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San Diego County Women's Hall of Fame 2006 Inductees
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2006 "Spirit" of the Women's Hall of Fame Award Sally Ride. At 27, with B.A., B.S. and master’s degrees, Ride was a Ph.D. candidate looking for post-doctoral work in astrophysics when she read in the Stanford University paper about NASA’s call for astronauts. More than 8,000 men and women applied to the space program that year, and 35 individuals, including six women, were accepted; one was Sally Ride. After begin accepted into the astronaut corps in 1978, Ride underwent extensive training that included parachute jumping, water survival, gravity and weightlessness training, radio communications and navigation. In 1983, Dr. Ride became the premier American woman to orbit Earth on board Space Shuttle Challenger, and her next flight in 1984 was an eight-day mission. After retiring from NASA in 1987, the former astronaut became a Science Fellow at the Center for International Security and Arms Control at her alma mater, Stanford University. Two years later she was appointed to her current position as Director of the California Space Institute and professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego. In her ongoing commitment to empower upper elementary and middle school girls to explore the world of science, Dr. Ride founded the Sally Ride Science, an interactive Web site. Through “innovative science programs,” including science festivals, science camps, and a national contest for students to create a new toy or game, Sally Ride Science “informs and inspires” girls to explore fields from “astrobiology to zoology and everything in between.”
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Kate Sessions. (deceased). Katherine Olivia Sessions graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1881 with a telling graduation essay: "The Natural Sciences as a Field for Women's Labor." She came to San Diego to teach, but then began a series of business ventures beginning with the San Diego Nursery and continuing with several additional nurseries in the San Diego area. She gained a reputation, both statewide and nationally, for her horticultural expertise, particularly landscaping, plant introductions and classes. She published numerous articles, helped found the San Diego Floral Association in 1906, and was appointed supervisor and teacher of agriculture and landscapes for city schools in 1915. Sessions’ experiments with plant introductions won her the 1939 Frank N. Meyer medal from the American Genetic Association—the first woman to receive this prestigious award. However, San Diegans, past, present and future, owe a true debt to Sessions for her creation of Balboa Park. She leased land in 1892 for a nursery in “City Park,” where she began planting 100 trees a year. She also planted at least 300 more throughout the City. She helped create a Park Improvement Committee to ensure the long-term survival of her landscaping. The Tijuana Tipu tree planted by Kate Sessions at the site of her nursery at Garnet and Pico in Pacific Beach is now a California Registered Historical Landmark. The bronze statue of Kate Sessions guarding the entrance to Balboa Park at the Laurel Street Bridge is the only full sculpture in the City dedicated to a real-life woman, the “Mother of Balboa Park.” |
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Nona Canon, Ph.D. Dr. Cannon is well known as a faculty co-founder of the Women’s Studies Department, San Diego State University (1969) and for her United Nations work for women’s equality and promotion of peace within communities and family. She joined the faculty of San Diego College in 1959 and became head of the Family Studies and Consumer Sciences Department. Working with students and other faculty, Dr. Cannon presented the new department proposal to the Curriculum Committee. When the world’s first Women’s Studies Department was instituted, she was one of three professors teaching its courses. To this day, the Department remains a leader in the discipline and is one of the largest. Dr. Cannon raised funds to accompany students to the U.N.’s First World Conference on Women in Mexico City in 1975. To expand their knowledge about international women’s rights, she founded San Diego’s U.N. Women’s Equity Council (WEC), and led students to the subsequent U.N.’s Women’s Conferences in Copenhagen (1980) and Nairobi (1985). She and her husband, Carroll began traveling throughout the nation—Carroll as Chair of Chapters and Divisions of the UNA-USA, and Nona to establish WEC’s in other UNA-USA chapters. The couple received the 1988 Goodman Award for their tireless efforts. Dr. Cannon’s organizational peace work included several events for the 1994 U.N. International Year of the Family. Her conferences, most notably at the University of Peace in Costa Rica, strategized for nurturing, peace-loving families.
The crowning of her many writings was the publication of her 1996 book, Roots of Violence, Seeds of Peace in People, Families, and Society, a textbook for creating peace-loving families, societies, and Families, and Society, a textbook for creating peace-loving families, societies, and individuals. |
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Lucy Gonzales. Told at one time that her child could only be recommended to a trade school with the name ‘Gonzales,’ Lucy became determined to fight discrimination through the pride and professional successes of young Pilipinas in the Sorority. The organization provides cultural and historical awareness as well as individual training, discovery and development. MCPS members have become teachers, businesswomen, doctors, engineers, military officers and academics in science, law, politics and ethnic studies. Since the founding of the Maria Clara de Pilipinas Sorority in 1968 with her daughter, Lucy Gonzales has been a mentor, role model and leader to promote and maintain the integrity of Filipino-American culture and citizens. The Sorority’s purpose has been to bolster the success and self-esteem of high school Pilipinas, encouraging them “to preserve and promote Philippine interest and culture in…homes, schools, and community.” Through their annual awards, support and events, Lucy Gonzales’ Maria Clara de Pilipinas Sorority continues to “project a higher image of the Filipina onto the San Diego community and throughout the nation.”
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Jeri Dilno. For over 30 years Ms. Dilno has been a courageous political and social justice activist on behalf of women’s and gay/lesbian rights. Her military discharge in 1961 for being a lesbian led her to risk personal safety in path breaking work. With other Philadelphians, she instituted a new gay pride festival to debunk stereotypes and show strength in the numbers of 8,000+ people who turned out for it. She brought that experience and her personable style back to San Diego in 1975: helping to plan the first gay pride march here and remaining an active driving force in annual gay pride activities; presenting the first formal presentation about gay/lesbian health issues to the American Nurse’s Association; serving as the first female Executive Director of the Gay Center (1975-77) and then serving on and Chairing its Board; assisting the Center in adding “lesbian” and “community” for a new name, “Lesbian and Gay Men’s Community Center;” representing California as an out lesbian at the historic 1977 Women’s Year Convention in Houston; and serving among the first out lesbians as a delegate in the Democratic Party. In addition, Jeri Dilno has served as an open lesbian on: Mayor O’Connor’s Commission on the Status of Women; the Police’s Gay and Lesbian Advisory Committee; the Citizen’s Advisory Board on Police-Community Relations; and on a subcommittee dealing with high speed chases in the City.
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Ashley Walker. is widely acknowledged and honored for institutionalizing the domestic violence movement in San Diego. She pioneered YWCA’s Battered Women’s Services decades ago with the County’s first shelter and comprehensive domestic violence services.
Through her passionate determination, the City Attorney and Police Domestic Violence services became national models upon which other cities have relied for guidance.
She served ten years as a certified trainer in child abuse and domestic violence responses for POST: Police Officers’ Standards and Training (all nine County Departments). Since the 1980s her lectures and seminars have also educated civic, financial, educational, legal, medical, business, religious and social service organizations. Her consulting group, Horizons Unlimited established the protocol for domestic violence services in the U.S. Navy Family Service Centers in the Western Region; her 1983 domestic violence Emergency Assessment publication was the first used by emergency room staff.In recent years, she brought her sensitivity training, management and organizational skills to her work as Executive Director of San Diego City’s Human Relations Commission—a 15-member commission devoted to issues of discrimination and equal opportunity, conflict resolution and violence prevention, and multiculturalism and diversity.
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Deborah Lindholmis. The founder and Executive Director of the San Diego Foundation for Women (FFW), Dr. Lindholm has worked vigorously and imaginatively to improve the lives of women with life-threatening illness, homeless women, and at-risk youths. Both locally and internationally, Dr. Lindholm and the FFW have provided women with seed money to begin small businesses through micro-credit programs. She describes her work best in the FFW literature: “I met a woman who borrowed $4—she had never seen $4 in her life. She bought a comb, a pair of scissors and a mirror and she put her husband in business as a barber. Now she has a home and her children are in school. All because of $4.”
Dr. Lindholm’s vision for the FFW has been to provide for women living on less than $1 a day. She has traveled to India and other locations to personally aid women who are participating in this concept of Village Banking, or micro-credit. She has witnessed first hand, the power of the credit concept. For her work she has received numerous honors and awards for creative and courageous leadership and volunteerism—not only for FFW, but also for other organizations such as San Diego Hospice and Catholic Charities. Her vision to connect and provide support to the poorest women locally and globally has provided self-sustaining livelihoods, meals, companionship and literacy and mentoring programs for those in the world who need it the most. FFW funded micro-credit programs are in place throughout the world and in our own backyard, making a difference, one woman at a time.
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MISSION
STATEMENT
The
mission of the San Diego County Women's Hall of Fame is
to acknowledge and honor women who have significantly
contributed to the quality of life and who have made outstanding
volunteer contributions in San Diego County.
General
Information:
The purpose of the
annual induction of five women into the Hall of Fame
is to make women's actions and accomplishments visible
in San Diego. The women honored every year will be remembered
for their efforts in a Hall of Fame exhibit housed at
the Women's History Reclamation Project. The annual
induction is also a forum for coalition building between
the four co-hosts and dozens of women's organizations
representing San Diego's diverse population. The annual
induction is also a fund-raising signature event for
the four Co-Hosts including the following:
Women's
History Museum and Educational Center
is
a museum, library and archive with a mission to educate
and inspire present and future generations about the
contributions of women. It preserves, shares, and integrates
women's stories for a more complete understanding of
history.
The County of San Diego Commission
on the Status of Women, established in 1970,
is mandated to study and advise the Board of Supervisors
on the needs and problems of women and to eliminate
the practice of discrimination and prejudice on the
basis of gender.
San Diego State University's
Women's Studies Department, the nation's
first women's studies department, established in 1970,
offers a BA, MA and Post-baccalaureate Certificate.
It has a reputation for excellence in curriculum, faculty,
community involvement, and international scholarly liaisons.
The Women's Center, University
of California, San Diego provides education
and support on gender issues affecting the UCSD and
general communities. The Center advances women's intellectual,
professional, and personal goals to increase awareness
of issues affecting women and men.
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