Petaluma Argus-Courier from Petaluma, California • Page 11

JtGUSOWiriUtqlumq. Wdrdoy, Morch 4, 1987 IB 7 Making 'herstory': 10 years of honoring women Week-long event now celebrated all month By VICKI BEGIN Argus-Courier Staff J.J. Wilson strains to remember the date so many years ago, but she knows exactly when the revelation came. She was brushing elbows with fellow members of the Modern Languages Association sometime in the early 1970s when it occurred to them that here they had been teaching American literature for years and not one female writer had been included. "Isn't that dumb?" said Wilson, a Sonoma State University English teacher, who says her Ph.D.

really wasn't really in literature as much as it was in men's literature. "It seems almost as if we were taught to be amnesic." -n i mi Three Petaluma women who made a difference Anna Medora Morrison Reed Anna Medora Morrison Reed spent nine years in Petaluma where she established a daily morning newspaper, the Sonoma County Independent, and herself as managing editor at a time very few women were in such a position. An activist in politics, suffrage, business and temperance, Reed was the first woman ever to be chosen to give the annual address at the California State Fair in 1892 in Sacramento, and for the Cloverdale Citrus Fair and Petaluma's District Fair. She was hired by the California Grape Growers Association to lecture against Prohibition throughout northern California. An attempt to win a seat in the California State Assembly in 1918 met defeat.

Dr. Kay Seidell The very first face many Petalumans saw upon being born may very well have been that of Dr. Kay Seidell, or "Dr. Kay," as she was commonly known. A 1922 graduate of UC Medical School in San Francisco, Seidell set up her practice in 1931 after her residency at San Francisco General Hospital.

President of the Sonoma County Medical Association and the Petaluma Chapter of the American Association of University Women, she was included in a 1985 bestseller, "Gifts of Age," which celebrated the talents of women of distinction. By the time she retired in 1970, she had delivered her third generation of babies. Helen Putnam Petaluma schoolchildren who gathered on the front lawn to the home of Helen Putnam and her husband, Rutherford, every Fourth of July for a "Ring the Bell for Freedom" ceremony grew up to see her become mayor of Petaluma and then a Sonoma County supervisor. The former radio talk show host turned to education, teaching at several schools before becoming principal at Two Rock School. A member of the Petaluma Board of Education for years, she was president of the Sonoma County School Trustees Association, the California School Boards Association and the League of California Cities.

Putnam became the city's first woman mayor in July 1965 and served as a Sonoma County supervisor from January 1979 until her death at age 75 in July 1984. Doug Brown with fellow middle, and J.J. Wilson, far right, shares a smile women's history activists Sandra Walton, Elaine Bundesen 'For everyone who's realized what women have done there are many who haven't' lot," said Wilson, "and It changed the whole way of American teaching. Along with Elaine Bundesen, a Petaluma resident and a student personnel administrator at SSU, Sandra Walton, an SSU librarian, and several others, Wilson put together a lecture series that featured women psychologists and the head of COYOTE, a prostitutes' organization, among others. "We raised a lot of issues around rape, sexual preferences, single motherhood, and all of those issues are still here as they were then," said Bundesen, 63.

"The place was full." Adds Wilson, "We were so scrupulous to represent history in a real way: working people, poor people, the disenfranchised, the invisible and the inaudible. "The lecture series seemed to be very yeasty, very provocative," she said. Around the same time, Molly Murphy MacGregor, a SSU graduate student teaching women's history classes at Santa Rosa Junior College's Petaluma extension, noticed the excitement on campus and among her students and got caught up in it. It was MacGregor, former CSW director, who organized the county's first Women's History Week celebration in 1977. Three years later, she and fellow organizers incorporated the National Women's History Project a clearinghouse of educational materials.

"We were thrilled with the success of it at a local level but it just kept growing and growing," said MacGregor, executive director of the organization. But it's far from finished. "For everyone who's realized what women have done there are many who haven't," said MacGregor. "I long one day for a boy who says to a girl, 'You can't do and she says, 'Sure I can. I know about Eleanor Roosevelt and I can do and he, being a new-age male, will say, "I don't know about and they'll walk hand and hand and learn together." Women in Petaluma trivia For trivia buffs, here are some bits and pieces about women in Petaluma's history: Helen Talbot Overton, known in her youth as "The Belle of the Redwoods," was the first premium winner at the first Sonoma County Fair in Petaluma for her collection of classified and pressed flowers.

She also owned the first sewing machine in the county, a Ladd Webster. Safa Tate led the grand march at the first masquerade ball in the county, which celebrated the opening of a theater building in 1871. She later married Navy Commodore John Philip. Mrs. A.A.

Haskell authored a state legislative bill that guaranteed female teachers the same salary as their male counterparts if they had the same teaching certificates. She became the city's first female principal for the new schoolhouse built in 1911, now the School Administation Building, which replaced the dilapidated building built in 1859 on Fifth and streets. Maria Varney opened the first school in Petaluma higher than a grammar school the private Hill Seminary. Virginia Dunham was crowned Miss California in 1935, after which she became the city's foremost goodwill ambassador. Agatha Starke, who worked as an accountant for the Petaluma Argus, was the first woman in Petaluma and in the county to register to vote.

She registered Oct 14, 1911. While the exploits of the McNear family are will known, some may not know that it was Ida Belle McNear, wife of George P. McNear who in 1913 started a plan to beautify the city by donating trees to those who were willing to plant them. QEGTAU.QAHT Open Evenings Fri. rEarly Bird Specials Wilson tucked that seed into the rest of the baggage she brought home with her and planted it at the university, which was already offering courses in women's studies.

What has grown from that was more than she, the faculty or the students could ever have imagined. It made history "herstory." It helped lead to Women's History Week, one week set aside to let teachers and their students know that history was not made by one sex alone. First celebrated in Sonoma County 10 years ago, it grew to be national and just this year mushroomed into National Women's History Month, celebrated this month. Also for the first time this year, the county's superintendent's office published a women's history curriculum guide sent free to teachers, and the Petaluma School District passed a resolution designating the month Women's History Month. "It's hard to change "curriculum and we never had a total curriculum guide before," said Marion Dahlman, a 10-year Petaluma resident and head of the women's history task force of the county's Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).

"Hopefully, when the teachers are presented with suggestions, we can get the ball rolling." "I think people have the idea feminism and consciousness raising is just sitting around talking about how mean daddy was or how dirty your husband's socks are," said Wilson, 50. "But it has always brought action. We were getting kind of a one-sided education across the disciplines, not just English and history." It made Wilson and fellow teachers realize that they would never be able to teach anything the way they had been taught as children. "It changed all our lives quite a RD $fl00 any of our nightly specials between 4 pm 6 pm. Some of our Features Include Fresh Fish of the Day 6.95 BBQRibs 6.50 Chicken Enchiladas 6.75 Chicken Cordon Bleu Char-Broiled Steaks 6.95 Deep Fried Prawns 7.10 Served with vegetables and potatoes or rice.

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