Category: Heroism

Women of Achievement
2010

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

Jasmine Gray

Twenty-one-year-old Jasmine Gray knows what it’s like for a child to spend long weeks in the hospital. She knows that hospital gowns leave you cold and make you feel ugly. She knows that just being in the hospital makes you feel that you’re not a regular kid. As a result, she founded Jaz’s Jammies.

Jaz Gray was born with a rare birth defect called an arteriovenous malformation, an abnormal connection between arteries and veins resulting in too much blood going to the right side of her face. Since the age of 10, she has endured 26 operations. During her sophomore through senior years, she spent every summer as well as Christmas breaks in hospitals or at home recuperating. She had one surgery in which her whole right cheek was removed and replaced with skin from her abdomen and back. Unfortunately this surgery did not eliminate the problem.

Not one to dwell on her troubles, Jaz moved ahead with her life. In 2006, she was a senior at Germantown High School and a Girl Scout. She was looking for a project that would impact lives. She remembered her own long stays in the hospital as a child. Warm, fuzzy pajamas, brand-new, of course, would be just the thing to cheer up a child. A colorful pair of pajamas “gives kids a sense of normalcy,” Jasmine says. “It makes them feel like someone cares about them and is thinking about them.”

Jazmine uses email, posters and flyers and even Facebook, to publicize drives. Since 2006, Jaz’s Jammies has collected and distributed over 2500 pairs of pajamas to children in need in hospitals and shelters. Victims of burns, sexual assault, children living in poverty and in homeless shelters have all been comforted by the gift. One little boy who’d spent all day in a wheelchair in a hospital gown was hugely cheered by his Scooby-Doo flannels.

Now a senior majoring in journalism at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Jaz has taken her efforts to the Nashville area. Not shy, she’s involved family, friends, church members and other students. One Murfreesboro restaurant let her pass out free cups of ice cream to support the drive. Her first donations went to Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock, where many of her surgeries were performed. Other recipients include Le Bonheur Children’s Medical Center, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital.

“She’s a dynamo,” says Steve Saunders, assistant director of the Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program at MTSU. An excellent student, she has a 3.9 GPA and is making plans for graduate school and for obtaining nonprofit status for Jaz’s Jammies.

She is working on a research project on the image of black college students in the media, which she hopes to present in China through the McNair Program. Last year she received a $1,000 Harold Love Outstanding Community Involvement Award from MTSU. She used part of that for a pajama drive. She plans to use the rest on obtaining nonprofit status and possibly establishing a website.

Her father says, ”She’s a very caring, very spirited, loving girl with a strong faith. She has accepted the fact that she is different and that God has a purpose in her life. That’s what has carried her through.” Jaz herself says, “What I love about Jaz’s Jammies is that it serves two purposes: helping children who face incredible odds, whether sick or homeless, and at the same time giving people throughout the community the chance to serve others. It’s a blessing on both ends!”

Jasmine Gray has heroically fought her own health battles. She has used what she’s learned to give children in pain and need just what might help most: Love symbolized by a soft pair of pajamas!

Women of Achievement
2008

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

Ashley Michele Sanders

Truly selfless, compassionate acts are rare indeed, but in an incident that occurred one afternoon in March 2007, so much human compassion was on display that one life was saved and at least two lives were changed forever.

The heroic story has been told and retold across the nation. On her way to Bible study at her Midtown church, Heather Mae Fox stopped at a drug store. As she approached the door she couldn’t help notice the upset young woman holding a baby. When she came back out minutes later, the woman still seemed in need and so Heather Fox offered to help. The offer later was to brand her a “Good Samaritan” by the news media and no one would argue with that.

Desperately clutching the child, the woman said she needed a ride to the library. Fox didn’t hesitate to unlock her car and let the woman get in her back seat with the baby and a carrier.

Soon, though, the ride turned into a carjacking. Pulling out a 40-caliber gun and still cradling the child in her arm, the woman barked at Fox to go to the nearest ATM. As she was directed into an unfamiliar neighborhood and away from traffic, Fox tried to figure out what to do. She didn’t want to wreck her car because of the baby. She also didn’t want to be a victim without trying to escape. She made a quick decision, braked and started to jump from the car to run away, but the young woman fired the gun. The bullet entered from behind the collarbone and exited Fox’s chest.

As she stumbled away, crying for help, she looked down to see that her blouse was drenched in blood. The carjacker meanwhile sped away, only to crash the car later and be captured.

As Heather Fox quickly lost blood, several bystanders hesitated to help her, apparently unwilling to come in contact with her blood. She felt herself in danger of dying. That’s when another Good Samaritan — and an honest-to-goodness hero — came to her aid.

Providentially, Ashley Sanders, a tall, no-nonsense inner-city teenager who loves sports and practices the art of peacemaking among her friends and acquaintances was nearby.

Armed only with the knowledge acquired by watching TV shows, she rolled up her hooded sweatshirt for a pillow to make Fox more comfortable, and immediately began applying pressure on the exit wound. She spoke reassuringly to Fox as she lost consciousness and kept pressure applied until emergency help arrived.

Later in the hospital, Heather Fox learned she had lost half of her blood and likely would have died but for Ashley’s quick actions.

As many of you know, this isn’t the end of the story. Heather Fox started a trust fund for Ashley, got more news coverage around the country and that led to a full scholarship to pharmacy school for Ashley. The two have become fast friends and both women say their lives have changed for the better. Heather Fox now views every day as a new gift from God. Ashley has had many first-time experiences, including her first rides in a taxi and on an airplane, but mainly she has learned that she is a capable young woman with a promising future.

“The media began calling me the Good Samaritan,” Fox says. “However, the Good Samaritan was an 18-year-old girl, Ashley Sanders, who heard the gunshot and came to my rescue.”

Two women of immense compassion, and one a model of true heroism — Ashley Michele Sanders.

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
2015

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

Dr. Owen Phillips

Since the 1980s, those who strive to assure American women access to complete reproductive health care, including termination of pregnancy, have been threatened with bombings, kidnappings, shootings and arson.

Doctors have been shot to death, even in their churches; nurses and other clinic staff have been killed or have lost eyes and limbs. Clinics have closed due to terrorism and those few that remain open strive constantly to protect personnel from danger.

In Tennessee last year, a proposal called Amendment One set out to change the state constitution’s protection of privacy rights that would grant state legislators the ability to pass unlimited restrictions on abortion, with no exceptions for rape, incest or saving the life of the mother.

Women concerned about the potential loss of healthcare and the likelihood that politicians could acquire control over women’s health care decisions organized across Tennessee to fight Amendment One. The Vote No on One campaign needed the voices of strong women – physicians, lawyers and healthcare consumers – to speak in commercials to educate voters about the potential impact of the amendment.

When the question was asked in Memphis – what doctor will appear in commercials to oppose Amendment One – Owen Phillips did not hesitate. This obstetrician-gynecologist, a specialist in high risk pregnancy and genetics, researcher and educator of student doctors raised her hand and signed on to be a face and a voice in support of women’s rights to control their own destiny.

In Owen’s commercial, which aired across the state, she told the compelling story of a patient diagnosed with cancer who chose to continue a pregnancy rather than treat her disease. She died – but she had charge of her decision. Owen said, “It was her decision and no one else’s.”

This heroic gesture was only the latest in Owen’s consistent support of women’s right to full reproductive care. She wrote an op-ed for the newspapers about the “dangerous and troubling” amendment. She wrote:
“I have had patients whose doctors advised them that because of their medical conditions, continuing a pregnancy would jeopardize their lives and leave their children motherless.
“I have had patients whose pregnancies resulted from failed contraception, even methods that were supposed to have been permanent.
“I have cared for 12-year-olds who have been raped by family members.”

Owen continued: “I am not in a position to make decisions for any of these women and their families, but neither is a politician or community member who has never faced such a terrible situation.”

Owen grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, where she earned her undergraduate and medical degrees. Even in high school she worked at a free clinic in Jackson, driving a home health nurse into the poorer neighborhoods to check on elderly residents.

Many years later, Owen joined Big Brothers Big Sisters where her relationship with one little girl has become support and mentoring for multiple children in two related families. In 2008, she received the Big Sister of the Year award for the Greater Memphis Area as well as volunteer of the year for the state of Tennessee for the organization.

Owen is a board member and past board president for the Memphis Area Women’s Council, a non-profit advocacy organization which seeks to eliminate barriers to women’s access to safety, equity and justice.

Being a visible face in support of reproductive rights has been deadly for physicians in our country but Owen Phillips does not hesitate. She has spoken out consistently in support of women and their sole right to make their own health care decisions with access to a full range of care.

Her heroic stance brings a reasoned, experienced voice to a difficult and urgent topic.

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
2016

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

Leah Walton

At birth, she was given the name Dylan, a name befitting the handsome little boy she was. Today she is Leah.

Dylan always felt different. As a child she dressed up in her mother’s lipstick and sang along with Britney Spears. As a young teen she came out as gay, but something still felt off. She felt uncomfortable in her own skin. And then one night, she stumbled upon a video of a beautiful transgender woman and it hit her like a bolt of lightning. “I’m a trans woman.”

In 2013, Dylan was a senior at South Panola High School in Mississippi, a school best known for its powerhouse football team, and she looked like your average teen boy— wearing hoodies and baggy pants. But outside of school, Dylan had changed her name to Leah and her pronouns from “he” to “she.” She was ready to be fully “out.” She began to make plans to attend the prom as a girl.

Mississippi is a state with no laws protecting the trans community. In fact, a law was passed in Mississippi shortly after Leah’s graduation called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It protects religious people from legal repercussions if they verbally condemn the lifestyles of LGBT persons. Additionally, under this law, businesses can refuse services to LGBT persons. Abusers and bigots are protected, but in Mississippi LGBT persons can be evicted or fired just for being LGBT. With knowledge of these laws you might say it is foolish, even illogical to come out as a proud trans woman, but Leah could not bear to live a lie. She could not bear going to school dressed as a boy now that she had discovered her true self.

Over winter break of her senior year Leah wrote to her school and explained that she was transgender. She asked permission to finish out the year as her true identity—dressing as, and being addressed as, a woman. The school wrote back to say they had never heard the term “transgender” and that school policy stated she had to dress in the style befitting her sex.
“I was distraught” Leah said. “I had six months of school left… I just wanted to be the real me.”

Kim Hood, Leah’s mother, found much at fault with the school’s response. She contacted The American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi and insisted they come to her daughter’s defense. The ACLU began to work with Leah’s school to ensure a smooth transition in the early stages of Leah’s gender transformation.

Quickly, local news outlets in Mississippi picked up the story, then it spread into Shelby County, Tennessee. “Male high school student in Batesville, Mississippi, will finish year dressed as a girl,” was the title of a story about Leah in The Commercial Appeal. Then it became international news. British publications The Guardian and The Daily Mail picked it up, among others. Leah did several interviews. A Facebook page called “Mississippians Support Leah” got more than 1,500 “likes” in less than 24 hours after being created. Supporters from all over the world wrote notes of support to the young, brave girl in Mississippi.

Leah was careful to dress nicely for her first day attending school as a woman. She was interviewed by WMC-TV, a local Memphis news program, and discussed planning her outfit. Leah proudly reported, “I wore jeans and a cute top and I wore high heels.”

But there was backlash. Leah was greeted at the school gates by a group of religious protestors — fellow students and parents wearing t-shirts that read, “You’re going to hell” and, “abomination.” They hurled insults at her and refused to use gender pronouns. They called Leah “it.” Leah was frightened and upset. She stayed away from school for several days.

When she returned to school she dealt with a new set of bullies. Girls stared at her as she walked down the hall. Girls laughed at her and took pictures of her with their phones. Classmates whispered and stared. “But the bullies never had the courage to say anything to my face,” Leah said, “and my friends were all there for me.” And then, slowly, other students began to approach Leah. They congratulated her. They told her she was brave to face the protesters as her true self.

Eventually, things got back to normal. No more protests. No more news reports. People got used to the new Leah and she went about living her life. Leah now lives and works in Oxford, Mississippi. After taking some time to care for herself, she now has great hopes of getting back into the advocacy arena and working to help and support others who are experiencing the same abuse and fear that she once faced. Leah will tell you this experience in high school feels like a lifetime ago, but she continues to be a remembered and visible trans figure in the community. She is surely a ray of hope for other trans people in Mississippi.

During the heavy coverage of her transition, a letter to the editor was printed in The Commercial Appeal in Memphis. The author, Anne Brownlee Gullick, chair of the Tennessee Equality Project Shelby County Committee, wrote of her proud support of Leah. She wrote, “Leah’s courage and strength exhibited in her public transitioning while still in high school in Mississippi is something to be honored and nurtured… When this chapter in Mississippi LGBT history is written, Leah’s very real, very human story will be remembered for making it easier for the next generation of LGBT young people to tell theirs.”

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
2017

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

Rebecca Terrell

As the executive director of CHOICES: Memphis Center for Reproductive Health, Rebecca Terrell daily faces the ever-present danger that accompanies leadership of an agency that, in addition to its other activities, offers abortion counseling and services.

Despite great opposition, she has campaigned to make conversations about women’s health, teen pregnancy, comprehensive and evidenced-based sex education, and the rights of women to safe abortion care a reality in our community. To an already challenging list, she has added providing services to the LGBTQ community including transgender people. Rebecca consistently works here and nationally to make her vision of open discussion and effective delivery of reproductive healthcare a reality

With a Masters in Public Administration and after years as a dancer, Rebecca spent 15 years as executive director of the Florida Dance Association. Her husband’s work brought them to Memphis in 1998. Here she spent the first five years at home with their twins. When she was ready to reenter the workforce, she talked her way into a part-time job at the Center for Research on Women at the University of Memphis. She was there 6 years then started looking for fulltime work. A friend mentioned that the position of executive director for what was then Memphis Center for Reproductive Health was open. Her first thoughts: “No way! Too intense! Who’d want to do that?” But she kept thinking about the job. Finally she called the director at that time and was told that what MCRH did was abortions. Out of an old house in Midtown.

Rebecca had a vision about sustaining and widening this long-standing feminist women’s center and almost before she knew it, she’d applied and been hired. The job came with both local and national opponents but Rebecca was up to the challenge.

Rebecca’s long-range vision was to transform MCRH into a healthcare facility providing a broad range of services from fertility assistance to a birthing center, STI tests, PAP tests, and breast exams to very specialized services for people living with HIV, the lesbian and gay community and transgender patients. She oversaw the move from the old house to an updated clinic space. MCRH became CHOICES. In 2011, the agency celebrated the new name at the new clinic located at 1726 Poplar. The location has a large, pleasant waiting room filled with information on reproductive health and jars of free condoms. CHOICES now serves more than 3,000 women, men and teens each year and is already outgrowing the space.

Rebecca knows that CHOICES changes peoples’ lives. This is obvious in notes sent thanking staff for kind, competent, non-judgmental care. Many are hand-written and include hearts. Some are from mothers saying they are glad their daughters have been able to make choices different from their own. One young man in transition said, “Each one of your jobs is changing lives, from the receptionist that tells me to sign in, the nurse that walks me to my room and even the lady who always greets me with a warm hello and says ‘I’m going to need you to pee in a cup today.’ ”

Rebecca knows that reproductive rights are always in danger. With that in mind, she is constantly looking for ways to bring allies to the fight.

In 2009 Rebecca served as chair and founding member of Memphis Teen Vision (MemTV). This coalition of 250 local agencies is dedicated to being comprehensive and inclusive of all members’ perspectives. The shared intention is to create a future where all teens are taught comprehensive sex education, teens’ onset of sexual intercourse is delayed, teen pregnancies are reduced/eliminated and teen parents are provided assistance. Rebecca’s confident voice leads the way.

In 2012, Rebecca became the founding member and chair of a statewide coalition: Healthy and Free Tennessee. The group now has over 40 member organizations statewide working together to promote and protect sexual health and reproductive freedom. The Coalition includes individual members and has regional and national partners. In her leadership role, Rebecca speaks out on legislation, leads rallies, and stands up for full and accessible reproductive health care for all.

Today Rebecca is leading the charge to raise $4 million to build a new clinic for CHOICES. The next expansion includes three birthing suites for midwife-assisted births. The facility will be the only non-profit in America to offer a full range of reproductive services.

Rebecca shared this idea of full-service comprehensive reproductive care at a recent national conference of the Abortion Care Network. She believes expanding reproductive services beyond abortion is the way forward.

We know that those who speak out and take action around reproductive rights have been harassed, stalked, even killed, yet Rebecca says that she is not frightened. She purposefully has an office with windows looking out on a busy street. She refuses to be afraid, she refuses to sit down and she refuses to be quiet.

Her heroic spirit is a model for all.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.