healing purposes. Her compositions include works for chamber orchestra, symphony orchestra, choir, flute, voice and piano. She was very active in promoting the work of contemporary female musicians and composers. Born in Freeport, New York, Gardner wrote and performed her first piano composition at the age of four. Gardner is considered a founder of the women's recording industry, and founded her own independent record label, Ladyslipper Records. Gardner produced 17 albums and composed works for piano, orchestra, and choir.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kay_Gardner
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