This week we've celebrated women of achievement in our town.
We've honored Dr. Anita Batman, a retired family practitioner who came back home after a fine career in public health medicine. She didn't stop there.
Instead, Batman and a group of health professionals have set up a responders' team for disasters that provide the link between local and federal assistance. They pulled this off in late August after Hurricane Katrina. There's no counting the lives saved by this mission.
One woman. One sphere of influence. Many lives touched.
Then, Thursday night we honored another one of our women, state Rep. May Whittington. What is it that Whittington hasn't done? She gives us a voice in the halls of the Legislature. She advocates for education. She pushes for health.
One of us. Making laws. Again, many lives touched.
Call me naive, if you want, but even in this age of instant messages over the Internet and video i-Pods, I believe in the power of one bringing many together, especially in the sphere of women.
Here are some of my personal favorites.
First is my grandmother, Dixie. She's dead now but still very much alive and vibrant in my thoughts and attitudes. She grew up in a large family and had to leave home early just to survive. And that she did, building a life and a home in Mississippi, far from her Corpus Christi, Texas, home.
Widowed at a relatively young age, she took the GED, earned her high school equivalency and enrolled in nursing school at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. She was 56 years old when she became a licensed practical nurse.
But more than that, my "Other Mother," as I called her, could do anything. The daughter of a plumber, she picked up the skill by watching her brothers and her father.
She could custom-build bookshelves on Saturday afternoon and serve a formal dinner to her minister on Sunday.
"Honey Baby," she would say to me, "the only thing that limits a woman is herself."
Ironically, she pointed to another woman to give me an example of what one could accomplish if she had the mind.
We lived in Leflore County at the time. I remember this smartly dressed woman in a U.S. Navy uniform coming over to our house to say hello. My parents lived next to her mother.
That day she came to visit, my Other Mother pulled me aside.
"Watch this woman," she said. "She is the highest-ranking woman officer in the U.S. Navy. You can do things like that, too."
Not long ago, I returned to this area and discovered that the woman and my first lesson in becoming a feminist, Viola Brown Sanders, still lives in this area.
During the 1970s, Congresswoman Barbara Jordan moved onto the scene during the debate over whether to impeach then-President Richard Nixon.
I admired her intellect and her grasp of the situation. Her sense of history moved me toward my chosen field of study - history.
This black woman from Texas had faced poverty and, armed with a public school education, finished law school at Harvard University.
Even when multiple sclerosis ripped her central nervous system apart, and leukemia drained her of more energy, Jordan continued to serve her country in different ways.
I've drawn a lot of inspiration from many women writers, and some of them from Mississippi - Ellen Douglas, Eudora Welty, Elizabeth Spencer.
But the writer who most influenced my life isn't that well known out of journalism circles.
Dorothy Parker burned bright for a short while, wowing people with her uncanny ability to use the proper word at the proper time.
Enhanced by her wit, Parker delighted and stung many readers of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker during the 1920s and 1930s.
Sadly self-destructive, Parker's ability with phrases outweighs her tragic personal life.
I have many more female heroes, some well-known and some who live in virtual obscurity.
This week we've made a point of honoring women in our communities. Wouldn't it be nice if we realized at least once a day how much women of all hues and personalities have contributed to our cultures?
