Politics/Community Involvement

In addition to a traditional focus on the public realm of governance and power structures, this theme should also reflect a feminist understanding of “the personal as political.” We are interested in women’s opinions, values, and activities as they relate to a broad sphere of social relations.

Honee Hess

Director of Education, Worcester Art Museum
….one of the things that I think is important for communities is that there are community traditions and it’s those traditions that make you feel like you’re part of something and so “First Night Worcester” is really a community-building event. We work out into the community all during the year, we train teachers in different art forms; we organize school kids, and do a lot of things that then culminate at “First Night” along with the professional concerts and things like that. So you know I think that that’s the achievement that I’m most proud of with “First Night” is that it really has become this community-building event. 
Honee A. Hess was born July 11, 1953 in New Orleans and moved to Worcester, Massachusetts in 1986 to take a job at the Worcester Art Museum where she is currently employed as the Director of Education. She lives in “Crown Hill” the first planned neighborhood in the city built in the middle of the 19th century. After the tragedies of Hurricane Katrina, she and her husband started hosting a charity event in order to raise money and awareness for victims of Katrina in New Orleans.
Interviewer: 
Bianca Ravida
Herbert Woodard
Interview Date: 
Sun, 11/08/2009
Interview Focus: 
Politics/Community Involvement
Name Sort: 
Hess

Barbara Haller

Worcester City Council Member, District 4
I applied to and was accepted as a VISTA volunteer-Volunteers In Service To America...this was back in '67, it was in the middle of the whole hippie thing. I was very much a part of the whole hippie movement...So I was sent to Chicago, Illinois, community organizing, and was assigned to a store front church. And we were doing outreach into neighborhoods not unlike neighborhoods that I would call Main South.
Barbara Haller was born in the suburbs of in Schenectady, NY in 1948 and currently lives in the Main South neighborhood of Worcester. She got involved with activism and the “hippie movement” at a young age, doing community organizing as an Americorps VISTA volunteer in Chicago during the height of Urban Renewal programs and helping to run a collective farm school for delinquent youth in Arkansas. Moving to Massachusetts in the mid-1970s, Barbara began commuting to Worcester to study engineering, first at the former Worcester Junior on Main Street and later at Worcester Polytechnic.
Interviewer: 
Justine Lambert
Interview Date: 
Thu, 10/27/2005
Interview Focus: 
Politics/Community Involvement
Name Sort: 
Haller

Mary Lou Anderson

College Dean and Professor
I think that many things have changed in our society so that there are more opportunities for young women and for people of other ethnic and racial backgrounds. Certainly things have changed. But they haven’t changed so much that the obstacles aren’t there. In my own experience sometimes somebody will automatically think to ask a man before a woman and that still exists. You also have to always be aware that when you come into any kind of a position that you have to double check that the man is not being paid more than you are being paid and there are all kinds of ways of getting around that. . . So I think that there still are struggles out there.
Mary Lou Anderson was born and brought up in Worcester, in The Island and Vernon Hill. She went to Anna Maria College, then earned an M.A. at Assumption College and her Ed.D. at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She taught English in the Worcester Public Schools, later became Dean of Graduate and Continuing Education at Assumption College, and now is Dean of the College and Graduate Studies at Assumption.
Interviewer: 
Arielle Ortiz
Maureen Dalton-Petillo
Interview Date: 
Mon, 03/23/2009
Interview Focus: 
Politics/Community Involvement
Name Sort: 
Anderson

Mary Jo Nawrocki

School District Superintendent
They [girls] were basically treated as if their sole aspiration should be to graduate from high school and maybe work as a secretary or work in retail and find a good husband, get married, and have some kids. Unlike today, we weren't really encouraged to pursue careers outside of the home.
Mary Jo Nawrocki was born on September 13, 1949 and grew up in Pennsylvania. Central Massachusetts became her home after she moved with her husband to the area. Nawrocki, currently a superintendent of a school district, manages to balance her incredibly active life.  Not only has she created a career for herself in education, but she has risen to one of the top levels of that career. She has also managed to raise a family, volunteer in her community, and become engaged in local political life.
Interviewer: 
Katherine Biegner
Lindsay Butt
Interview Date: 
Wed, 04/15/2009
Interview Focus: 
Politics/Community Involvement
Name Sort: 
Nawrocki

Brenda Safford

College Administrator, Director of Multicultural Affairs

They told me, 'You should go to college,' and at that point I was 38. So thought, 'It is over for me, I can’t, are you crazy? I can’t go to school now.' And they said, 'Why not?' And that is how I began my educational journey as a late learner, an adult learner.

Brenda Safford was born on August 5, 1956 in Lubbock, Texas. Moving to Worcester with her second husband, Brenda worked within the community and became an adult learner at the age of 38, receiving both her Bachelor’s Degree and Master’s Degree in Human Services. Brenda is currently the director of Multicultural Affairs at Assumption College. In this interview, Brenda speaks about her days growing up in Lubbock, Texas, and her experiences with both racial segregation and integration in her school system.

Interviewer: 
Hannah Brencher
Interview Date: 
Mon, 03/30/2009
Interview Focus: 
Education
Politics/Community Involvement
Name Sort: 
Safford

Sheri Hostovsky

Volunteer Coordinator: Rape Crisis Center of Central Massachusetts in Worcester, Our Deaf Sisters Survival Support Project
As Deaf women, we have a right to know what’s going on around us. For so long, we walked around ignorant, but not anymore. Now we want people to know their rights and that it’s okay to speak up and how to protect ourselves against awful or traumatic experiences. I was a victim before in my life, and I learn now how I can become a survivor. And I really want to show others how they can become survivors too.

Interviewer: 
Ada Chen
Katherine Marrone
Interview Date: 
Thu, 02/12/2009
Interview Focus: 
Politics/Community Involvement
Name Sort: 
Hostovsky

Hannah Laipson

College Professor, President of the Worcester Institute for Senior Education (WISE)

But what happened was, when I taught that [first] class, I enjoyed the experience so much that, do you know the term serendipity? Something happens unexpectedly and it changes things. I decided that I really enjoyed that. But, it didn’t come to fruition until quite a number of years later because in the meantime I started having a family. Are you familiar with the writings of Betty Friedan? She was the feminist, she was the first great [modern] writer of feminism, and she wrote a book that became immensely popular. And when I read it, I decided it was time for me to do something more. So that was when I enrolled at Assumption for my Master’s degree, and from that point on, I was a teacher.

Born in 1925 in Haverhill, Massachusetts, Hannah Ethel Karp Laipson has lived in Worcester since her marriage and currently resides with her husband, a former member of the Navy during World War II. Hannah graduated from Colby College in Maine with a major in English and a minor in History. Today, Hannah is as an active member of Common Cause Massachusetts and continues to stay involved with the WISE program at Assumption College, in which she previously served as the board President and course group leader.

Interviewer: 
Andrea Gagnon
Danielle Buttafuoco
Interview Date: 
Fri, 11/14/2008
Interview Focus: 
Politics/Community Involvement
Name Sort: 
Laipson

Mary Jane McKenna

Former Holden Selectwoman, State Representative, and Executive Director of the Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism

"I enjoyed town politics and what was going on, and met a lot of wonderful people. And then I decided I knew as much as anybody, so I ran for the Board of Selectmen for the town of Holden, and I was elected, and I served—and I was the first woman."

Interviewer: 
Andrew Whitmore
Mark Thomas
Interview Date: 
Mon, 11/13/2006
Interview Focus: 
Politics/Community Involvement
Name Sort: 
McKenna

Lynne McKenney Lydick

Actress in One-Woman Play on Abby Kelley Foster

"I just think that we owe the next generation much more than we’re giving them. I think the environmental issues, the human rights issues, the financial issues, I just think we owe them trying to get things straightened out before they inherit the mess.  And I also think you think differently about the future [as a mother]. It puts you in a different place. I also think as mother, as a mother of sons, it’s important that they know that women have a place, a very important place, and deserve …. a place at the table and be important in decision-making.  I find that’s quite a big responsibility, to be mother of boys."

Interviewer: 
Meghan Murphy
Interview Date: 
Tue, 10/09/2007
Interview Focus: 
Politics/Community Involvement
Name Sort: 
Lydick

Virginia Swain

Peace Corps volunteer, teacher, UN worker, activist

"It’s called the Culture of Peace Initiative and actually it was started by the Nobel Peace Prize winners in the 1990s and I’ve been working with it at the UN for a number of years, but I decided I would bring it to Worcester because there’s so much potential here for hope -- people don’t see that we can get beyond our divisions…so I’m pretty excited about this and I feel a little bit more intentional here in Worcester because it’s taken me all this time to realize how I can contribute. In Worcester, it’s a very unusual and wondrous community of people who, when I first came, always asked me, why would I come here from Cambridge? I keep feeling that they don’t know the potential, there’s so much here that’s possible for Worcester."

Interviewer: 
Cara Joyce
Interview Date: 
Sun, 10/28/2007
Interview Focus: 
Politics/Community Involvement
Name Sort: 
Swain

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