National Women's History Museum

A local nonprofit in Rockville, MD will tell stories of women who helped shape the local community, including a former slave girl who escaped to freedom, and the first female lawyer to open her own practice in Montgomery County.

Peerless Rockville Historic Preservation, a nonprofit committed to preserving buildings, artifacts and the history of Rockville, is leading this project, which will chronicle six women who profoundly helped to shape the city. The booklet will be called “Women Who Dared: A Guide To the Places in Rockville Where Women Dared to Challenge Expectations Both in Society and in Themselves.”

The booklets stories were mainly based on census records, oral histories, and property deed documents. The publication was funded by the Heritage Tourism Alliance of Montgomery County and state funds from the Maryland Heritage Areas Authority.

According to MSN Health & Fitness, women who regularly drink beer may hold a greater risk for developing psoriasis, an autoimmune disorder affecting the skin.

The new findings from researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and Boston University, observed 82,869 women who had not initially been diagnosed with psoriasis for about 15 years, from 1991 through 2005. The participants reported their own alcohol consumption and also, over the course of the study, reported whether a doctor had diagnosed psoriasis.

The findings revealed that even amongst moderate beer consumption, there was a marked elevation in risk of the disorder.  2.3 drinks in one week caused put the risk for psoriasis at almost 80 percent.

Click here to learn more about the findings.

A group of activists and academics at Rutgers University are working vigorously to generate more female representation in politics. Although there were a number of high-profile female candidates in the political world this year, the presense of women in politics is still lagging compared to their presense in the rest of the workforce. According to the Washington Post, only 17 percent of members of Congress are women, and women make up just 24 percent of state lawmakers.

The Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University hopes to prepare a new generation of potential female candidates for the 2012 elections.  In the coming two years, project participants will recruit women from all sides of the political spectrum to run for office.

Director of the Center for American Women and Politics, Debbie Walsh said “Our hope is to get women who hane made it in their fields, who have broken their own glass ceilings, who are at a point where they’re asking, ‘What’s next for me?’ ”

The group is expected to raise high dollars to support events at conferences of female engineers, health-care professionals and other fields.

History was made Monday when Letitia A. Long was appointed as the first woman director of the Natoinal Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a U.S. Intelligence agency in the Department of Defense.

Long, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, will succeed Vice Adm. Robert B. Murrett, who headed the organization for four years.

Senator Ted Stevens

NWHM lost its longtime friend and supporter, Former Senator Ted Stevens Monday night, when his plane crashed in Southwestern Alaska.  Stevens was 86 years old. There were nine other passengers aboard the plane and five are believed to have been killed in the crash.

The much maligned longest- serving Republican in the Senate who was often monikered as “mean and miserable” was an invaluable source of support to our Museum.

Most folks don’t know about the unique relationship Senator Ted Stevens had with NWHM. Our Founder, Karen Staser and her husband, Jeff Staser were old friends of his and Jeff worked for him.

When we took over the project to get the Suffrage Statue, which was given by the Suffragists to the Congress to commemorate the passage of the 19th amendment, moved out of the Crypt of the U.S. Capitol into the Rotunda, he was the first to step forward to help.  When in 1995 we were told that the floor of the Rotunda would be unable to support the weight of the statue, Stevens stepped in and paid for an engineering survey of the floor, which proved it could in fact hold the weight of the statue.

The statue’s official name is the Portrait Monument and features Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony.

Senator Stevens told us that he was raised by women who were Suffragists and he knew all the Suffrage songs.  He even sang them for us.  He enlisted Senator John Warner to help with the legislation to move the Statue and got it passed unanimously in the Senate.

He stayed our friend throughout the rest of his life. RIP Senator Stevens…keep singing those songs….

For more than 30 years, Myra M. Oliver of Trumbull, CT dedicated herself to ensuring that her “girl” would grow into a beautiful “woman.” Her “daughter,” The International Institute of Connecticut, an organization that reaches out to new immigrants and refugees as they integrate into American life, continues help thousands of people receive their citizenship every year.  If still with us today, Myra would have been proud of the progress her “daughter” has made.

It has been two years since Ms. Oliver passed away at the age of 69, from a long battle with cancer.  An impassioned and committed advocate for the cause of immigration, she continued to work until her death in July of 2008. The legacy of Myra’s dedicated work ethic and her passion for improving the lives of men, women, children and families embarking on the road to American citizenship, lives on through the work of the IIC.

Myra M. Oliver was born on October 8, 1938 in Waterbury, CT to Frank Manzo and Claire Beland. Her parents had immigrated to the country, her father from Italy and her mother from France. As a young child Myra was sent to a boarding school in Baltic, Connecticut along with her sister, and she enjoyed her time there.  From there she went on to graduate from high school and later from Central Connecticut State University. Oliver earned her Masters from the University of Bridgeport.

In 1974 Myra assumed the role of Executive Director of the IIC, where she worked eagerly and tirelessly with new immigrants and refugees on their path to full American citizenship.  Her dedication to the IIC’s mission of assisting people’s transition into American life was far reaching.  Under Myra’s leadership, the IIC was able to expand its operations to a statewide level with three offices, in Stamford, Bridgeport and Hartford. When she first took over in 1974, the organization’s budget stood at about $54,000 today it boasts a $1.2 million budget. During Myra’s tenure 10,000 new Americans have graduated to full citizenship. The organization also grew to provide service for almost 7,000 immigrants and refugees every year. Currently, the institute sponsors the largest naturalization ceremony annually in Connecticut.

Dedicated to helping the countless families she worked with in whatever way she could, Myra took immigrants into her home for days or weeks at a time until she could find them more permanent housing.

Myra’s respect and admiration for the many immigrant and refugee families she assisted, inspired the work she did.  Their courage and perseverance in building lives in a new place cultivated a profound respect and appreciation for her own freedoms and privileges as an American.

In celebration of her tremendous contributions to both Connecticut and the nation at large, Myra was honored by Senator Joseph Lieberman (CT) in 2004 as “One of Connecticut’s Best.”   Senator Lieberman lauded Ms. Oliver saying, “It is a founding principle of our great nation that immigrants have the chance to realize the American Dream that brought my grandparents, wife and so many others here in search of opportunity. For so many of CT’s immigrants the tireless work of Myra Oliver and the International Institute of CT provide crucial components for reaching that goal.”

In addition to her work at the IIC, Myra Oliver was a dedicated and loving wife and mother. For 48 years Myra Oliver and her husband Raymond J. Oliver supported and uplifted each other in a loving marriage that produced four sons.

NWHM remembers and honors the life of Mrs. Myra M. Oliver for the lasting impact she has had and continues to have in the lives of so many Americans.

D.C. lawyer Sarah Carey Reilly, who helped to open trade between the US and Russia died on July 29 of pneumonia at George Washington University Hospital.  Ms. Reilly was 71 years old.

During the 1980s, when the Soviet Union had begun to open up to the possibility of working with Western buisnesses under President Mikhail Gorbachev’s administration, Mrs. Carey Reilly was at the helm of negotiations to establish some of the first partnerships between Soviet and US companies. Some of those joint company ventures included PC World Magazine and engineering comapny, Honeywell.

Ms. Carey Reilly is survived by her husband of 31 years, her three daughters,  her brother and sister and two grandchildren.

Journalist Ann E. Ewing, who was widely believed to be the first journalist to report on ‘black holes,’  died on July 24 at Washington Home & Community Hospices of pneumonia after complications with a stroke. She was 89 years old.

As a journalist, Ewing’s writings focused on science and from the late 19490’s through the 1960’s she contributed to Science News, a publication of the Society for Science and the Public.  She covered a wide range of scientific topics including astronomy, physics and medicine. After her time at Science News she freelanced, writing for medical trade newspapers.

Although physicist John Wheeler is widely credited as coining the term ‘black hole,’ Ms. Ewing has been recorded as using the term as early as 1964 in her story “Black Holes in Space.”

Ms. Ewing was a graduate of Ripon College in Ripon, Wisconsin, where she received her degree in physics and chemistry in 1941. She also studied at the Universtiy of Chicago before entering the Navy in 1942, where she served as a Navy journalist during WWII until 1946.

According to Neumont University of South Jordan in Utah, women with computer science degrees are finding jobs at a faster rate than their male counterparts. 95% of the school’s female graduates are finding jobs within six months of graduation, four points higher than men, and are also earning $2,000 more on average.

Scientists have produced a gel product for women that is showing promise as an AIDS preventative. The gel incorporates the antiretroviral drug tenofovir, which is already used as part of the “cocktail” given to AIDS patients.

In a trial study that tested 899 women, half received the drug and the other half the placebo. There was a 39 percent reduction in infection for those who got the drug. The reduction was 54 percent among those who reported using it at least 80 percent of the times they had intercourse.

Click here for more information about this study.