Author: WOAmemphis17

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Sonia Louden Walker

Women of Achievement
2010

INITIATIVE
for a woman who seized the
opportunity to use her talents and created her own future:

Sonia Louden Walker

If ever a life story defined initiative – it is the story of Sonia Louden Walker.
Teacher, social worker, TV personality, community activist, nonprofit executive and now ordained minister – Sonia Walker has built and rebuilt herself in distinct careers that make perfect blended sense within the basic deeply held values that define her.

Community healer, bridge builder, connector and encourager – these too describe this remarkable, vivacious and gifted woman. It doesn’t really matter to Sonia Walker what the job title is – she will make it into what it needs to be in order to be of good purpose.

Her good friend Nancy Bogatin wrote: “Her persona incorporates a sensitivity which transcends her ambition and yes, a spirituality which, without imposing it upon others, she shares, often soothing, always smoothing the way for so many who come within her aegis.”

When Sonia Walker arrived in Memphis in 1974, mother of three sons and wife of the new president of LeMoyne-Owen College, she had already had a career as an educator and social worker in school, hospital and agency settings. And she had enjoyed three years that she described on her resume as “home administrator. . .not gainfully employed” but engaged in “family launching.”

In Memphis, she took a job as director of community relations at WHBQ-TV, beginning a 16-year term as manager of public affairs programming and community service projects for the ABC affiliate. She served on public boards, hosted “A Closer Look” and delivered editorials, effectively addressing social issues and solutions. Sonia was not just another pretty face on TV — her fingerprints are on innovations from Adopt-A-School to Food for Families as she used that job to lead community solutions across the spectrum.

In 1990 and 1991, she coordinated the Black Family Reunion Celebration in a nine-state area. Seeing another need among the 7,000 members of her church, she created a spiritually based, culturally sensitive counseling program at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church that within a year had a building of its own. Out of a lifelong commitment to education and children, she staffed and equipped the first office of Partners in Public Education and continued to lead the non-profit school reform and funding program for five years.

Along the way Sonia served on numerous community boards and advisory committees – from the Chamber of Commerce to the Literacy Foundation to the Memphis Jobs Conference and the National Conference of Christians and Jews and beyond. She is a founding board member of Leadership Memphis and was the first woman and the first person of color to chair it. She is an honorary trustee of the Community Foundation of Greater Memphis.

She did all this while supporting the independence of her husband, Walter, who was diagnosed with MS just three years after the family moved to Memphis from Chicago.

Having flirted with the idea of religion studies for years, in 2002 she entered Memphis Theological Seminary part-time, vowing to complete her studies slowly, with no student loans — but before she turned 80!

Two years ago, she graduated from Memphis Theological Seminary and was ordained by the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). This daughter of a minister in Columbus, Ohio, finally fully assumed the ministry she had felt and lived since childhood.

Her Memphis journey had flowed from first Memphis Kwanzaa Queen, in 1976, to graduation cum laude and with the Hoyt Hickman award for Excellence in Liturgical Scholarship from Memphis Theological Seminary in 2008.

Sonia has excelled in a half-dozen fields and in all she found ways to use her unique talents and skills for the benefit of others. For her unending, passionate, discerning, gracious service to our community, we salute Sonia Walker, 2010 Woman of Achievement for Initiative.

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Ruth Lomo

Women of Achievement
2008

INITIATIVE
for a woman who seized the
opportunity to use her talents and created her own future:

Ruth Lomo

From her birthplace in Sudan, to her adopted home in Memphis, Ruth Lomo has taken the initiative to use her gifts and skills to improve the lives of the women and children around her.

Ruth was born in Sudan in 1970. Coming from a family that understood the value of education, she attended high school and then had the unusual opportunity to participate in vocational training. She considered the three options, looked around, recognized a need and enrolled in the carpentry program, where she was the only woman.

In 1993, during Ruth’s 23rd year, violence erupted between the Sudanese government and rebel forces. Fearing for their lives, Ruth took her own five children, her sister’s six children and one other child and walked for five days to the border with Zaire. From there they crossed into Uganda where they reached the relative safety of a refugee camp. In 1995, her homeland still unsafe, Ruth searched for other options for herself and the children. Discovering better opportunities and services, they journeyed to another camp in Kenya.

The intent of refugee camps is to provide housing on a short-term basis, but due to the on-going violence in Sudan, Ruth’s family stayed six years, until 2001 when their situation was evaluated by the United Nations. Clearly it was not safe to return to their home, so Ruth and the children came to the United States under the auspices of the Associated Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlement program.

Arriving in Memphis, she and the children were provided with a social worker and a place to live. She found work as a carpenter and quickly learned to use the power tools now available to her.

Shorty after getting settled, she managed to enroll all the children in her care into parochial schools. Having had little opportunity for education in the camps and speaking little English, they were nonetheless placed in grades more equivalent with their age than their level of learning. Recognizing this, Ruth found them tutors through a program at Second Presbyterian Church. Seeing the difference this made in the lives of her own children, she started arranging tutoring for other refugee children.

Fluent in several languages, Ruth also helped other women from Sudan, Afghanistan and Somalia learn the skills they needed in their new home – how to drive, enroll in English language classes, navigate a new culture, help their children succeed in school.

Ruth’s experiences had given her a clear vision of what women needed – an organization to support and teach refugees how to advocate for themselves and their children. She created the International Community of Refugee Women and Children out of her own dogged determination that it needed to exist, and with support from organizations such as Catholic Charities, the United Methodist Neighborhood Centers and her own church community.

Eventually Ruth left the carpentry business to create her own home-cleaning business. She still devotes much of her time to the ICRWC, continuing to oversee the organization’s after-school tutoring program for children.

Each morning Ruth takes her children to school, does home cleaning in the day and industrial cleaning at night. Four afternoons a week, she goes to the tutoring center to babysit so that mothers can attend English classes. She gets home at midnight or later and then gets up the next day and does it all again.

She continues to network with other refugee coalitions in other areas, learning and sharing with other women what she has learned. The refugee women in Ruth’s program wanted to tell us about Ruth. Using their growing English skills, they spoke with shining eyes and they had a lot to say. They described her as a mother, a sister.

“You meet her and you feel like you’ve always known her. She talks with us about everything and she takes care of us. We can always find her and she can always find us.”

“She’s lovely. I’m standing with her forever.”

Ruth Lomo is building new lives for her family and for many others. She is in every way a Woman of Achievement for Initiative.

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Nancy Hale Lawhead

Women of Achievement
2007

INITIATIVE
for a woman who seized the
opportunity to use her talents and created her own future:

Nancy Hale Lawhead

Nancy Lawhead left her native Kentucky in the late 1960s determined to see some places and help some people.

In 1970, after a few years spent working in New York, Nancy found her way to Memphis. And lucky for us she did. She has used her University of Kentucky social work degree and eventually two master’s degrees to help our most vulnerable citizens.

Her decision to put service over self has, for the past 35 years, helped create a better future for thousands of men, women and children – from troubled, delinquent teenage girls in Brooklyn to homeless mentally ill people in Midtown Memphis, to neglected, abused and at-risk children, to the tiniest of newborns in the neonatal intensive care unit of the Med.

She says, “I wanted to be in a helping profession. I saw the plight of the mentally ill as a young social worker in the mid 70s, because of the stigma of mental illness. People, if they get cancer, can get treatment, but not if they are mentally ill, homeless, walking the streets hearing voices.”

She joined the United Way of Grater Memphis as a planning and research assistant for child welfare, juvenile delinquency and teenage pregnancy programs. Five years later, Nancy moved to the University of Tennessee Mental Health Center, in charge of program development and grant writing. In 1978 she was named executive director of the UT Mental Health Center. This was the era when mental patients were being “deinstitutionalized” and put out of facilities such as Western State Mental Hospital to fend for themselves.

Nancy passionately believed patients needed a community mental health center that would connect them to medications, housing, transportation, and whatever else they needed to have a normal life.

Dissatisfied with services being provided to poor Memphians, Nancy in 1980 located a school building on 2 ½ acres at the corner of Danny Thomas and Pontotoc, raised the needed money and founded Midtown Mental Health Center. Renovation of the old school alone cost $400,000.

She followed that feat with development of an on-site, 24/7 Crisis Stabilization Unit for people in serious psychiatric crisis.

For 7 years, working virtually around the clock, Nancy led the Center as executive director.

After a two-year break in the private sector, she returned to public service in 1990 as executive director of the Memphis and Shelby County Community Health Agency. For five years, she worked to improve access to primary care for poor people.

In 1995, Shelby County Mayor Bill Morris tapped Nancy to become special advisor to the mayor for health policy at national, state and local levels. She worked on release plans for Shelby County Jail inmates who were mentally ill or had substance abuse problems while grappling with what she saw as the criminalization of the mentally ill by managed care health systems.

In 1998, Nancy brokered the joint venture between the Memphis Shelby County Health Department and The Med. The agreement linked their clinics into a primary care network called the Health Loop, a $15 million operation and the largest primary care provider in Shelby County.

Now serving her third mayor, Mayor A C Wharton, Nancy earlier this year moved into the Urban Child Institute where she will head the county’s efforts to address early childhood and infant mortality issues. She will advocate for more funding and new policies and coordinate local efforts to stop the high rate of infant deaths.

Nancy Lawhead’s passion for helping the helpless led her to a career of service that has made thousands of lives healthier and happier and has made Memphis a better place to live.

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Susan Stephenson

Women of Achievement
2006

INITIATIVE
for a woman who seized the
opportunity to use her talents and created her own future:

Susan Stephenson

When Susan Stephenson was a second-grader in Chattanooga, she told her teacher she wanted to be a doctor.

Her teacher suggested that Susan was mistaken. What she meant was that she wanted to be a nurse. When Susan told the story at the dinner table that night, her father decided it was a time for a lesson about choosing her future.

The next day, he accompanied Susan to her classroom where he diplomatically explained to her teacher in the hallway that Susan could be a doctor, a nurse or whatever profession she chose. He made sure that Susan heard what he said.

That lesson about confidence and possibilities would guide Susan for the rest of her life.

She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Tennessee with a major in history and English. Her goal? To attend law school and become the first woman justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Sandra Day O’Connor would beat her to the bench, but Susan found another way to be the first woman in an influential spot.

The year before O’Connor joined the court, Susan moved to Memphis as the young wife of a student. She had spent half a school year teaching in Chattanooga, but couldn’t find a mid-year teaching job in Memphis. A friend suggested she try banking and sent her resume to First Tennessee Bank. The bank saw executive potential in the young college graduate and invited her to join the bank’s management training program.

That was in 1980. She more than realized her potential. Fifteen years later after being hired as a management trainee, Susan was named chairman, president, and chief executive officer of what was then Boatman’s Bank of Tennessee. She was the first woman to serve as CEO of a Memphis bank. That was in 1995. Just three years later, in a climate of mergers and acquisitions, Susan and Chip Dudley took a chance at organizing a new, independent bank – appropriately called Independent Bank. The bank is thriving today and offers special programs for women.

That reflection of personal values in the workplace is typical of Susan, said Ruby Bright, president of the Women’s Foundation for a Greater Memphis where Susan is chair-elect of the board.

“Susan stands on her beliefs and she walks her talk,” Ruby said. “She led her corporate board of directors to the decision over a year ago to be committed to paying a living wage to all of its employees.”

“She has broken many glass ceilings in a male-dominated field,” Ruby added. “She has certainly earned this recognition.”

Susan has worked with other community groups – from arts organizations to the American Cancer Society to Junior Achievement and the Leadership Academy – and she also takes time to share her experiences with other women. She emphasizes the power of confidence:

“Confidence is the steady assurance that something you want or need to happen will happen,” she once told a group of women.

“. . . You can change your life and the lives of people around you if you act with confidence.”

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Mars Child, Harriet McFadden, and Polly Glotzbach

Mars Child
Harriet McFadden
Women of Achievement
2003

DETERMINATION
for a woman who solved a glaring problem despite
widespread inertia, apathy or ignorance around her:

Mars Child, Harriet McFadden, and Polly Glotzbach

Never underestimate the power of women, especially when their target is something for their children. Such is the legacy of Mars Child, Harriet McFadden and Polly Glotzbach.

These three women were determined to build a place just for children, where youngsters could expand their imagination and knowledge in an atmosphere of joy. They created the Children’s Museum of Memphis, which for 13 years has enriched the lives of children and those who love them across the city and the region.

Mars Child grew up in Boston, attended Harvard, and worked for a foreign film distributor, New York’s public radio and television station, and as Mayor Ed Koch’s gubernatorial campaign press assistant. She loved the idea of the children’s museum of her childhood and, after moving to Memphis in 1984, wanted to see it translated here for her three children to enjoy.

At virtually the same time, native Memphian and Hollins College graduate Harriet McFadden read about the Boston museum in an in-flight magazine. She promptly flew north to see the museum for herself and plan one similar for Memphis. It was there that a Boston museum trustee told Harriet about Mars’s interest in the same idea and that Mars was in Memphis. Was it fate? Coincidence? Magic?

Harriet called Mars, who lived only a few blocks from her. It was the fall of 1985. They met and went to work, at first two or three times a week, balancing young children and other responsibilities, in the days before cell phones and e-mail. “We formulated a plan,” Harriet said. “We had to explain what a children’s museum was – an educational, interactive resource for children … and plan how we would sell it to people who didn’t know what one was but would possibly help us get started, like corporations and foundations.”

When they were ready to get serious about fundraising, many people told them to see Polly Glotzbach, who had just completed a term as president of the Junior League of Memphis. A Vanderbilt graduate, Polly lived within a few blocks of Mars and Harriet. She had toured the St. Louis Children’s Museum. “It came home to me,” Polly said, “how great it would be to have a children’s museum here, plus how fun it would be to be in on something in the early stages.”

In April 1987, they incorporated the Children’s Museum of Memphis. That July they hired a children’s museum consultant.

“People told me in meetings where we were trying to get money that our enthusiasm was infectious,” Harriet said. “We were determined.” Gradually their troop of believers grew, from a few women around a kitchen table to a large group of people.

Said Polly, “Initially, I felt we were pushing a rock up a hill and could stop when we wanted to but it took on such momentum we were soon racing after it.”

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Eleanor “Dicky” Ehrlich

Women of Achievement
2004

HERITAGE
for a woman whose achievements still enrich our lives:

Eleanor “Dicky” Ehrlich

Eleanor “Dicky” Weile Ehrlich never stopped feeling lucky that she survived nine different German concentration camps.

So she never stopped teaching about the Nazi Holocaust. ‘‘There is too much to tell,’’ Dicky said. ‘‘There is so much yet not told. Just remember, it all did happen … and please keep it from happening again.’’

Dicky began life in Berlin where her mother owned a needlework shop and her father was a traveling manufacturer’s representative. As Hitler’s restrictions and persecution of Jews intensified, she and her parents moved in 1933 to Amsterdam where Dicky became a neighbor and sometime playmate of Anne Frank.

But soon the Nazis ended Holland’s 100-year neutral history by marching in with occupation soldiers. Eight times Dicky answered the door late at night to find Gestapo soldiers there. Eight times she talked or sang to them and they went away. A ninth time she didn’t awaken until two soldiers were looming over her bed.

The Weile family was loaded onto cattle cars to a camp in southern Holland. It was February 1943. The family was separated. Within eight months, her mother Tilla, who was assigned to tend to young children in the camp, caught scarlet fever. With only aspirin and sulfur available as medicines, Tilla died in November and was cremated. Dicky never forgot the smell of the smoke that blew over her as her mother’s body was incinerated.

Meanwhile, the Philips Company had persuaded the Germans to build in the camp a factory which would keep Dutch Jews in Holland as long as possible at a time when Jews from all over Europe were being shipped to death camps in Germany and Poland. Dicky always believed it was her training to build intricate radio tubes for V1 and V2 rocket weapons that delayed her departure to Auschwitz for a critical 10 months and saved her life. She was convinced that if she had arrived sooner, she would have been gassed with thousands of others.

Dicky reported with pride that she and her fellow inmates were able to damage about 60 percent of the instruments they made, without being detected, assuring that many of the German rockets never reached their mark.

In June 1944, she was shipped to Auschwitz, Poland, where three large chimneys turned the night sky orange and the stench of burning flesh was unreal. Though it was a while before she knew it, Dicky arrived in the notorious camp on D-Day, June 6. Her hair clipped short, number 81020 tattooed on her left arm, she was soon loaded on cattle cars again, bound for Reichenback in east Germany. She was moved four more times as the Germans dodged advancing Allied forces and kept the inmates manufacturing parts.

Finally, she arrived near Hamburg for the hardest work yet – shoveling mud to dig tank traps, ditches three yards wide and three yards deep, shaped like a V. Guards stood above, snapping whips to speed the exhausted workers.

Dicky was barely holding on. Fortunately, the Swedish Red Cross made a deal with Hitler to trade some concentration camp prisoners for German deserters. Dicky was on the second transport to Sweden. It was three days before the end of the war. She was 23 years old and weighed 88 pounds. She had spent over 2-1/2 years in nine concentration camps. She later learned that her father had been killed in the Auschwitz gas chamber on Oct. 1, 1944.

In 1948, she agreed to move to Atlanta to live with an aunt. Her ship arrived in the New York harbor as July 4 fireworks blasted. She met and married Sidney Ehrlich and began life as a wife, mother of two children and unstoppable public speaker. She became a deeply patriotic American who always flew a giant flag on Independence Day.

Wherever she lived in the United States, Dicky shared her story. She also taught teachers how to teach about the Holocaust: ‘‘To teach this to young people and to impress upon them how very lucky they are to live in this country with all of its freedoms, we must dig a little deeper – what does it do on a personal basis when all the freedoms we take for granted are taken away?’’

She described the forced walk of 2,000 inmates and 3,000 cows through snow for six days with paper shoes to wear and one slice of bread and snow to eat. She told about a trip that should have been three hours that went on for 11 days and nights, standing in a freight car with 209 other prisoners with three pieces of bread, no water and no modesty when allowed under a stopped train car to ‘‘use the bathroom’’ at gunpoint.

In 1997, she was interviewed and videotaped for Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. Dicky Ehrlich died in Memphis on May 1, 2001. She was 78.

Friend and colleague Rachel Shankman, regional director of Facing History and Ourselves, said, ‘‘No one who ever met her will ever forget her. What made her special to the children and teachers was her ability to bring that hard history to life, and talk about it with humor and resiliency.’’

A teacher who heard Dicky speak in Arkansas several years ago wrote a two-page letter expressing the power of Dicky’s testimony in changing her life. ‘‘I know that I will move through the world differently now. I hope that I will be a better person. I believe that what you have done here is to become a rescuer. Somehow, some way, your words continue to make me grow.’’

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Ethel Niermeyer

Women of Achievement
2003

HERITAGE
for a woman whose achievements still enrich our lives:

Ethel Niermeyer

Ethel Niermeyer spent 48 years working through the YWCA to broaden opportunities for girls and women and to stimulate awareness of and action on civic affairs.

Born in Mitchell, South Dakota, in 1887, she obtained a B.A. from Iowa State Teachers College in Cedar Falls and completed additional courses at Columbia University in New York. She started work in 1912 as a Girl Reserve Secretary in Akron, Ohio. Later she worked for the Y in Honolulu, spent four years at the YWCA in Istanbul, Turkey, and worked for the YWCA National Board.

Ethel came to Memphis in 1932 to serve as executive director, a position she held until her retirement in 1955.

During those years of racial segregation, she encouraged the development of a Negro YWCA branch, which was at first under the direction of an all-white board of directors. Under her leadership the board moved from having one African-American representative on a board to full participation in policy-making groups within the association. From racially integrated groups within the YWCA, the association became the only place in Memphis where integrated meetings of non-YWCA members could meet.

The Public Affairs Committee worked with people from other organizations to develop better state laws on adoption and to promote a hospital in Memphis where black doctors could intern. This was finally developed at E.H. Crump Hospital.

A Public Affairs Forum was established which held dinner meetings where local, national and international questions were discussed from various viewpoints and honest disagreement could be voiced without rancor.

Teen clubs were organized through the public schools and a summer camp was established in Hardy, Arkansas. Under Ethel’s directorship, a capital funds campaign was conducted to build a new central office and program building at 200 Monroe and a branch at 1044 Mississippi Blvd.

Work with girls and young women started in north Memphis in the Manassas area and the first black person was employed to work at the central office.

During World War II, the YWCA was one of four USO locations in Memphis. The YWCA oversaw activities at all four locations and remained open after the other three were closed.

An international group established by the YWCA led to the development of the International Group of Memphis and a group on equal rights for women led to the establishment of the Women’s Resource Center. Many outstanding women of Memphis received their early encouragement to become involved in civic affairs through their involvement at the YWCA, including 1987 Women of Achievement Heroism recipient Frances Coe.

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Juanita Williamson

Women of Achievement
2002

HERITAGE
for a woman whose achievements still enrich our lives:

Dr. Juanita Williamson

Some are born with a gift for scholarship. Others are born with a gift for teaching. And a few special people are born with a gift for both. Juanita Williamson was one of these. Internationally recognized in linguistics, reading, and education, she is equally remembered for the special talent she brought to the classroom.

Born in 1917 in Mississippi, Juanita Williamson was raised in Memphis in a book-filled home and graduated from Booker T. Washington High School. A scholarship recipient, she graduated summa cum laude from LeMoyne College in 1938 and earned an M.A. from Atlanta University in 1948.

As early as fifth grade, Juanita Williamson knew she wanted a Ph.D. When she enrolled in the doctoral program at the University of Michigan, one of her professors made it clear that he didn’t believe linguistics was an appropriate pursuit for women. He also implied that he didn’t think much of minorities. Though she felt her work deserved otherwise, he failed her first paper. Determined to never have that happen again, she began to take down every word and memorize her notes. She received her Ph.D. in 1961.

She joined the faculty of LeMoyne-Owen College in 1947 and later became Professor of English and Chair of the Humanities Division. Publications include A Various Language (1971) co-authored with Dr. Virginia Burke and a standard reference in linguistic studies. Her reputation led to serving on the boards of the American Dialect Society, the Modern Language Association and others. She received a Rockefeller Fellowship, was honored by the Ford Foundation and the Black Studies Association. An Amistad Research Grant led to study of Southern and black speech. She presented papers at Princeton, Stanford and the University of Wisconsin. She found time for community activities such as the YWCA, Girl Scouts and League of Women Voters.

Juanita’s interest was the structure of language and grammar, her deep concern for the achievement of African-American children and the correlation between their learning performance and their speech. This led her to examine the effect of speech customs of the South on students. She was widely acclaimed for her research. Though she could have gone elsewhere, she chose to stay at LeMoyne-Owen. Committed to the role of historically black colleges she felt she could make a real difference in the lives of her students. According to author Dr. Gloria Wade Gayles, academic excellence at LeMoyne-Owen was synonymous with Dr. Juanita Williamson. She was tough, witty, brilliant and humble. And she cared about students in and out of the classroom, providing financial assistance for those who fell on hard times.

She died in 1993, but her greatest gift is still giving – empowering her students who continue to contribute today. They pass on her torch of knowledge and strength of character.

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Marion Keisker

Women of Achievement
2001

HERITAGE
for a woman whose achievements still enrich our lives:

Marion Keisker

Until her death in 1989 at the age of 72, Marion Keisker blazed a trail for women in many fields, including broadcasting, theater, writing, the military and women’s rights.

In the 1950s, while working as an assistant to the owner/producer of Memphis Recording Service and Sun Records, Sam Phillips, she was the one who had first contact with Elvis Presley when he came to record a song for his mother. “Call this kid Elvis,” she told Phillips, “I’m telling you, Sam, he’s got something.” The rest is history.

Her broadcasting career includes 10 years (1945-55) at the top of the ratings with her WREC radio show Meet Kitty Kelly. At one time, she was responsible for daily programs on every radio station in the city. Hers was the first voice heard on WHER, the first all-female radio station in the country, where she read the news from 1955 to 1957.

Shortly thereafter, Marion joined the Air Force with direct commission as a captain. After training at Lackland AFB in San Antonio, she was assigned to Vance AFB in Enid, Oklahoma, where she was the only woman officer (other than nurses). In January of 1959, she was transferred to Ramstein AFB in Germany, overseeing the largest armed forces television station in the world. Next, she served as the only woman line officer at Patrick AFB in Florida. She retired in 1969 as a major and returned to Memphis.

It was then that she became deeply involved in the women’s movement. As founder and president of the Memphis Chapter of NOW from 1973 to 1974, Marion led the fight to “de-sex” the classified ads in local newspapers so jobs would no longer be classified by gender. Promoting the Susan B. Anthony silver dollar, she said, “They finally gave us our money, now let’s show them its effect on the economy.” Through her membership in the Women’s Media Group, she fought discrimination against women in the media.

In the 1970s and 1980s, she became known for her theater/broadcasting work. She was voted the city’s Best Actress three times. She also led the “Shy Persons Club” and organized to keep Prairie Home Companion on WKNO.

Always on watch, Marion’s frequent letters to the editor of local newspapers often spotlighted incidents of discrimination against women. In one such letter printed in 1986 in The Commercial Appeal, Marion responded to the issue of a lax attitude toward sex discrimination saying, “… gains are accepted as the norm by those who benefit from them. Those who grow weary in the fight for equality (i.e. justice) relax. Progress slows or is reversed.”

Marion Keisker’s spirited service to the community and steadfast crusade for equal rights has benefited all women of Memphis and Shelby County. Her call to remain diligent is a strong reminder that the fight is not over.

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Charl Ormond Williams

Women of Achievement
2000

HERITAGE
for a woman whose achievements still enrich our lives:

Charl Ormond Williams

Educator. Political force. Suffragist. Charl Ormond Williams juggled all these roles in an era that rarely saw a woman work outside the home.

Appointed superintendent of Shelby County Schools in 1914, Charl, only 30 years old, redefined educational administration in the six years she served in this capacity. Through her leadership and vision, the county school budget was doubled with more than a quarter of a million dollars allocated to new construction and equipment.

Charl’s world travels began after her 1921 election as the first Southern woman president of the National Education Association. That next year, as the newly elected field secretary for the NEA, she logged an average of 40,000 miles a year throughout the United States. For three decades following her involvement with the NEA, she helped strengthen the organization and lobbied for a federal Department of Education and federal aid to education and campaigned to end discrimination against married women as teachers. She took her crusades abroad to Japan, India and Pakistan in 1953 to organize teaching groups, and visited Russia two years later to study educational methods.

Politically adept, she also became a “first” in the political arena, the first woman from the Volunteer State to become a member of the Democratic National Committee. She was also elected vice chairman in June 1920, the first woman to hold such a high post. In Nashville that August, she was the leader of the combined suffrage forces as overall chairman of the ratification efforts pushing to make Tennessee the 36th and final state to ratify the 19th amendment. She stood by Gov. A.H. Roberts’ side as he signed Tennessee’s ratification papers of the so-called Susan B. Anthony amendment making votes for women the law of the land.

In 1935, Charl was elected president of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs. She also served a term as national vice president of the Parent Teachers Association, and in 1955, she was elected vice president of Phi Beta Kappa.

So respected as a leader and strategic planner, Charl was named one of the 12 American women competent to hold the presidency of the United States by the president of the International Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs.

Charl Ormond Williams’ legacy is an enduring one, having affected education for our children, state and federal laws, and the business community three decades after her death.