Author: WOAmemphis17

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Deborah M. Clubb

Women of Achievement
1997

VISION
for a woman whose sensitivity to women’s needs
led her to tremendous achievements for women:

Deborah M. Clubb

In March 1984, a group met to discuss establishing awards to recognize accomplishments of local women. They were all too familiar with the abundance of tributes for prominent men while women’s contributions seemed taken for granted. One person was the instigator for calling these women together for the cause: Deborah Clubb.

The result of her effort was Women of Achievement, a diverse and community-wide coalition of women’s groups and other supporters. It was Deborah’s vision as the founding president of Women of Achievement that has brought people together each March for 13 years, to honor women of all races, all creeds and all backgrounds each year as we celebrate Women’s History Month. “Our presence at Women of Achievement events says we believe in celebrating women, our victories, our work, as we make choices, take chances and change ourselves and our world,’’ Deborah said.

Deborah grew up on family farms in Henry County, Ky., the eldest of five children sharing cattle and crop chores. She noticed ways that boys and girls were treated differently but had no name for her observations and feelings. In the fall of her first year at Transylvania University, she took a short-term class taught by a female literature professor and a male history professor. Its title – “Up Against the Wall, Mother: Women in History and Literature.’’ It was 1972. The second wave of the American women’s movement was underway and those two teachers, the first feminists she ever knew beyond some new college friends, gave her words to express what she had observed all her life about roles, about place, about why things were as they were – and why those things needed to change. “Speaking up and out and giving a voice to wrongs I saw became part of me,’’ Deborah said.

With degrees in English and history from Transy in 1976, she took a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern in 1977 and got a job as associate editor at Farm Business Inc., in Washington, D.C., covering agriculture policy and Congress for farm magazines. In 1978, she became the first female reporter on The Commercial Appeal’s business news staff. In the nearly 20 years since, she has campaigned daily as a reporter and editor to improve the role of women in the newsroom and their portrayal in the newspaper.

In her personal life, she has worked equally hard for women’s issues, as the first female chair of deacons at Lindenwood Christian Church, president and steering committee member of Network, on the board of the Economic Justice for Women Coalition and as a mentor for Girls, Inc.

Mid-South women now receive the recognition they deserve because of Deborah Clubb’s vision of an exciting celebration night, reminiscent of the Oscars, where women would be the stars.

Deborah retired from The Commercial Appeal in December 2003 after more than 25 years and is pursuing other writing and advocacy projects.

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Elinor ‘B’ Bridges

Women of Achievement
1996

VISION
for a woman whose sensitivity to women’s needs
led her to tremendous achievements for women:

Elinor ‘B’ Bridges

Elinor ‘B’ Bridges has become a legend in her own time among the more recent generations of women activists in Memphis.

Her work in women’s causes and in discovering women’s history reaches into the 1920s and 1930s during the struggle for the vote and equal rights. Her great-grandmother, grandmother and mother were all ardent feminists in Mississippi, so B’s activism has always been key to her life. Her great-grandmother was the first woman to vote in Mississippi. That activism, B said, still is not extremely popular in her age group. “I’ve had ’em shake their fists at me and say, ‘You just want to be like the men.’ And of course that’s not true. … “If you dared to try to do anything, you were a ‘pushy woman.’ I just try to ignore it and go on – that’s all you can do.”

Early on, she broke an employment barrier when she was hired by the federal government as an accountant because her name – B Bridges – hid her gender.

Her paid career was an accountant but her passion was writing and communicating, especially about women’s history and concerns. She also worked for women’s rights as a member of the American Pen Women and the Business and Professional Women. She argued the need for change to make society an equal place in articles published in The Commercial Appeal.

She is revered by other leaders like Carol Lynn Yellin, Mary Robinson and Frances Loring as a founder of the Memphis women’s movement. In 1960, Memphis State University gave her its “Woman of the Year” award and she was listed in the 1970-71 Who’s Who Among American Women. She was a founder, first treasurer and newsletter editor for the Women’s Resource Center. She secured a grant through Levi Strauss that funded furnishings for the center. She spent hours working to keep it going when funds for staff ran out.

At age 68, she headed the center’s women’s history committee that worked with Dr. Willie Herenton, Barbara Sonnenburg and others to integrate women’s history with the history and science curriculum in the public schools. She wrote for national publications including the BPW national magazine about the school history program. She was not satisfied when the idea of a “women’s history week” in the schools was suggested. She pressed for full integration of course content. The whole idea, she said, is that “women’s history, whatever their race, is American history.”

B was born in 1909 in Mississippi. She knew her three generations of feminist foremothers. She will be 87 in April 1996, and is still writing to The Commercial Appeal. Always the activist, B organized a consciousness-raising group after moving into a senior high rise on Highland.

Only failing eyesight forced her to cease her accountancy career after 51 years. But her vision for women – her push for equal rights and opportunity for women – has never failed.

B died December 16, 2002, at age 93.

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Margaret Rhea Seddon

Women of Achievement
2004

HEROISM
for a woman whose heroic spirit was tested and
shown as a model to all in Shelby County and beyond:

Dr. Margaret Rhea Seddon

From Memphis to the dark reaches of space, Dr. Rhea Seddon has demonstrated her heroic spirit and has shown little girls everywhere that they, too, can reach their dreams.

Rhea Seddon, a native of Murfreesboro and 1973 graduate of the University of Tennessee School of Medicine in Memphis, became one of the nation’s first female astronauts when she was selected for training in 1978.

In the next 19 years, she logged more than 722 hours in space on three Space Shuttle flights. She flew as a mission specialist on the Shuttle in 1985 and 1991 and as payload commander in 1993.

Rhea grew up in the 1950s, graduating from Murfreesboro’s Central High School in 1965. Space exploration was a new American dream. Rhea was fascinated with how people would react and feel in space. But as a practical teen, she didn’t think there was any way she could ever find out. “They didn’t want women astronauts then,’’ Rhea said. “And early on, the only way you could get into space was to be a test pilot. Medicine became my real love … They were letting a few women into medical school, fewer still into surgery. I always felt very lucky to get into those fields.’’

She earned a bachelor’s degree in physiology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1970 and her medical degree in Memphis in 1973. She completed a surgical internship and three years of a general surgery residency in Memphis with a particular interest in nutrition in surgery patients. Between the internship and residency, she served several Mississippi and Tennessee hospitals as an emergency department physician.

Just as she finished her medical training, NASA decided to admit women and scientists into the shuttle program and Rhea, 29, unmarried and without a steady job, was in a perfect position to apply. “Sometimes the stars align just right so that preparation and opportunity come together at just the right moment,’’ she says.

Her third flight, aboard Columbia, flew Oct. 18 to Nov. 1, 1993 as a life science research mission with Rhea as payload commander. It received NASA management recognition as the most successful and efficient Spacelab flown to date. The seven-person crew performed medical experiments on themselves and 48 rats. Rhea assisted in the first animal dissections in space, hailed by NASA as a scientific triumph.

After three Shuttle flights and various assignments at NASA, she was detailed to Vanderbilt University by NASA in 1996 to assist in preparation of cardiovascular experiments which flew aboard the Columbia in April 1998. She retired from NASA in November 1997, returned to her hometown of Murfreesboro and is assistant chief medical officer for the 800-physician Vanderbilt Medical Group in Nashville. She and her husband, former astronaut Robert L. Gibson, have three children.

 

Dr. Sedden was inducted into the Tennessee Aviation Hall of Fame in 2005, the Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2015, and the Tennessee Women’s Hall of Fame in 2015. In 2016 she was awarded the National Football Foundation Nashville Chapter’s Fred Russell Distinguished American award, the Independent Book Publishers Association Ben Franklin Gold Award for Best Autobiography/Memoir (Go For Orbit,) and a University of Tennessee Centennial Top 100 Alumni Award. She was co-recipient of the Great American Leadership Award which was presented to her along with her husband, Capt. Robert “Hoot” Gibson at Awakening 2017.

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Wanda Henson and Brenda Henson

Women of Achievement
2003

HEROISM
for a woman whose heroic spirit was tested and
shown as a model to all in Shelby County and beyond:

Wanda and Brenda Henson

Brenda and Wanda Henson set out to create a peaceful place for retreat and education in rural Mississippi. Instead, they were confronted with verbal, legal and physical harassment at their feminist education center, Camp Sister Spirit. They refused to abandon their vision of a safe place for women who faced abuse or discrimination. That vision evolved in Gulfport, Mississippi, where Brenda and Wanda met while serving as volunteer escorts at an abortion clinic. The attraction was immediate. Almost 19 years later, they remain together, sharing the same last name as a declaration of their commitment.

A few years after they met, Brenda and Wanda opened the first feminist bookstore in Mississippi. The store expanded into a crisis center, providing services for women, children, and lesbian and gay families. As that work grew, they decided to move to the country and focus on outreach.

The Hensons thought they had found the ideal place, a former pig farm in the tiny town of Ovett near Laurel, Mississippi. Their plan was to share the land with others who sought retreat in an environment that was free of violence, alcohol, illegal drugs and discrimination. Their arrival in the summer of 1993 was uneventful. Things changed a few months later after a copy of their newsletter was circulated among local residents.

The Hensons planned to hold workshops on topics including sexism, racism and homophobia. Through the newsletter, it became clear that Brenda and Wanda were lesbians and that they intended to bring more lesbians into the conservative community.

The response was quick: threatening mail and phone calls, gunfire near the property, a dead dog draped over a mail box, opposition statements made in local church pulpits and epithets toward women volunteers who were building a fence around the property. Soon the Southern Baptist Convention lent its support to a movement to buy the property and have the camp branded a public nuisance through a lawsuit. Some wondered why Brenda and Wanda didn’t just leave but the Hensons refused to respond with fear.

Their plight attracted the support of others, including then-Attorney General Janet Reno, who sent federal investigators and mediators.

Almost a decade later, the Hensons are still there. They won the public nuisance lawsuit and face no more litigation. They rarely encounter opposition.

More than 5,000 visitors have spent time at the farm, which has been converted to a conference center with meeting rooms, a 40-person dormitory and rental cabins. In the past decade, they have expanded their work in Ovett. In addition to educational events and the retreat center, they serve the local community, providing clothing, school supplies, emergency food boxes and funds for GED exams. Brenda, who didn’t complete high school, obtained her GED before obtaining bachelor’s and master’s degrees and is continuing her education. Wanda is sharing her knowledge as a Family Nurse Practitioner by working four days near Natchez, Mississippi.

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Sharon Pollard

Women of Achievement
2002

HEROISM
for a woman whose heroic spirit was tested and
shown as a model to all in Shelby County and beyond:

Sharon Pollard

Sharon Pollard never meant to become a warrior for workplace rights.

The men around her just went too far.

Sharon went to work for DuPont in the hydrogen peroxide unit in 1977 in Memphis. In 1995, she left her job with a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by years of harassment and isolation at the male-dominated plant. In 1997, she sued DuPont. In 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court heard her sexual harassment case and unanimously cleared the way for larger damage awards to workers who lose their jobs because of illegal discrimination. The story of her battle appeared in newspapers nationwide.

A 1965 graduate of Westside High, Pollard was divorced and raising a daughter alone when she was hired at DuPont as an assistant operator at the company’s tank farm in North Memphis. One male coworker grabbed her rear end; another reached into her overalls. That was the extent of her problems until her promotion to operator in 1987. She moved from working outdoors, where she turned valves on giant tanks, to the control room where crews of six worked each shift monitoring the chemical process. She was the only woman on her shift and trouble with coworkers started immediately. One placed a Bible on her desk open to the passage “I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over man.’’ Men she worked with asked if she would like to have sex, cursed her and defaced the bathroom with a drawing of large breasts and graffiti.

As incidents stacked up, Sharon reported some and let others slide. The worst of the harassment started after Sharon spoke to girls visiting DuPont for Take Our Daughters to Work Day in 1994. Others on the shift were instructed not to eat with her, be in the break room with her or talk to her. And the men routinely used foul words for women. She went to management. She asked that the four women in that area work the same shift. Management refused. She asked for medical leave and began to see a psychologist. Determined to reach retirement, in February 1996 Sharon met with managers but the only offer was to go back to the control room. She declined and was fired. At trial in federal court, she listened to DuPont employees lie. But in federal court, she won a judgment for $407,000 in back pay and damages, a judgment affirmed by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Sharon went on to the Supreme Court to ask whether federal law limits the amount of damages victims of job discrimination can collect to make up for lost future earnings. The court ruled that she and others deserve more. “Hopefully, the message has been sent by the courts that you are going to have to straighten out the work environment and I feel really good about that,’’ Sharon said. The men who abused her still have their jobs. The main perpetrator never received a reprimand and was never disciplined. There was no further investigation. Sharon continues to work on her emotional recovery.

In October 2003, DuPont was ordered to pay Sharon $2.5 million in punitive damages but the $24 billion multinational company appealed the federal judge’s decision in November 2003.

On June 22, 2005 the Court of Appeals stood by the District Court’s decision to make DuPont pay Pollard $2.5 million in compensatory damages.

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Jodie Gaines Johnson

Women of Achievement
2001

HEROISM
for a woman whose heroic spirit was tested and
shown as a model to all in Shelby County and beyond:

Jodie Gaines Johnson

Jodie Gaines, daughter of a wealthy owner of a furniture factory in McKenzie, Tennessee, had just turned 18 when she was kidnapped April 18, 1978, by three men and held captive five days.

She grew up in Carroll County, about 115 miles northeast of Memphis. Starting in the 10th grade, she attended Lausanne, a private school in East Memphis. She’d make the two-hour drive to Memphis on Sunday evenings and return to McKenzie on Friday afternoons. On one of those Fridays, she had dinner with her parents at the Carroll County Country Club and was stopped by a car with police lights shortly after she drove away. Three men claiming to be conducting an undercover drug bust forced her into the back floorboard of her car. She was imprisoned, first in her car in the Henry County woods, and then in a concrete-block fishing cabin on Kentucky Lake where she was handcuffed to a bed. She was beaten repeatedly and raped.

On Monday afternoon, the men left to arrange and collect a ransom. They returned once, to get an answer to a question that would prove to her family that she was alive. The men left again and for hours, Jodie beat on the bed. She kicked it and hit it all night long. Sometime after dawn on that Tuesday, the bed broke and she freed herself. Meanwhile, authorities arrested the kidnappers, who never got their hands on the $250,000 her father had borrowed and placed under a river bridge. Two attackers pleaded guilty; Jodie testified in the trial of the third, who was convicted as a result of her testimony.

Jodi went on to college at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, but sometimes felt suicidal and hated men. She moved further from McKenzie, to California, worked as a waitress and met a firefighter named Jeff Johnson. They married about 18 months later and he persuaded her that McKenzie was a great place to raise a family. With Jeff as her rock, she rebuilt her life and they are raising four children.

Of her attackers, one remains in prison and one was paroled in 1986. Another, who masterminded the kidnap plan, was freed from prison in 1999 and returned to the McKenzie area to live and work. When state officials would not tell her when her attackers would be released or what they looked like, her campaign for victims’ rights legislation began.

“I have four kids and I don’t want to be in the grocery store and run into them because I’m not that strong,’’ Jodie has said. “I’m going to do whatever I can do … I’m going to speak out, especially for those people who don’t have a voice.’’

She has spoken to legislators in Nashville to push a constitutional amendment and bills providing notification and other rights to victims of crimes. She met with Vice President Al Gore regarding similar federal proposals and spoke at the 2000 Democratic Convention. A 1996 state constitutional amendment guaranteeing victims’ rights passed in Tennessee and now Jodie wants the same thing to happen across the nation.

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Molly Meisenheimer

Women of Achievement
2000

HEROISM
for a woman whose heroic spirit was tested and
shown as a model to all in Shelby County and beyond:

Molly Meisenheimer

In 1990, Molly Meisenheimer was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 35, too young at the time for a routine mammogram. With the support of her husband and two sons, she underwent a mastectomy, extensive chemotherapy, and reconstructive surgery. Faith in her family and church helped her survive the experience. “It’s not a death sentence,” Molly insists. “I’m here, I have hair on my head and a smile on my face.”

But Molly realized that women she knew didn’t talk about breast cancer, and she was desperate to find a way to reach out to other women and share her feelings. She came across an article on the Dallas-based Susan G. Komen Foundation, which raises money to fund treatment for breast-cancer patients. The group began the Race for the Cure 5K walk or run with women participants only, followed by a one-mile family fun run. Molly decided to help bring this fundraiser to Memphis, thus assisting women who didn’t have access to doctors and hospitals. In 1993, the event took place in 18 cities, including Memphis, with 1,753 participating, and net profits of $35,000. In 1999, in Memphis, 12,640 participated and $462,900 was raised.

The race is now held in more than 100 cities. Seventy-five percent of the funds raised locally stay in Memphis to pay for diagnostic screening, surgery, wigs and prostheses, videos, books, and support groups. The Race for the Cure office, run by volunteers and one paid staff member, has a sign prominently displayed reading, “Leave your ego at home.”

“I wish I hadn’t had breast cancer, but I really like the person I’ve become,” says Molly. Along with organizing the annual Race for the Cure, Molly addresses women in factories and jails, urging them to do regular self-examinations and to get mammograms.

“We are all women, we all have breasts, and cancer has no barriers.”

This May will mark the fifth year of a Memphis pro/amateur golf event that men can enter. Donations to the race and to the Komen Foundation come in throughout the year. A luncheon held locally once a year to honor all breast-cancer survivors will have 500-600 attendees. They come by word of mouth and are recognized by the number of years they have survived the cancer.

Molly has become a heroine to her family, to the Memphis community, and to breast-cancer patients and survivors everywhere for turning her personal tragedy into hope for hundreds of other women.

Molly Meisenheimer won the Memphis Chapter of the Public Relations Society of Americas (PRSA) Communicator of the Year award. She has relocated to Oxford, Mississippi.

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Sandra Harrison

Women of Achievement
1999

HEROISM
for a woman whose heroic spirit was tested and
shown as a model to all in Shelby County and beyond:

Sandra Harrison

Sandra Harrison was illiterate.

She was 46, but she could not decipher a utility bill, or choose a greeting card for a friend, or read a simple paragraph in a newspaper story.

Typically, people who cannot read will make their way in society as best they can, hiding their secret. Some take classes at the many literacy councils in the area. Some go on to get their general equivalency diploma (GED) and enroll in adult basic education classes.

Sandra Harrison was different. She decided to go back to school.

In 1996, she entered second grade at Drummonds Elementary School and began her education with 7-year-old children. With loving support from a dear friend and a fine teacher, she set out determined to learn to read and write.

She swallowed her pride, not only to get the education she needed, but also to prevent others from being illiterate. She told the story of her struggle on the front page of The Commercial Appeal. To her classmates, she said, “I can’t read. I come up the hard way. I don’t want you to go through what I did, the way that I was brought up. I want to be able to read, and be with you, and do things like you do.’’

Sandra’s family were Tipton County sharecroppers. She, her brothers and sisters – 11 of them – got to go to school when it rained. Otherwise the family worked the cotton fields.

In the 1950s and 1960s in rural Tipton County, no one thought to test Sandra for a learning disability. No one noticed or helped as she fell behind in her schoolwork, so Sandra began a lifetime of pretending and getting by. At last, a teacher said, “You can’t learn.’’

Sandra married at 16 and nearly 30 years later, her caring husband, W.H. ‘Bug’ Harrison, encouraged her to accept friend Inez Miller’s offer of reading lessons. After a year of grammar, spelling and phonics, Inez paired Sandra with veteran second-grade teacher Mable Jefferson. She became “Miss Sandra,’’ drilling with flash cards and reading from piles of picture books alongside youngsters with missing teeth.

“I love them books,’’ she told The Commercial Appeal. “I get excited about them books.’’

Years after a school system failed her, Sandra Harrison bravely risked humiliation and disappointment in her drive to change her life by learning to read and write. She bravely shared her story, in her community, at church and in the newspaper, to offer an example of hope and strength to others.

Sandra Harrison studied for four years and then stopped to tend to an ill family member.

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Alison Williams

Women of Achievement
1998

HEROISM
for a woman whose heroic spirit was tested and
shown as a model to all in Shelby County and beyond:

Alison Williams

Alison Williams’ parents raised their daughter to be colorblind. So it was no wonder that as the newly elected 17-year-old student body president of Hernando High School, she questioned the race-based student election system that began during integration in 1970.

Freshmen, sophomore and junior classes elected co-presidents – a black student and a white student for each class – as a way to give representation to black and white students. The high school also had two principals – one black and one white. The common response was, “That’s just the way we do it here.”

“Race relations are good, so why does the school need this system?” Alison wondered.

She spoke up about this policy at a DeSoto County School Board meeting in May 1997. The school board quickly dismissed Alison’s question, but they couldn’t dismiss her conviction. She believed that the student body should be able to vote for student council representatives based on individual merit and the individual’s desire to run and serve. She decided to fight to the end.

With assistance from a local parents group, Alison and her parents persuaded the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Education to investigate. As the investigation became publicized, Alison began losing friends at school. One teacher told her she was disappointed in her. Eventually the national media approached her – the Associated Press, Good Morning America, CNN, and 20/20.

A petition to have her impeached was started by a teacher and a few former friends. However, on June 2, 1997, the DeSoto County School Board announced that there would be no ethnicity requirements on any activity at Hernando High School. A month later, it became a countywide change. And she learned that the next year, there would be only one principal at the school.

Alison is now a senior and is thankful for the friends who stood by her in her fight. Alison has said that if she could go back, she would do it all over again. She is what we call people who challenge accepted practice and spark important debate about unpopular causes – a hero.

Alison completed high school out-of-state and is a straight-A student in criminal justice at Northwest Mississippi Community College. She works for the Sheriff’s Department and raises and trains horses.

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Lisa Herdahl

Women of Achievement
1997

HEROISM
for a woman whose heroic spirit was tested and
shown as a model to all in Shelby County and beyond:

Lisa Herdahl

A heroine is a woman noted for her courageous and daring acts. Courageous and daring are words used many times to describe Lisa Herdahl, a woman who exhibited tremendous heroism in her legal battle against the religious practices of the Pontotoc County School District.

In 1993, Herdahl and her family moved from Wisconsin to Mississippi and into the Pontotoc County School District. Five of her six children attended the North Pontotoc Attendance Center and were exposed to daily devotionals over the intercom, biblical history classes subsidized by local churches, group prayer sessions in the gymnasium and religious videotapes shown in classes.

With the support of the American Civil Liberties Union and the advocacy group, People for the American Way, Lisa challenged these long-standing religious practices publicly when she brought suit against the school systems.

The trial, which drew national media attention, was declared a victory for Herdahl and her family in July 1996. A U.S. district judge ruled that the Pontotoc County School District was in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition of government establishment of religions and ordered the daily devotionals on the intercom to be stopped.

During the two-year legal battle, Lisa and her family were subjected to harsh criticism from students, teachers, townspeople and community leaders. They were ridiculed, taunted and belittled.

“My kids and I have been harassed for standing up for our religious freedom,” Herdahl said. “I don’t believe that any students should be forced to choose between going along with some official prayer or having to stand out and be ostracized.”

In response to her public stand on the school prayer issue, Lisa was called an atheist, was forced to quit her job and faced eviction from her home. But through it all, Lisa Herdahl held fast to her beliefs.

Lisa has been unable to find a job since the lawsuit. She is organizing a non-profit to help families assert their rights in dealing with public school systems regarding special education, disciplinary actions and other issues.