Lillian Moller Gilbreth

Lillian Moller was born May 24^th 1878 in Oakland, Ca.  She was tutored at home until she was nine, at which time she entered the Oakland Public Schools and then the University of California at Berkeley, graduating in 1900 with a B.Lit. degree.  She was the first woman to be chosen as the university’s commencement speaker.

In 1903, after earning a master’s degree in English from Berkeley, she departed for Europe. On a stopover in Boston she met Frank B. Gilbreth who was a cousin of her traveling companion. He was one of New England’s leading building contractors.  Lillian and Frank were married on October 1904 when she became a partner in his rapidly expanding business.

Lillian had twelve children.  With the assistance of her mother-in-law and hired help, she managed to earn a Ph.D. in psychology from Brown University in 1915.  One of her children, Frank, Jr., wrote the bestselling book about their childhood, Cheaper by the Dozen.  Lillian and Frank opened Gilbreth, Inc., in Montclair, New Jersey.  Their company pioneered the application of motion study in industry, consulting with major companies around the company.

Frank died in 1924 and Lillian continued their work alone and put all of here eleven surviving children through college.  From 1935 to 1948 she was professor of management at Purdue University where she established a time and motion study lab.  She became a consultant at the Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine at New York University Medical center where developed a model kitchen adapted to the needs of the physically challenged.

She continued to do research into her seventies and lectured and published books well into her eighties. She received more than twenty honorary degrees and numerous awards.  A fellowship in here memory was established by the Society of Women Engineers as a tribute to her lifelong encouragement of women to become engineers. 

Belle Case LaFollette

Belle Case LaFollette, Attorney and Woman’s Suffrage Activist, was born on April 21, 1859, in a log cabin in Summit, Wisconsin.  Upon graduation from the University of Wisconsin, she taught for two years and then married a former classmate, Robert LaFollette.  The ceremony was performed by a Unitarian minister and by mutual agreement, the word “obey” was omitted from the marriage vows. 

In 1883 Belle entered the University of Wisconsin Law School, becoming the first woman to receive a law degree from that university.  She was admitted to the bar but never actually practiced.  Her legal training was of great help to her husband’s career though. She was an active participant during Robert’s three terms in Congress, serving as his secretary and administrative assistant.

Robert was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1906. Three years later Belle created LaFollette’s Magazine, which later became The Progressive. In 1911 and 1912 she wrote a syndicated column for the North American Press Syndicate. She edited the “Women and Education Department” writing articles on health, child care, political news and the social life in Washington. 

In 1913 Belle spoke before her husband’s colleagues in the Senate Committee on Suffrage, in favor of suffrage. In 1914 Belle addressed the colored Young Men's Christian Association, raising an argument that segregation of colored people on street cars. public conveyances and government departments was wrong. She added there would be no constitution of peace until the question is "settled right". In 1915 she helped found the Woman’s Peace Party, which later became the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. After World War I, she was active in the Women’s Committee for World Disarmament, and helped found the National Council for the Prevention of War in 1921. She and other women influenced governments to convene the Naval Arms Limitation Conference in 1922.

  

Franc Lynette Johnson

Franc Lynette Johnson was born March 30^th, 1887 in Tunnel City, Wisconsin.  She was named after her father, Frank Lewis Johnson, an architect, who died when she was only three. After his death her mother taught school to support her three young children.  Her mother died when she was twelve, but she inherited a strong sense of self from her mother and continued her education along with her older sister Ella. 

In 1912, eight months after New Mexico attained statehood, Franc came west by rail to teach at the Navajo Indian boarding school in Fort Defiance, Arizona.  She earned $25 a month and lived and ate with the students in the dormitory. Two years later she married Arthur Newcomb, a clerk at the trading post, and became known as “the Indian trader’s wife. Eventually she was recognized within academic circles as a scholar and writer on the Navajo way of life.  Franc befriended Hosteen Klah, a medicine man, and he invited her to attend his healing ceremonies, and she became the first white person to record Navajo symbolism. Her documentation of Navajo art and culture, writing, lecturing, or reproducing ritual sandpaintings onto two-dimensional painted surface, made a significant impact of Southwestern studies.

During the flu epidemic of 1920, when one tenth of the Navajo population died, she used her knowledge of the Navajo religion and healing ceremonies becoming a respected medicine woman.  She was inducted into the tribe, the first white woman to have such an honor bestowed on her, and given the name Atsay Ashon.

Franc wrote numerous books about the Navajo.  She and her friend Mary Wheelwright established the Museum of Navajo Ceremonial Art in Santa Fe.  All of her watercolor re-creations of sand paintings – almost 1,000 in all – plus her pottery and basket collection were donated to the Museum.

Mary Sewell Gardner

Mary Sewell Gardner

Mary Sewall Gardner was born in Newton, Massachusetts on February 5^th, 1871.  Her mother died when she was only four and her father remarried a woman who was a physician. 

Most of Mary’s early education was in local private schools but she went to Miss Porter’s School in Farmington in her teen years.  In 1890 she returned home and spent many years nursing her invalid stepmother and doing work in the community.  When she was thirty she attended the Newport Rhode Island Hospital Training School knowing that she wanted to become a physician, probably inspired by her step mother. When she completed a four year program she became superintendent of nurses in the Providence District Nursing Association.  Her leadership led the organization to become a model for other district nursing associations.  She implemented organized, regular meetings, an efficient record keeping system and introduced uniforms.

In 1912 Mary and another nurse founded the National Organization of Public Health Nursing, serving as its president. She helped create a monthly periodical Public Health Nursing, which has been revised twice and translated into several languages and long considered a classic.  Mary contributed many editorials and scholarly articles.  

When World War I broke out she took a leave of absence and went to Italy where she served as chief nurse on the American Red Cross Tuberculosis Commission.  She also established training programs for Italian women who wished to become nurses.

She received an honorary Master’s Degree from Brown University in Rhode Island and received the Walter Burns Saunders Medal for distinguished service to the nursing profession.  She has been inducted into the American Nursing Association Hall of Fame.