Oakland Tribune from Oakland, California • 17

Ruth -the 4th 'R' in Education Continued from Page 15 make a difference here," she continues. "I've always believed you could make a difference in education in a big city, although a lot of people have given up on them. Before I leave here, I would like to really show that a large city school district can get itself together." Love is not asking of her students and her staff anyshe does not ask herself. Since her early days Bakersfield she has been By Susan Shoemaker an achiever with what she describes as "a built-in sense of purpose." She skipped several grades and graduated from high school at 15, despite a quickly aborted attempt by one counselor to shunt her into the "domestic science" track. She graduated from San Jose State University at 19, and immediately began teaching elementary school in Oakland.

"I was the oldest daughter of five children, and my family always expected me to set the pace for the others," she reflects. "I guess I was pressured quite a bit." After only six years in the classroom she was tapped for administration, and, she says with a rueful smile, "I found that once you leave the classroom, you usually don't go back." Still, she looks on her teaching days as some of the happiest of her career. "I really enjoyed the classroom enormously," she says. "It's one of the most gratifying jobs I've had. If you really care about kids, it's never the same -now the gratification is sort of second-hand." From Oakland she moved to Sacramento, where she worked for and eventually headed the state's massive compensatory education program.

In 1971 she went to Washington to direct the young Right to Read program, a federal effort to improve children's reading skills. In 1975, the Oakland school board asked her, for the second time, to succeed the slain Marcus Foster as district superintendent. Divorced, 42 years old, and with Right to Read firmly established, she decided she to go. "I'm not a maintenance person," she explains. "I find it challenging to make things happen, to motivate, to stimulate.

I like to start things and get them well underway, and then I don't want to stay around forever." Love is one of only two women school superintendents in California, and one of the few black women in the nation to head a school district. is an anomaly she takes in stride. "I don't expect people to treat me differently as a woman," she says. "I expect them to relate to me as a superintendent. If they act strangely I either deal with it directly, or just ignore it and assume it's their problem.

I'm not about to apologize for being a woman." Love is a woman at the very top of her profession- -and to get there she has needed a bit more strength and personal political savvy than might have been required of a man. "To succeed you have to be a decision-maker," she says. "It's not easy, because in making decisions about serious issues people are going to get hurt. If you're going to change things, some people aren't going to like the changes you suggest. "But I don't worry about it.

I try to listen to people, but I also make a conscious effort to win people to my way of thinking. "It's important to me to be liked, but it's more important to be respected," she says. "You can say what people want to hear and be liked for a while, but that only lasts until they see you can't deliver what you promised." One of the things Love has promised Oakland is students who are adept at basic skills. To her, that means "thinking and solving problems and being able to exercise your options" as much as it means being able to read and write. "I want to see real quality education for all kids," she says.

"I'd like to see it have the same national priority as other big issues, like defense. I think we have enough resources, financial, human and technical, to do that for kids in this country. "But the major thing is putting children first. You can spend all your time doing paperwork, giving speeches and wandering around, and never impact the children at all." Love's dedication to her job is total, as the 19-hour days reveal. She usually rises a.m., meditates for a while, and then writes for a couple of hours.

She is work- At a reception held for her shortly after she arrived, Ms. Love chatted with W. Byron Rumford, an old friend from Berkeley and Washington ing on two books- one about reading, and the other a novel "about this couple." "According to my editor it's intriguing, but to me it just seems to go on and on," she "I'm not very good at fictionalizing things. But it's a on good diversion -when I'm fed of up with work and don't even want to think about education, it's good." Love's other hobbies include cooking, sewing, music and -none of which she has much time for any more. Nor does she have time for a social that's a problem," she says with a grin.

"A professional woman can be very threatening to -I know I am, although personally I don't think I'm very intimidating," she says thoughtfully. "A strong personality that's a female personality can present an awesome challenge. "I need a strong, secure man who sees you as a woman first and not as a superintendent. I'm not very with insecure people- -but I'm so used to meeting men who've accomplished more than I have that it's not really a problem; that puts it on a whole different level. "You she says, "when you become superintendent you really make a great sacrifice.

Your personal life is really secondary, so in ND BIG WEEK! OUR SANDALS DRESS AND SPORT SHOES ALL NAME BRAND SHOES CHOOSE FROM 3,000 OUR REGULAR DISCOUNT PRICES HAVE BEEN SLASHED on SELECTED GROUPS of WOMEN'S SHOES VALUES FROM to The Colored Dots Tell The Blue $399 Pink $999 Green $799 Yellow $1 99 the ROCKRIDGE shoe house Vol HOURS: Rockridge Shopping Center your p.m.; Broadway BANKAMERICARD. 5132 OAKLAND 658-5347 welcome Sun. 12-5 Oakland Tribune June 27, 1976 17 Love's public speaking engagements are part of her effort to involve the entire Oakland community in the improvement of the school system Did a Pioneer Feminist Deserve Medal of Honor? By HARRY ALTSHULER There's a movement coming on strong now to give Dr. Mary Walker back her Medal of Honor. A little late, unfortunately; she's been dead since Feb.

19, 1919. Regardless, it's a vindication of the only woman ever to win the Congressional Medal and a triumph for women everywhere to see belated justice done to a pioneer feminist of Civil War days. Spearheading the drive is Dr. Mary's great-grandniece, Ann Walker of Washington, D.C., a journalist and author. "Rep.

Peter A. Peyser of New York is introducing a bill in Congress to restore the medal," Miss Walker told reporters happily. She explained how the medal was awarded and taken away: "Dr. Mary was the only woman in her class when she was graduated in 1855, at the age of 22, from Syracuse Medical College in New York. When the guns fired at Fort Sumter, opening the Civil War, she was ready.

She knew everybody in Washington; she worked as a volunteer physician for the Union forces until Lincoln assigned her as a contract surgeon. Later she was an assistant Army surgeon. "From the field she wrote things like, 'We have nothing but tent cloth to bind the wounds, so I went to my trunk and took out four of my prettiest nighties and tore them up for Also, 'I doubt whether the men I treat know whether I'm a man or a woman, but when they do they are comforted by my She was with the Union Army at Manassas and the Second Battle of Bull Run. "If you kept this place clean," she observed in a field hospital, "you wouldn't need to cut off so many legs." Lincoln himself penciled the citation for her Medal of Honor: "For valor and distinctive angel-of-mercy service in scenes of battle where she freely risked her life while saving the lives of others Lincoln was killed soon after, but his successor, President Andrew Johnson, endorsed the recommendation and presented the medal to her on Nov. 11, 1865.

She wore it proudly until Feb. 15, 1917, when a military board switched the rules, stating there was "insufficient reason" shown for awarding the medal to Dr. Walker. The board came up with the theory that the Medal of Honor should go only to those actually bearing arms against the enemy which effectively excluded all women. Dr.

Mary to hand the medal back. It reposes now at the Oswego County Historical Society, Oswego, N.Y., the town where she was born. She died alone and indigent after a fall on the steps of the Capitol where she had gone to fight for the return of her honors. But she had lived a remarkable life not only as a Civil War medico. There was romance, too.

Soon after she won her degree, she married a classmate, Dr. Albert Miller; she wore a white satin pantaloon outfit and the word "obey" was dropped from the service. The marriage lasted only five years, when she caught her husband in an act of flagrant infidelity. He shrugged, "You have the very same privilege, my dear." She divorced him and subsequently wrote a couple of books denouncing all the sins of the day. Her books were titled "Hit" and "Unmasked, or the Science of Immorality." What she hit at and unmasked were liquor, drugs, tobacco, marital infidelity and child abuse.

She was against them all. The great-grandniece, Anne Walker, has written a book about her, "Dr. Mary's Medal of to be published next fall. Meanwhile the New York State Senate has called on Congress to restore the medal. Reprinted from Midnight LOSE WEIGHT FAST At a surprisingly low cost Special maintenance program teaches you how to stay slim Shed pounds and inches fast, medically Highly trained professional staff supervises your personal weight control program Optional prepared meals 11 varieties all delicious Ralph Alperin.

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