The Des Moines Register from Des Moines, Iowa • Page 4

The Des Moines Register ST Page 4A Saturday, August 24, 2002 "We all sort of held her in awe because she was such a pioneer in women's rigltis. Everyone held Iierupasa role model" Lt. Gov. Sally Pederson, on Louise Noun iiiuiniiiiiiiiiLiiiniiLiiiiniijii.1,11111,111111 mi i iinTTmrr i 1 1 Jl -'A 1 li vi HvtV'' Legend gives me a message to deliver DOUG WELLSREGISTER FILE PHOTO Donor: Louise Noun holds a catalog featuring a painting I 1 luvJ immmmmi Women's causes: Ferniriist leader Gloria Stemem, resident Susan Knapp last November. Steinem helped raise $20,000 GARY FANDELREGISTER FILE PHOTO for Noun's Chrysalis Foundation.

1M1M MtMlMd Mil 900 Polk Bonlevint Apl To Family, Friends, and Caretakers: Some of you know that it has long been my intention to commit suicide whenever I decided that because of age and disability I no longer had the prospect of leading a full and useful life. It is obvious to me mat the time has come to act on this intention while I still have the mental ability to decide my fete. The afficult.es of i achieving this goal are the laws and social customs aesigneo piB finding the means to do so. Now that I have finally found the means I happily take leave of you. My fear is that if this suicide attempt does not work, I might be left in a coma.

If such should be the case, rjeasejakr no steps to revive me or keg mt alh My old age has been much happier and more fulfilling than I ever expected it to be, and I am grateful to all of you who have made this possible. I do not want a funeral. My grandson Jason Flora, and my friends can decide whether or not they I want some kind of memorial gathering. My deepest thanks for your love and care. SPECIAL TO THE REGISTER Recognition: In November 1950 Louise Noun, left, was honored in New York for her work as president of the Des Moines chapter of the League of Women Voters.

Mrs. Theodore Stroud, right, was also honored. In her words: Louise Noun made her final wishes clear in a note, at left, addressed to friends, family and caretakers. Iowa Jewish Senior Life Center helped me in August 2002 Louise Noun, a dear friend, died Friday. It was the final act of self-determination for a legend who spent her life helping empower women to take charge of theirs.

At 94, Louise had done everything she wanted to do, which was more than the most ambitious of us could aspire to in a lifetime. But in pain from various health problems, and anticipating a steady decline of her health and faculties, she decided to go on her terms. Her lawyer, Phyllis Pearson, confirmed that she planned and carried out her own death. "My old age had been much happier and more fulfilling than I ever expected it to be," Louise wrote in a final note addressed to friends, family and caretakers. And, she wrote, "Now that I have finally found the means, I happily take leave of you." Louise had, in fact, decided as far back as the 1970s that when she could no longer lead a "full and useful" life, as she put it, she would end hers.

But the decision was the easy part. The tough part, she said, was coming by the means to do it because of society's attitudes and laws against helping someone end his or her own life. "It just isn't done, that's all," she told me. Like Louise's other friends and associates, I had known for months of her desire to commit suicide. The week before Mother's Day, she called and asked me to come over to discuss a project her final project, she called it which she wanted us to work on together.

She was a prolific writer but didn't have the strength. So she wanted me to deliver her message. I was not to publish it or tell anyone about it until after her death. Her goal was to advocate for the right of someone at her age and stage of life, looking ahead at years of infirmity and pain, to choose to die something extremely difficult for her because the means to end her life were so hard to come by. "IVe got everything lined up but the means," she said.

"And I just think people should understand that it's a real problem, keeping all of us alive." My reaction wasn't what she expected or wanted. I tried to talk her out of it, debated her on it, told her life in Des Moines wouldn't be the same without her. "You're thinking of yourself," she said, "not me." Couldn't we do something to improve the quality of her life? "You cant give me back my health," she said. Would it make a difference if she had community around her all the time? "I would go crazy with people around me all the time. I love to have people come in and visit but I wouldn't want to be around people constantly, I find it very wearying." I agreed to do this on condition we not rush it, but rather spend several sessions talking it over.

I made Louise promise to stay alive until it was completed. In truth, I was stalling for time until I could figure out what to do, and she could sense it. I realized later that I was guilty of doing exactly what she pronounced others guilty of trying to control her decision. But no one could live her life for her or experience her day-to-day pain. From feeling out others who knew her, it became obvious just about everyone knew of her plans and felt her wishes should be respected.

Her only child, a daughter who lived in Fairfield, was terminally ill and dying. In fact, she died two days ago. Her grandson supported her right to determine her own destiny, Louise said. She had no other close family. A brother and sister died before her.

This is a complicated subject, and Louise's views should not be broadly construed. She agreed that there are bad suicides, like those involving young people who lack the maturity to make a sound decision, or anyone who's depressed and acts spontaneously out of that depression. And she admitted she hadn't figured out how, if suicide laws were liberalized, one could protect against the risk that people who are merely depressed would use the easing of restrictions to kill RekhaBasu themselves. For herself, however, she had thought it through and was resolute. She felt strongly about her right to make this decision for herself.

Most importantly, she wasn't making it because she was depressed. "People have a tendency to ask you, Why are you Louise said. She recounted how tough it was getting doctors to help. "I was really miserable, I was just doubled up, and I said to the doctor, "You know I'm tired of it and she looked at me and said, "You want to see a and I said And she said, You want some pills for depression? And I said 'No. I'm not depressed.

I just One doctor said she completely understood and supported her decision but could be prosecuted if she helped get Louise the pills. It's illegal in Iowa to assist in a suicide. Louise had even thought about starving herself, but decided it was too slow a process. "People in my condition who face a long period of pain and incapacity we're not doing society much good." She didn't see the choice as a sign of failure. She made it rationally and unemotionally, just the way she approached everything a trait inherited from her parents, with whom she wasn't close.

She was a woman who knew what she wanted. "A control freak," she laughingly called herself. A series of small strokes seemed to have triggered falling spells, making it unsafe to walk even inside the halls of the Iowa Jewish Senior Life Center, where she moved last year from an apartment at the Park Fleur. Louise hated being physically dependent on others. She could go out with friends for up to two hours, but then her energy level would fail, so she spent most of her time sitting in the mustard-upholstered chair in her living room and reading.

Until the end, her mind, her memory and her vocabulary were crystal clear. That made her decision to die especially hard to fathom. But that was the only time to make such a decision, she insisted. "If I weren't crystal clear, I wouldn't be thinking about this." She wasn't afraid of dying. As an agnostic (originally Jewish), she didn't believe in any kind of life after death.

She feared getting sicker and disabled. As it was, some new physical ailment cropped up every month, she said. "I don't think I have anything to add, and I'm scared about the future." Didn't she get pleasure out of life anymore? "I exist. You know, when you can't lean over because you're going to fall, and your stomach hurts and your back hurts, you do the best you can." In her lifetime, Louise chalked up a master's degree from Harvard and three honorary doctorates, had written seven books, and won countless awards. Through the Chrysalis Foundation, which she founded, she supported programs for struggling women at almost every stage of life.

But titles and honors mattered little to her. What mattered were the struggles for women's equality, social justice and civil liberties. Louise lived to make the world a better place, not just in the sense of throwing money at things though her philanthropy was extraordinary but by being a change agent and a committed feminist. But she scoffed at the idea that she was still a needed leader. "Nobody's indispensable," she said.

One of her greatest accomplishments, she felt, was her role on the Iowa Civil Liberties Union, which she once headed, and which was instrumental in getting the Tinker vs. Des Moines Independent Louise Noun, D.M. activist and author, is dead at 94 that she donated to support the University of Iowa Women's Archives in 1991. Iowa Women's Archives at the University of Iowa Women's Archives with the $1.6 million sale of a Frida Kahlo painting. Ms.

Noun recently wrote a biography of the Iowa suffragist Annie Savery, whom she greatly admired. The Iowa Women's Archives will publish "Leader and Pariah: Annie Savery and the Campaign for Women's Rights in Iowa, 1868-1891" this fall, in time for the Iowa Women's Archives 10th anniversary symposium in November. "The women of Iowa are just thrilled to have the archive here, that there is a place where their lives and work will be honored and remembered," curator Karen Mason said. "We have over 850 collections of letters, diaries, scrap-books things like that. It's just a treasure trove of material for Iowa women." Despite her wealth, Ms.

Noun was anything but ostentatious. The small, thin woman who always wore slacks never sought the limelight, even though she often found herself in it. "I knew her so much by reputation, and we all sort of held her in awe because she was such a pioneer in women's rights," Pederson said. "Everyone held her up as a role model." Ms. Noun's fighting spirit did not wane in her later years.

Shortly after her 87th birthday, she returned from a national women's conference invigorated with possibility. "I come from an activist background," she said. "So if I'm not stirring something up, I wonder what's wrong." Reporter Maggie O'Brien can be reached at (515) 284-8039 or obrlenmnews.dmreg.com il fit ta. 'i 'Please note that no employee of the anv wav in my suicide attempt. 1 Community School District case (the so-called "black armband" case) all the way to the U.S.

Supreme Court, establishing students' right to free speech. The Young Women's Resource Center, Chrysalis and Iowa Women's Archives, all of which she founded or helped found, were three others. But Louise didn't feel able to contribute anymore. She couldn't spend time writing. She had resigned from the board of Chrysalis.

There was a slew of events to honor her this year but she wasn't up to attending any. "Three times this year I felt as though people were having funerals for me," she quipped. She was more matter-of-fact than maternal. Her bluntness was vintage Louise. We became friends soon after I moved to Des Moines in 1991.

We met for lunch regularly and talked about politics, women's issues, her writings, my columns. "I read your column today," I remember her saying once. "I was appalled." You got used to that bluntness, and then you grew to relish it. In a world of empty smiles and often meaningless talk, she didnt waste time on making you feel good unless she thought you deserved it and then it really meant something. When accepting an award from a organization, she wasn't afraid to criticize it for doing something to compromise students' or women's rights.

And she was always challenging you to re-examine your views. Gandhi once said something about the need to become the change you want to achieve. That was Louise. Down to earth, completely lacking in airs or affectations, she shunned sentimentality, opting in the end for cremation and no funeral service. She was educating people right up until her death, and even after it.

Rekha Basu's column appears Tuesdays and Thursdays In Iowa Lite and Sundays In Opinion. She can be reached at rbasudmreg.com or (515)284-8584. champion for civil liberties in general. Her leadership in the 1960s was pivotal to the success the ICLU had." Stone said the group's membership grew under Ms. Noun's leadership, from 5,000 to 20,000.

As she grew older, Ms. Noun continued to work for various causes, and she stayed interested in what was happening in the world. "I had coffee with her about two weeks ago, and we had a nice conversation about arts and politics," said Lt. Gov. Sally Pederson.

"I was always so impressed with how incredibly involved she stayed with everything that was going on around her. "She was one of those truly strong-willed, strong-minded women." With Ms. Noun, Pederson joked, "you didn't have a lot of small talk. She was very outspoken." In 1989, Ms. Noun established the Chrysalis Foundation, which hosts women's conferences, helps victims of domestic abuse, pays for child-care services and gives financial aid to women who attend the Des Moines Area Community College.

Ms. Noun was named to the Iowa Women's Hall of Fame, given honorary degrees from Drake University and Grinnell College, her alma mater, and received the Philanthropic Vision Award from the Ms. Foundation in New York City. Joe Rippetoe, executive director of the DMACC Foundation, said Ms. Noun was hospitalized a few years back.

One of her nurses, a former student, attributed her career success to Ms. Noun's guidance. In 1992, Ms. Noun created the Louise Noun-Mary Louise Smith NOUN, from Page 1 A Her feminist philosophy grew from her experiences. As a child, she felt her brother received favored treatment.

When she finished graduate school, she was told to go home and get married. As a woman, she was denied access to the Des Moines Foreign Policy Association, where some of the brightest men in the community met to discuss foreign affairs. When the women's movement was revived in the 1970s, Ms. Noun joined immediately and felt at home. Working with the local NOW chapter, she initiated a study of United Way practices, which ultimately alleged that the agency discriminated against the poor.

Though her family had been a big supporter of United Way, she hit the streets and handed out leaflets critical of the agency. Ms. Noun also was president of the Iowa Civil Liberties Union during the 1960s and 70s. Her term included a landmark student-rights case that began when three Des Moines students were suspended after they wore black armbands to school to protest the Vietnam War. The students sued the school district, and the case went to the US.

Supreme Court. In 1969, the court ruled that schools could not ban "nondisrup-tive free expression." Tinker vs. Des Moines has since been cited in cases ranging from searches of student lockers to censorship of student newspapers. "She was really the leading advocate for getting involved to the case," said Ben Stone, the Iowa Civil Liberties Union's executive director. "People shouldn't forget that she was always a real.