Author: WOAmemphis17

Women of Achievement
1992

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

Patricia Howard

Patricia Howard has a vision for the girls of Memphis. She sees them reaching womanhood with the knowledge and skills they need to live successful lives.

Patricia began at Girls, Inc. in 1966 as a work-study college student and rose through the ranks to become executive director in 1978. She has learned through her years that the first step towards change is the ability to envision that change, and she has worked hard to give young women the tools with which to do that. Young women participating in Girls, Inc. learn that they can make choices about their futures. She emphasizes that decisions they make now (staying in school, getting a good education, developing employment skills) will make a difference in their lives. She stresses the importance of taking responsibility for oneself and one’s actions.

Patricia considers it a personal challenge to take this vision to women so that they know they have a responsibility to the girls in this community, and to motivate them to act to improve the futures of younger women by raising funds to implement programs and serving as role models and mentors. To accomplish this, she has worked closely with Provida, a national support group for Girls, Inc.

Realizing that programs for young women were not receiving equitable funding, Patricia helped organize the Women’s Funding Forum, whose purpose is to increase the community’s awareness for the need to support services for girls and women. While working with the general community, the group specifically targets women and woman-owned businesses.

To help more people share her vision of helping young women reach maturity with as many skills and options as possible, she has been an energetic participant in Memphis community and civic life. She has been active in Leadership Memphis, the IBM Community Executive Program, the Girls’ Club of America Board of Directors, the Bethany Home Board of Directors, and the Community Day Care and Comprehensive Social Services Association.

Patricia has long been active in women’s groups. In 1977 she was a founding member of the Coalition for Choice, a community-based group that lobbied to maintain reproductive rights. She was a team member and planner for the 1982 Women in the Community, an NEH grant through Radcliffe College, which produced a series of programs on the history of Memphis women. And in 1984 she was present at the brain-storming session where Women of Achievement was born.

In the words of her nominators, Patricia Howard is “a special person; her vision for Girls, Inc. — and every one of the girls who she serves — has made Memphis a better place to live.”

Patricia Howard passed away on March 5, 2019. Read more about her legacy here.

Women of Achievement
1991

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

Karen Williams

Karen Williams, a native Memphian, took her University of Arkansas music degree to Memphis State University where she earned a law degree in 1976. She then practiced law in the city’s first all-female firm — Coleman, Sorak and Williams. Drawn to politics, in 1982 she defeated an incumbent to win a seat in the house of the Tennessee General Assembly. In her nine years in Nashville, Karen has become known as the most consistent friend for women in the legislature.

She won her seat by building a coalition and she used those same skills to pass legislation to fund shelters for battered women and their children. This was not a popular cause because it would increase the marriage license fee for funding, and it was not restrictive in defining battered women. She faced active, persistent and well-financed opposition. Even so, she did not give up and finally gained passage of the legislation.

Karen then co-authored and led the battle for passage of the maternity leave bill, which requires businesses employing at least 100 people to provide four-month pregnancy leave, putting Tennessee at the forefront of the 50 states on that issue. She also visibly supported the Child Support Enforcement Act, guarding victims’ rights and insurance coverage for special counseling services.

This year she is trying again to extend the parental leave rights to adoptive parents and to address insurance needs of adoptive children. She also is supporting legislation requiring state-funded mammography equipment be kept in good working order and that technicians be well trained.

Karen Williams is a visionary, but not as defined by Webster. Rather, she is a doer who inspires others to join in the effort to meet the needs of women. As she entered this year’s legislative session, Rep. Williams summed up her guiding philosophy: “What we do affects people’s lives and we ought to be cognizant of that every minute.”

Women of Achievement
1990

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

Elma Neal Roane

Elma Neal Roane led the struggle for women’s rights in athletics in local, regional and national settings for four decades, helping change forever the treatment of female athletes in Tennessee.

She came to women’s athletics as a young participant. She was a champion in basketball and softball for Messick High School in the 1930s, on all-district and all-state teams, winning awards too numerous to mention. And that was only the beginning.

Choosing education as her lifetime calling, Elma gained undergraduate and graduate degrees and began her teaching career at Treadwell High School. In 1946 she joined the Memphis State College faculty, where she ultimately held the position of director of the Women’s Division, Physical Education Department, and coordinator of MSU Women’s Athletics. In those positions she fought for the rights of women students to have funding, space and equipment, publicity and support equal to male athletes. She championed in Tennessee and particularly at MSU implementation of Title IX federal legislation that provided equal access to athletics for women.

All the while, Elma remained an active athlete herself, making a mark in women’s softball, tennis, badminton and golf. She has been named to the Memphis Park Commission’s Hall of Fame, received an award from the Tennessee Commission on the Status of Women, and in 1984 was named Greater Memphis State Educator of the Year, to list only a few of her honors.

It is easy today to forget the atmosphere 20 years ago and more when a few women with vision in the United States began campaigning for equal rights in sports. Opponents painted images of men and women forced to compete and warned of a drain on funding for male athletic programs. That opposition proved erroneous.

A fighter and a winner, Elma had the special vision needed to lead the way so that women can play and win under equal treatment of the law.

Women of Achievement
1988

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

Marilou Awiakta

Writer Marilou Awiakta has said with deep conviction that “Nature is female, and nature is thought. Therefore, the thinking woman is one of the profound harmonies of the universe. Even with the efforts of the women’s movement, we’ve made slow progress in changing the American concept of women as sentiment: passive, all-giving, all-suffering. This concept is not true and it is damaging to women in our society.”

This belief has led her to give generously to many efforts to aid women: stopping violence against women, support of the ERA, and securing better treatment for female prisoners. She is on the board of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, the Women’s Network of the Girl Scout Council, and she chairs the literary panel of the Tennessee Arts Commission. She also is a founder of the Far Away Cherokee Association, which became the Native American Intertribal Association.

When friends speak of Marilou Awiakta, her intuitiveness is always mentioned first. This, combined with her skills in relating the familiar to the cosmic, is the basis for an appeal that cuts through barriers of class, race, age and gender. Her two books, “Abiding Appalachia: Where Mountain and Atom Meet” and “Rising Fawn and the Fire Mystery” were chosen for the U.S. Information Agency 1984 show “Women in the Contemporary World.”

She has read her poems on campuses across the nation, behind prison doors in Shelby County, and to countless children of Memphis.

Marilou Awiakta is a woman who knows who she is and helps us see who we are or may become. She lives her Native American tradition that calls for the true artist to help create harmony and healing in the environment. She has fused her Cherokee-Appalachian heritage with the experience of growing up on the atomic frontier in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and through her writing, lectures and personal interactions, all the while sharing her unique vision with us all.

Marilou received the Distinguished Tennessee Writer Award in 1989 and the 1991 Outstanding Contribution to Appalachian Literature Award. Her third book, Selu: Seeking the Corn-Mother’s Wisdom was published in 1994. She and her work are profiled in the Oxford Companion to Women’s Writing in the United States 1994.

Women of Achievement
1989

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

Carol Lynn Yellin

Author, editor, activist, mentor — Carol Lynn Yellin has been part of the Memphis community since she moved from New York in 1964.

While editing Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, she quickly became active in civil rights, joining the black and white women in the Saturday Luncheon Club who tested desegregation laws by dining in various restaurants. Three days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., she and her husband David founded the Memphis Search for Meaning Committee. She obtained grant funds and worked with volunteers in the massive job of documenting Memphis events of 1968. A National Endowment for the Humanities grant turned their labor into the Memphis Multi-Media Archival Collection at Memphis State University.

Carol Lynn’s commitment to women’s right is long-standing. From 1975 to 1977, she participated in the International Women’s Conference in Mexico City, the Tennessee Women’s Meeting and the National Women’s Conference in Houston. For the Tennessee meeting she helped to write and edit Tennessee Women: Past and Present.

Before the demise of the first campaign for ratification of the ERA, she organized pro-equality luncheons and helped organize a citywide celebration of the anniversary of women’s suffrage in Court Square, featuring the man who cast the deciding vote in Tennessee in 1920 that led to voting for women. She has marched on the county courthouse, pressing for women on juries; helped found the Memphis Chapter of Women in Communications, Inc., the Economic Justice for Women Coalition and Women of Achievement, Inc. Her article on the suffrage movement, published by American Heritage magazine in 1979-80, is regarded as source material by scholars. She is comfortable dealing with “old-timers” in the women’s and civil rights movements as well as with young women who are just beginning to understand the sacrifices of those who came before them.

Carol Lynn Yellin has a vision — a vision of equality and opportunity for women of all ages, races and backgrounds.

Carol Lynn incorporated VOTE70 Inc. with Paula Casey and Joan Horne Lollar in 1989 to celebrate the 70-year history of women’s suffrage. She is working on a biography of Mahatma Gandhi.

Women of Achievement
1994

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

Paula Casey

Paula Casey has a vision of women taking their rightful place in the halls of power. She has worked tirelessly and creatively to make that vision a reality.

Paula is a co-founder of the Memphis Women’s Political Caucus, was president of the Tennessee Women’s Caucus, served as a charter member and secretary of the Economic Justice for Women Coalition, and is currently a board member of Woman’s Party Corp. in Washington, D.C., which maintains the Sewall-Belmont House, a depository for women’s suffrage memorabilia.

In 1989 Paula founded VOTE 70 and incorporated it with Carol Lynn Yellin and Joan Horne Lollar to celebrate the 70-year history of women’s right to vote. Frustrated with the lack of information concerning the suffragists in history books, she decided to take action. The result is a 12.5-minute video, Generations, detailing 70 years of struggle for the right for women to vote. It is now available in all 50 states and at the Smithsonian Institute.

Other activities include over a decade of work for the YWCA as both a volunteer and board member and as a board member of the National Federation of Press Women since 1977. A former newspaper journalist, Paula brings powerful energy and enthusiasm to her causes. She is a voice for Tennessee women on political issues. An example is this comment from a July 1991 story about Gov. Ned McWherter’s failure to appoint women to the University of Tennessee’s 24-member Board of Trustees: “The very fact that he cannot look at that and say ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’ suggests he needs some consciousness-training. He’d never dream of appointing an all-white board. Why doesn’t he know better than to have all men?”

Carol Lynn Yellin says, “She carries people along with her own spirit.” And Marilou Awiakta adds that “Paula has, as the Indian people say, ‘a good mind’ — that is, she is positive in thoughts and spirit and works for the good of the people.”

It is no coincidence that these past recipients of the Vision Award mention spirit. For Paula’s spirit is strong and a model to us all. Her nominator says, “Paula is indeed a hero, not only to me, but to every little girl in America who may grow up to realize all her dreams without limit and to every woman in America who already can.”

It is her vision of equality for women that makes this true.