The Pittsburgh Press from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 19

1 Tuesday, December 19, 1989 The Pittsburgh Press B7 A look at 3 distncernmists who made a difference By Ann Butler THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT TODAY MOTHERS, DAUGHTERS SISTERS weight of thousands of years against you." mm 1 IV -i: 4 "v5t Anne Pride ill Jo Ann Evansgardner Anne Pride Outspoken psychologist Chose her own name Wilma Scott Heide Started NOW chapter The Pittsburgh Press What of the feminists who paved the way for the women's movement in Western Pennsylvania today? Were they too busy making history to realize they were part of the greatest social movement of the century? What becomes, of those with the courage to take a stand? It is a stressful, sometimes lonely path they choose with some triumphs and always one more battle to wage. Today we look at the lives of Wilma Scott Heide, Jo Ann Evansgardner and Anne Pride feminists who made a difference. Wilma Scott Heide Wilma Scott Heide organized the first National Organization for Women chapter in Pittsburgh in 1967 and served as national NOW president from 1971 to 1974. Mentor to Ellie Smeal and role model for dozens of Western Pennsylvania activists, she made it seem heroic to be a feminist. "Let me help to educate you she would say in her soft voice.

Her manner was gentle, her words powerful. A nurse, a sociologist and a thinker, Heide put this challenge to Pittsburgh's Human Relations Commission in 1968: "Men have always been taught to be brave and women have always been taught to care. Now, men must be brave enough to care about the total quality, the interpersonal quality of our lives without fear of being called soft or effeminate. Women need to care enough to bravely assert our concerns about the quality of our common lives without fear of being called aggressive." Born near Johnstown in 1921, Heide grew up in Connellsville and obtained undergraduate and master's degrees in sociology from the University of Pittsburgh. In the 1950s, she plunged into the fight for racial justice in the South, where her husband was stationed in the military.

Mother of two daughters, she was married to Eugene Heide from 1951 until their divorce in 1972. They lived in the Pittsburgh vicinity from 1955 until 1971, and she served on the Allegheny County Civil Rights Council as well as the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. She was instrumental in adding sex discrimination to prohibitions in the Pittsburgh City Ordinance. As a NOW leader, she formulated much of the ideology and tactics of the women's movement. During theummer of! 1976 she crossed the country in an "ERAm obile" to portray Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 19th century attire with a colleague who portrayed Susan B.

Anthony. Her focus on the philosophical and ethical issue of feminism on freedom from predetermined xpectations about what it means to be a woman or a ntan led to her peacemaking efforts to create an international community that transcends race, class or fiex. Wilma Scott Heide died on May 8, 1985. I Jo Ann vansgardner Anne Pride was a housewife with two children in Edgewood in 1968 when she joined the women's movement From 1970 to 1976 she helped edit KNOW the nation's first feminist press. She also founded Motheroot Writers Guild, a quarterly review of women's small press books.

She was the first staff person and then director of Pittsburgh Action Against Rape, which began as a volunteer organization in 1972 and was the first rape crisis center in Pennsylvania and one of the first federally funded centers in the country. In 1980 with the threat of jail hovering, she refused to turn over to a defense attorney notes a counselor made while talking with a rape victim. Pride's stand led to landmark legislation in Pennsylvania guaranteeing confidentiality between rape victims and crisis center counselors. After a year as executive director at Women's Health Services, she assumed her post as manager of BirthPlace, a midwifery birthing center associated 'with West Penn Hospital. Her commitment to empower women has not only improved the lives of Pittsburgh women, it has also transformed her own life.

Born Anne Huggett in 1942, she married Edwin Kurlfink when she was 16. They separated in 1977 and divorced several years later. Even before the separation she wanted to change her last name from her husband's to her family name of Huggett. Her husband had no objection, but her father protested. If she was going to be involved in the women's movement he didn't want his name associated with it.

And so, she chose a name no one could reclaim, a name that reflected the woman she had become. Today, Anne Pride faces her greatest challenge. Last spring she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and she is undergoing chemotherapy. The cure rate is low. "I certainly hope to survive it, and I am well aware I may not." sg'prdn the University of Pittsburgh.

She came to the women's movement from the civil rights movement and helped lead successful actions here to desegregate newspaper want ads and reduce sexism on local television. In 1971, Evansgardner ran for City Council. She did sot win, but she led the Republican ticket. And, although the Home Rule Charter was defeated, Evansgardner, the only woman on the Allegheny County Study Commission, persuaded the commission to adopt a plank that "there shall not be a majority of inore than one of either sex on any appointed board." i Gardner, a mathematician and feminist in his own right, ran the printing press for KNOW the 'nation's first feminist press, out of the couple's Shadyside garage and basement. He also was the first 1 man elected to the national board of NOW.

A professor in the Department of Engineering at the University of Houston, he is faculty adviser to the campus NOW chapter and instrumental in developing a women's studies program there. Evansgardner had considered teaching in Houston but, as a feminist, she says she's alienated from psychology. "I just don't believe in it." At 64, she describes herself as "a full-time troublemaker and housewife. I recruit men and women for the movement." With a gentle laugh, she reflects: "I'm more philosophical and patient. I'm much more aware of how difficult it is to bring change when you have the Jo Ann EvansgVdner once tried to slug a self-described "male chauvinist" county official after he told her to "get bbck into the kitchen where you belong." "You should be asl tamed.

You're an oppressor," she countered, as she a couple of swings that he blocked. That was 15 years ago. Today, the outspoken psychologist and her husband, Gerry Gardner, live in Houston. They left Pittsburgh in 1980 because, she says she had found it "impossible to be an upfront militant feminist and hold a job." Born in Latrobe ia 192.5, Evansgardner grew up in Pittsburgh and holds three degrees in psychology from Smeal from Page B6 concluded that it might have passed if more lawmakers sympathetic to women's rights issues were in office. It occurred to her that maybe she could help to put them there.

That realization, Smeal says, is the biggest shift in her thinking in the last 20 years and the reason she started the Feminist Majority. "I learned that you can have 75 percent of the people on your side but still not get your objective," she says. "We have to realize that there is some real strong, powerful opposition in the highest places." She feels confident the current debate over abortion rights will be settled in favor of the pro-abortion side. Even ERA, she predicts, will someday succeed. "Having the facts on our side," she says, laughing, "is an aid." Sometimes, Smeal gets disgusted: When people say because she is a feminist, she is abrasive or doesn't like men angry about things and women aren't supposed to be.

I guess we're supposed to smile and always be pretty or Or when people say feminism is dead it's dead, why are they always writing about But she still works seven-day weeks for the same reason she got off her bad back in 1969: "There's nothing like the power of an idea. If you really believe in doing something right, it is very powerful. More powerful than anything." Except, perhaps, for time. Aug. 2b, 1990, marks the 20th anniversa-' ry that Ellie Smeal and her husband, Charlie, joined NOW.

So, for once, Smeal is thinking about slowing down but just long enough to have a party. "Maybe," she says wryly, "not a fund-raiser for a change." Women from Page B6 dren of feminists, some are from traditional families. There's a wide range from 18-year-old freshmen to women in their 60s." Rectifying neglect At Carlow College, Women's Studies is required for all students, male and female, according to Ellie Wymard, chair of the division of humanities and a professor of English. She founded the program' in 1972. Women's Studies programs grew out of the women's movement when women academics realized that women had been neglected in' their own disciplines, says Wymard.

"Academics began to try to recover the past of women. History has been the history of wars, treaties. But where are the women? "A lot of academics came to Women's Studies out of anger, which can be a stimulus for creativity. It's still exciting and still a pioneer area." Young women today take a great deal for granted, reflects Wymard. "They think things have always been this way.

They're skeptical of what went on in the '60s and '70s. But they have to understand the price women paid for suffrage. When they know that history, they're more apt to help other women as they move into the corporate network." 'A woman's touch' The women's movement is not dead, says Wymard. "It has an extremely serious agenda. Women have to be educated how to develop leadership skills, how to deal with issues of policy.

That's where the action is today. Women have to develop the skills, the strategies, the assertiveness, all the qualities associated with men without losing their own values." 1 1 1 AjA Thousands took up the cry for women's liberation in a '1970 rights parade in New York City The women's rights advocates of the 1840s had espoused equality because they believed in equal humanity. Many, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, had been ardent DAUGHTERS SISTERS came to the women's movement Wymard. "If these are the values from the civil rights movement women have come to embrace, and, in their fight for total equality they must not disown them but turn hey rejected the social feminists' them instead into public clout and j.

ihilosophy of "a woman's touch." impress Instead of working Today, the women's movement from a system of competition, we in general is moving away from the must work from a system of po sture of imitating men toward caring. apj yeciating the traditional femi- "The question is, as women nint virtues, maintains Wymard. move into positions of power in the "Fm not agreeing with Freud world, bringing these humane val- However, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries the belief that I women were more virtuous and the 1910s were fueled by the idea honest than men provided much of that "a woman's touch was need- ed" to end corruotion and brine that biologv is destiny. Rather, ues with them, will the world the impetus tor social lemimsm and the revived suffragist movement. The suffragist campaigns of about reform.

li worm have been socialized to be change? We would hope that it In the 1960s many feminists nurturvrs and care-takers," says would." Sears drops Tiegs, loosens Disney ties Embattled Corcoran director quits I i I i fs CHICAC0 (AP) Sears, Roebuck and Co. is dropping its 10-year association with model Cheryl Tiegs and loosening it marketing ties to Walt Disney Co. as it struggles to reshape its retailing image. The moves' came yesterday amid mounting evidence that Sears' sw'itch to everyday low pricing earlier this year is failing', to lure consumers back from discount merchants sue as mart and Wal-Mart. Dropping the Cheryl Tiegs line of women's sportswear, a private' label carried by Sears since 1980, reflects a commit Wnt by the world's largest retailer to offer more namer.

brand goods, said Sears spokeswoman Mary Jean Houde1 "Recent trends 1 women's apparel have indicated a preference for natiWal-brand merchandise and less demand for celebrity lines," she said. Chicago-based Setirs also has apparel marketing agreements with actress Stephanie Powers, tennis player Yvonne GoolatVmg and golfer Arnold Palmer. The company announce 'd earlier this year it was phasing out its men's dresswea.T, department, which includes a line of Johnny Carson-1 'bel clothes. Houde said Sears' affiliation with Palmer and Powers would continue, at least ui nil their contracts expire. The Goolagoong status was u.

ucertain. Houde also said Sears ar.tf Disney had modified a 10-year marketing agreement i vigned with much fanfare in 1987, sharply curtailing Seai rights to market Disney-character products. Under the revised deal, which was struck last February, Sears has rights to til new Disney merchandise on a case-by-case basis i tnd maintains exclusive rights until 1991 of about 250 characters from classic Disney films and to certain Di ney-themed products. Ironically, mart has receiWly added celebrities Jaclyn Smith and Marsha Stewart to its lines. the Phillips Collection instead.

Half a dozen staff members submitted their resignations, including chief curator Jane Livingston, who had booked the Mapplethorpe show. A majority of the gallery staff and Corcoran School of Art faculty called for Orr-Cahall's resignation, as did the director of the Friends of the Corcoran. The crisis also focused attention on longstanding problems within the Corcoran board, calling once again into question the museum's role in Washington and the national arts scene. The trustees accepted Orr-Cahall's resignation at a lunch meeting by a vote of more than 40 to 1, according to board President Freeborn G. Jewett.

She had been at the museum less than two years. "She wasn't pushed," said Jewett. "I think it's a question of the difficult times she has been going through, with a great deal of criticism in the press and elsewhere which has made her feel this would be the best thing." Orr-Cahall, who did not attend the board meeting and who was not at work yesterday, could not be reached for comment. Orr-Cahall, who made more than $100,000 a year as director, reportedly will receive 18 months' severance pay. Jewett said he will soon appoint a search committee, which will in turn recommend an acting director and then begin a search for a permanent replacement.

Art School Dean Bruce Yenawine usually serves as acting director when Orr-Cahall is away. (Washington Postdistributed by LA Times-Washington Post News Service.) By Elizabeth Kastor Press news services WASHINGTON Corcoran Gallery of Art Director Christina Orr-Cahall resigned yesterday immediately before trustees were scheduled to vote on her future at the museum. "I have decided to resign now in the hope that my withdrawal will end or abate this controversy with continuing corrosive consequences for the Corcoran for me as its symbol, and for our community," Orr'-Cahall said in a written statement. She will leave the museum Feb. 1.

Orr-Cahall's resignation came after a weekend of discussions with members of a "blue-ribbon" trustee committee, which yesterday presented to the entire board its report on the problems afflicting the Corcoran. The members approved "in principle" the committee's recommendation for a major overhaul of the board, which has been labeled unwieldy and inflexible. Orr-Cahall has been the focus of fierce criticism since she canceled an exhibit of Robert Mapple-thorpe photographs in June, saying she hoped to remove the Corcoran from a brewing political battle over National Endowment for the Arts funding of potentially offensive art. Instead she plunged the museum into a six-month-long drama that was played out on a national stage. Boycotting artists forced the cancellation of two Corcoran shows and left the future of a third in doubt.

Painter Lowell Nesbitt withdrew a $1.5 million bequest to the Corcoran and promised it to .0 iff Cheryl Tiegs and Sears are ending their 10-year fashion association. 9f.