March 8 is International Women’s Day – a century-old observance to increase awareness and celebrate the progress of women while also indicating the inequalities that still exist. It also is my Mother’s birthday, who today would have celebrated her 83rd birthday. She passed away in Fall, 2008 just four months shy of her 80th birthday.
As an added footnote for central Ohio residents, my Mother celebrated her final birthday observance March 8, 2008 by going to church in the early morning then remaining indoors the rest of the day and the next day as the greater Columbus area received 2 feet of snowfall during a late winter storm. It was a Saturday and the snow was melted and gone away by the following Saturday, March 15, 2008.
My Mother was not a feminist, but a staunch supporter and avid fighter in the battle for women’s rights and equality in the workplace. She had married my Father at age of 19 on September 11, 1948. A high school graduate, my mother had taken one course in bookkeeping at a local community college in Grand Rapids, Michigan and one additional course in general business. She worked as a waitress at a local hamburger joint.
Upon relocating to Columbus, Ohio in 1955 when and where my Father had accepted his first civil engineering job, my Mother worked downtown in the LaVeque Tower as a bookkeeper. Within just a couple years, she joined and was an active member in the local chapter of the Business and Professional Women’s Association.
After a span of about seven years to raise a young son and daughter, my Mother returned to work. I was so distraught about this as a young boy that I became a behavior problem at home and at school. In fact, I was very disruptive and got to the point that my Father was at his wit’s end, so to speak, without any clue what to do. Then one evening, my Mother took a turn to put me to bed and tuck me in and while doing so she had a little Mother-to-Son chat with me about my emotional duress over her going back to work. It was 1966 and I was but 7 years old and this is what she said to me as if she again had said it just last night:
“Son, your Dad and I love you dearly and I especially love you so much. I’m sorry that you have been so upset lately, but I need for you to understand that it’s okay for me to be a wife to your Dad, to work as Mr. Frampton’s secretary, to volunteer at the school and to just be who I am. What I need for you to know is that while I can be all those things, I will always, always first and foremost, be your Mother.”
End of behavior problem; beginning of acceptance about a woman’s role in American society during the mid-1960s. Yes, I was just 7 years old.
My Mother soon joined the state medical association where she eventually rose through the ranks as comptroller and membership director and to serve as the only woman on the association’s executive staff. Her pay was not equal to her male counterparts and she did not feel she shared in equal respect among many of her male peers. Privately, she one day was told by the association’s executive director that the apparent inequality most likely resulted from her lack of holding a college degree. This was about 1972.
She came home from work and was furious beyond all compare. I’ve never seen my Mother more upset, but also more determined and this is what she said that night at the dinner table. “I’ll fix those sons-of-bitches and really show them who they are dealing with. I’ll show them.”
So this 43-year-old female executive, mother of two, loving wife, community volunteer and high school graduate with just a few community college credit hours on her education balance sheet from the 1940s, enrolled in night school at Ohio Dominican College. She was a dutiful and masterful student, earning high grades and praise from her professors. She was even more involved as a business leader, wife and mother – still able to adjust a schedule and come see her’s son’s high school baseball game, still able to alarm every family member on the summer vacation camping trips when she decided to swing an axe and chop wood, and remained devout to her marriage and her religious faith.
We all cheered her and supported her and in 1977 she attained her bachelor’s degree in business administration from Ohio Dominican College and was rewarded well at work with added recognition, equality and pay. But she went another step further – she stayed in night school and some Saturday classes at Ohio Dominican which had a shared instructional partnership with Cincinnati’s Xavier University and several years later also added MBA – Master’s Degree in Business Administration – to her list of accomplishments.
So on this March 8 – International Women’s Day (and on this Mother's Day) – I celebrate many of my Mother’s accomplishments and especially those for all the women who went back to school and who sought additional training and instruction, so that they may improve their position in the workplace and community, and still be a great Mother to her kids. Thanks Mom.
Your Ever Loving Son John.
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