Dayton Daily News from Dayton, Ohio • 21

ILY NEWS TUESDAY, MARCH 22, 1994 5 i hey (women) were told they had no history and believed it. Therefore, they had no future Gerda Lerner Pioneering scholar of women's history 1 WDM1N University of Davton I mr- er' I ummon nacwarna I warn a j' I i i'u Laaynyerstowinineuivisionu -Mit A-'. trailblazers Women pave way with many 'firsts' i i unas. i i i i .1 I V. I RESPECT 1981 Sandra Day O'Connor FaA 5 7 A is the first woman named to the 1 Supreme Court.

1 lit ft 9 i I .1 1982 Wisconsin passes the first state gay and lesbian rights law, launching national efforts to secure state and federal protections in housing and employment for gays who legally can be discriminated against in most parts of the country and in the military. Phyllis Schlafly throws an ERA-is-dead party when it's Edith Longstreth Boyer, Dayton's first official meteorologist, sets up a weather observatory at her Huffman Hill home in 1882. She takes daily recordings of temperatures, rainfall and barometric pressures for the next 57 years. These records later prove invaluable when the Great Flood of 1913 ruins records of U.S. government weather stations in the area.

Maryalyce Jeremiah at Division II finals clear that not enough states will ratify the amendment to ensure inclusion of the ERA in the Constitution. Boyer 1991 Anita Hill testifies against U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas to an all-male U.S. Senate committee. She accuses him of sexual har-rassment.

Thomas survives the hearing and is sworn into office. Many women angered by the hearings run for political office. The film, Thelma and Louise, strikes a national chord with its portrayal of women who strike back against abuse. A U.S. Abortion legalization in 1973 sparks battle 1973 The U.S.

Supreme Court legalizes abortion in the case Roe v. Wade, ending decades of illegal abor- -j tions. The case, however, ignites a grassroots battle, spearheaded primarily by religious groups, to stop abortion on demand. The U.S. Government Printing Office style book includes Ms.

as an acceptable prefix. Meanwhile, women's tennis leader Billie Jean King beats Bobbie Riggs in a "Battle of the Sexes" nationally televised TV match. 1974 The Dayton Women's Center opens and offers classes for the first time on assertiveness, sexuality and careers. It also counsels rape victims and battered women. The center closes in 1981 after agencies adopt its pioneering programs.

Dayton's Hawthorne School opens its doors to teen mothers and their children, becoming one of the nation's first schools to enable pregnant teens to finish their education. 1974 National Little League Baseball agrees to let girls play ball; Equal Credit Opportunity Act prohibits discrimination in credit based on sex or marital status Jhijs making it easier for women to own homes and hold credit cards in their names only. Previously, a Wpman typically had to have a male relative guarantee JHban or be a primary credit card holder. Minimum wage is extended to the 1.5 million domestic workers rhostly women) 1983 Sister Dorothy Kammerer starts the House of Bread to feed the hungry in Dayton. She later starts The Other Place, a downtown day shelter for the homeless, and also Women Helping Women, which provides jobs for low-income women.

1983 Sally Ride becomes the first U.S. woman astronaut; Alice Walker wins a Pulitzer Prize for The Color Purple. 1984 Democratic National Convention nominates Geraldine Ferraro for vice EL Bertha Comstock travels by bike in 1883 throughout Dayton for stories she writes as the city's first woman reporter at the Dayton Journal. Orville and Wilbur Wright install an acetylene lamp on her bike for night reporting. Gertrude Felker and Eleanora S.

Everhard open their joint medical practice in 1903. Dayton's Hill Supreme Court ruling forbids employers from excluding fertile women from high-paying jobs that may involve risk to fetuses. Comstock rstionwide. first women physicians worked and lived together for more than 40 years. Bessie D.

Moore becomes the first woman lawyer in the Dayton Bar Association in 1917. Annae Belle Barney Gorman establishes one of the nation's first occupational therapy schools in Dayton in 1918. It trains women to serve in military hospitals nationwide. The Barney Community House later expands into welfare and medical services and eventually becomes the Children's Medical Center. Dora Burton Rice becomes Dayton's first black woman police officer in 1922.

In 1925, Edith McClure Patterson opens an adult education school for the wives of NCR workers, making it the first school of its kind in the country to be sponsored by a business. She is the niece of John H. Patterson, NCR's founder, and the first Republican woman in Ohio to run for U.S. Congress in 1932. 1974 Erma Bbmbeck named top humorist in the hation when she I wins the Mark Twain Award.

She devel-; cped her newspaper peumn based on her experiences as a I Bellbrook and Dehterville housewife. 1992 More local women elected to county and city offices reflecting national trend. 1992 Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas is elected president. The first bill he shepherds into law in 1993 is the Family Leave Act, which allows parents to take time off from their jobs after birth without fear of being fired.

1993 Dayton agrees to pay $175,000 to Lisa Gray, a former security officer at the Dayton International Airport, after she files the first major sexual harassment lawsuit against the city. The case forces the city to take sexual harassment seriously. It suspends two airport managers; initiates sensitivity training for all city workers and places a woman at the helm of airport security. 1993 Clinton names Janet Reno as. U.S.

Attorney General. She is the first woman to hold that office. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton spearheads the administration's efforts to solve the nation's health insurance crisis. Carol Mosely Braun becomes the first black woman elected to the U.S. Senate.

Epidemic increases of breast cancer In women influence I i iii witl-iJlrT- Bombeck in her Centerville home in the 1960s. vjTWk I 'in ita 1 (' tr I im (iJUii i la-imiinii I'll Vftir imrtt m-ili i i. 1 president, marking the first time a woman runs on the national ticket for a major party. Indianapolis passes anti-pornography ordinances, sparking national debates on censorship. It is eventually struck down in federal court.

1985 Lynette Woodard becomes the first female Harlem Globetrotter. 1986 Women enter the firefighting training program of the Dayton Fire Department for the first time. 1986 Gallup Poll finds that 56 percent of all women consider themselves feminists. U.S. Representative Patricia Shroeder (D-Colo.) and 40 cosigners introduce the Parental and Medical Leave Act, which becomes law in 1993.

1987 Dr. Mae Jemison becomes first black womar astronaut. The U.S. Supreme Court rejects the argument that disability leave for pregnancy and childbirth discriminates against men. The Girl Scouts celebrates its 75th anniversary.

Wilma Mankiller is the first woman elected head of the Cherokee Nation. 1975 A small group of women create Women Inc. in Yellow Springs, a support group that attracts a wide following. Unlike many groups that disbanded as femi- hism went mainstream, Women Inc. still meets today.

1975 Ohio limits use of evidence about a victim's Bexual history in sexual assault trials. 1975 In Virginia Beach, Dayton native David Redman becomes the first male president of a NOW chapter. The Pentagon ends automatic discharge of pregnant women from the armed forces. Eleanor Gertrude Brown receives in 1934 her Ph.D. from Columbia University, becoming the nation's first blind person to earn a doctorate.

Brown, who was born on the outskirts of Dayton, teaches in the Dayton schools for 40 years and lives for many years at the Biltmore Hotel. Brown many of its victims to adopt activist tactics used by AIDS organizations. Their efforts to persuade the medical profession to focus on the cancer cap 20 years of the women's health lit Sis. 1976 Ohio laws prohibit sex in insurance coverage on the basis of sex or marital status. 1976 Eleven women are the first officially ordained women Episcopal priests in the country.

Barbara Jordan is the first black woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from the South and the first black woman Ho-, Dayton Fire Department try-outs 3 movement. Thousands of young women get a first-hand look at job opportunities when they participate in the Journalist Anne O'Hare McCormick becomes the first woman to win a Pulitiz-er Prize for foreign correspondence in 1937. Married to a Dayton manufacturer, she and her husband live in Oakwood for 16 years. She becomes a foreign correspondent while traveling with her husband on business trips abroad.

In 1921, she starts writing free-lance Reno first Take Our Daughter to Work Day. McCormick 1994 A record number of women candidates nine are registered to appear on a statewide ballot in May for the Ohio General Assembly. 1994 The U.S. Navy assigns 500 women to serve on war ships. Previously, they were banned from them.

They had served on support ships since 1978. 1988 First woman Episcopal bishop named. Congress authorizes a monument to women who served in Vietnam. The monument is unveiled in 1993. 1989 Women's Economic Assistance Ventures, an outgrowth of Women opens in Yellow Springs to help women start or expand businesses.

By 1994, it serves hundreds of women-owned businesses. 1989 For more than 10 years, lesbian couples have been bearing children by artificial insemination. A Washington state court ruling is the first to recognize two moms as legal parents. Efforts by other lesbians nationwide aren't as successful. A U.S.

Supreme Court decision enables states to restrict abortions. 1990 Gov. Richard Celeste grants clemency to 26 women imprisoned for killing or assaulting their batterers. 1990 The Des Moines Register publishes a series to give the keynote speech at a Jordan 1 convention of a political party (Democratic National Convention). Janet Guthrie is the first woman driver in the Indianapolis 500.

1977 National Women's Studies Association forms to serve 276 programs. By 1992, 670 programs exist at colleges nationwide. 1978 Nurse Betty Schmoll opens Hospice of Dayton Inc. to help terminally ill people die in a residential setting. Starting with a dozen volunteers, Schmoll turns Hospice into a $12 million model operation by 1993.

1978 Helen Rankin becomes the first black woman serve in the Ohio General Assembly. 1978 Distribution of "59" buttons illustrates stories for the New York Times and later becomes the first woman editorial writer for that paper. In 1938, Jessie Hathcock becomes the first black woman to graduate from the University of Dayton. She becomes a teacher at Dunbar High School. Maude Elsa Gardner becomes the first female member of the Engineers Club of Dayton in 1939.

She was an aeronautical engineer and worked at Wright Field from 1936-1941. Anne Baumgartner becomes the first American woman to operate a jet airplane in 1944 when she flies an XP-59A for 30 minutes at Wright Field. Yvonne Walker-Taylor becomes the first female president of Wilberforce University in 1984. The documentary, Seeing Red, is nominated in 1984 for an Oscar, making Daytonian Julia Reichert the first female filmmaker to be nominated two Sources: "Remember The J.adies," report by the Dayton and Montgomery County Public Library; Dayton Daily News files; Montgomery and Greene counties historical societies; Wilberforce University library; Greene County Women's History Project; Corridors of Light, by Eleanor Gertrude Brown, Ohio: Matters of Fact, by Damaine Vona-da; Ms. magazine; Alternative Americas, by Mildred Loomis; "Ohio Women," a report by The Ohio Bureau of Employment Services; Ohio Women's Commission; Wright-Patterson Air Force Base; Global Information Solutions (formally NCR Significant Sisters: The Grassroots of Active Feminism, by Margaret Forster.

Staff Writer: Wendy Hundley; Page Design: Merry Beth Hopkins; Editor: June Herold; Art Director: David Kordalski. about rape survivor Nancy Ziegenmeyer that uses her name. The series touches off a debate in newspapers nationwide whether to name rape victims. A New York Times article declares that women are paid substantially less then men. 1979 Apprentice positions in many trades, such as plumbing, construction and toolmaking, open to women In the ate 1970s and early 1980s at Dayton-area companies.

"feminism" a dirty word. Other main stream publications claim feminism has failed. The Act for Better Child If i iare passes. I times tor an I mwniMin wwnffituwiii Academy I 1 1979 National Coalition Against Sexual Assault forms. Meanwhile, more women than men enter college for the first time 4, Id U.S.

history. The U.S. Treasury issues a Susan B. Anthony silver dollar but stops producing it two years later for lack of use. A U.S.

j. -1 a i i i Award. Reichert and her partner, Jim Klein, previously had been nominated in 1977 for their film, Union Maids. ioun or Hppeais ruies mai women employees can't be forced to wear uniforms if male counterparts aren't too. Women enter skilled trades In the late 1970s mmmammmwm iii ii iii iri in ir Reichert TTirTHiHr TilTBffVi i.