By TERRY WOOTEN
Poet bard
---- — Feb. 15th was the 192nd birthday of Susan B. Anthony, the champion of the women's suffrage movement during the 19th century. She was born precocious and learned to read and write at 3. Her father once pulled her out of school because girls weren't allowed to learn long division.
As a young woman, Susan fretted over her looks and feared public speaking. Later she became a powerful orator. She was a feminist long before the Civil War.
On Nov. 18, 1872, Susan was arrested for voting in the presidential election. The judge wouldn't allow her to speak in her own defense. He ordered the jury to declare her guilty, and read a statement he'd written before the trial. She was fined a hundred dollars, which she refused to pay.
Susan B. Anthony died March 13, 1906. Fourteen years later the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, giving women the right to vote.
Joan of Arc (1412-1431) is another of my favorite women. She dared to be a warrior in the Hundred Years' War. Charges against her were for being too spiritually creative, dressing like a man and sassing her elders (all men, of course). She was burned at the stake.
Like all wars, World War II was one of the great tragedies in world history, but a major side effect was a forward shift in women's rights. I think Susan and Joan would have been proud of Rosie the Riveter.
Throughout history, women have been discriminated against. The gender war, especially in certain parts of the world continues.
March is Women's Herstory Month. To celebrate the leap, here are three women's voices from my Elders Projects.
Audrey Kaiser
One big change that happened
during the war
was girls started wearing pants to school.
Women were working in factories
and doing men's work.
Times were changing.
My one brother was in the Navy,
and sent me a bunch of blue bell-bottoms.
I started wearing them
with white shirts and ties.
There were twelve kids in my graduating class,
eleven girls and one boy.
There had been two boys,
but one boy came to school
dressed in his mother's clothes
in retaliation of how girls were dressing.
He wore her dress,
her hat, bead-necklace
and high-heeled shoes.
He got expelled,
and enlisted in the Army.
Leda Miller
I worked a lot of jobs
and did things on my own.
I worked in a pickle factory
in Alden for two years
in the summer.
Quit my factory job in Traverse City
to stay home a month or so
and do that.
In 1943 I rode a train to Oregon
with my brother and his wife,
and stayed with them for a month
before he went overseas.
We got jobs out there in a restaurant,
and worked in a laundry
folding clothes.
I'd grown kind of independent,
and it was hard adjusting
when Jack first came home.
Things like having to stand back
and let him buy movie tickets
bothered me.
I lost a lot of freedoms
that a married woman didn't have
in the 1940's.
Betty Holzhauer
My maiden name was Betty Klemm,
very German.
During World War II
I worked in a depot
serving donuts and coffee,
watching these guys
coming through from southern Illinois
to Chicago.
Stan never passed up a donut
in his life.
We probably met each other
without realizing it.
He went off to war.
I was home doing volunteer work
and taking care of my son.
My first husband died
of a brain tumor,
and I had a son three months later.
My first boyfriend died
on the Bataan Death March.
My second boyfriend died
in France in the war.
So I lost two boyfriends and a husband.
I was getting desperate,
and had to capture one.
In 1954 I was working as a secretary
at my son's high school.
They were having trouble
with an older teacher.
She couldn't discipline anybody,
so they brought Stanley in.
Not only did he teach,
they put him in the office with me
selling lunch tickets.
His bookkeeping was there.
I locked the door.
Stanley survived the war,
but I captured him.
Our theme song was,
It Had to be You.
