Women’s History Month: “Women I Admire”

by Matilda Butler on March 18, 2011

catnav-rosies-daughters-activePost #9 – Women’s Memoirs, Rosie the Riveter – Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett

Welcome to Day 18 of Women’s History Month. To honor women this month, Kendra and I have planned a few different blog posts, ones that step outside our usual memoir and memoir writing content. (See the bottom of this post for links to two of our blogs.)

In a recent email to our readers, we posed the question, “Who is the woman you most admire?” Here is one of the responses we received that we felt was worth sharing. Have your own woman you admire, or even a list? You can post them in the Comments section or send us an email.

WHO DO I ADMIRE?
Joellyn Avery

Well, there are the obvious women like Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and women of the suffragette’s movement. But there are many women every day providing love, comfort, support to their loved ones as well as complete strangers. Think of all the brave women who share their painful memoirs.

I admire my daughter and the work she did at the Martin Luther King Papers Project and the dedicated work she does every day to engage and inspire her students.

On short notice and with not too much thought, I think of Margaret Mead. And, importantly, there is Rosalind Franklin, who actually discovered the double-helix DNA in her X-ray crystallography research. Without her permission, Maurice Wilkins gave Watson and Crick access to her research data including the famous double helix. Guess who got all the credit and the Noble Prize? She died young of ovarian cancer possibly because of her radiation exposure. This is more brief than “Cliff Notes,” but her research and bio are fascinating.

While I was finishing my biology degree at George Mason, I traveled to Central America in ’96 with other students and professors. I was studying ethnobiology as practiced by the local Bri Bri Indians. Among the fellow travelers, was a famous Russian geneticist, who along with his wife had been harassed and eventually imprisoned by the KGB for being “refuseniks.” During dinner one evening, I brought up the subject of Franklin and how some in the scientific community believe she was robbed of the recognition she deserved. I barely got the last word out before he jumped up from across my table as if to punch me, while yelling what great friends Watson and Crick were. They, among other noted scientists, wrote repeatedly (and successfully) to have this professor and his wife released from prison.

O.K., my brain is spinning with so many women now. I have to go and make a list!

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Kendra and I invite you to make your personal list of women you admire. Put your list below in the Comments or send us an email. Either way, we’d like to hear from you.

If you missed Kendra’s list of three women she admires and why, click here.

If you missed Matilda’s list of two women she admires and why, click here.






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