Posted on Mar 20, 2006
This year's Women of Achievement include a musician who has became defacto grandmother to 200 Hamilton Hill children and a woman who is both the mother of nine children and chairwoman of the county Legislature.
The YWCA will honor them and four other local women at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the Glen Sanders Mansion, when it inducts all six into the Academy of Women of Achievement.
For musician Judy Atchinson, the honor comes at a time when she feels Quest, her program for inner city youth, is finally starting to affect young women. “We never used to have a lot of girls. Now it's close to 50-50,” she said. But the girls get into fights, so often that one of Atchinson's “graduates” created a weekly anger management course that is mandatory for the worst offenders.
Atchinson counts the course as a success because Lateepha Hoading, a girl who joined Quest eight years ago from a “violent background,” is now able to teach others how to deal with anger. She was beyond proud on Thursday when they had their first breakthrough. Two girls left the building to fight, but the others raced after them and broke it up immediately. “That's a first,” Atchinson said. “That's a big deal.”
TEACHES RESPONSIBILITY
Across the city at Union College, Patricia Williams is also trying to teach youths to stop fighting, using drugs and otherwise misbehaving. Even though the students she works with are usually in a far better financial situation than Atchinson's, the problem students need to learn the same lesson. “They have to learn to take responsibility,” she said.
Williams isn't sure how to teach that, but as senior assistant dean of students, her job is to try to get the message across to students who may be in danger of leaving the college because of misbehavior or poor academic performance.
“I don't know how long it will take them to learn responsibility but they certainly learn I will hold them accountable for their actions,” she said.
She measures success in the number of students she counsels who eventually graduate. Sometimes, she thinks she's failed even when they leave with a diploma – but a recent phone call reassured her that she must be doing something right.
A difficult student – “he was a problem from the second day he was here,” she said – called to say that he was attending graduate school. He thanked her for the four years she spent counseling him and said he probably wouldn't have made it without her. “That gets you thinking. Maybe it's worth it,” she said.
Angela Baris was named a woman of achievement for working with children from the other side of the spectrum: sexual abuse victims, sometimes as young as 3, who are willing to take far too much responsibility for what happened to them. “The guy will say, ‘She was walking around half-naked.' The kids will hear that and take responsibility,” Baris said.
She is the coordinator of Northeast Parent & Child Society's sexual abuse treatment program. It's a tough job, but she takes strength from the successes: the times when a child realizes that being abused was not its fault.
“I get to see the growth . . . when they say, ‘He took advantage of me, I didn't hurthim,'” she said. “I see my job as helping children become strong individuals.” Efforts to increase diversity in Schenectady were also recognized in this year's women of achievement.
FIRST PRESIDENT
The YWCA recognized Sue Lehrman, the first president of the Graduate College of Union University, for setting the tone at the new school.
She has increased scholarships and incentives for minorities, improved on programs to recruit international students, and developed a course to teach students how to respectfully work within diverse cultures.
But she stressed that she can't take all the credit for the graduate school, which was created 2 1 /2 years ago. “Not too many people have the opportunity to be the founding president of a new college. To give birth, if you will, to a new institution doesn't come by very often,” she said. “That's something I'm very proud of. But I certainly didn't do this by myself. I was part of a team.”
She said the diversity course was sorely needed at the school, citing her experience as a health services researcher who worked in the business world before joining academia. “I bring a very different focus. I think these issues are front and center of what's going on in the business world today,” she said. “That set a whole new tone for the program.”
The YWCA also honored county Legislature Chairwoman Susan Savage, who led the legislature as it chose the first female county manager, appointed the first black county legislator and hired the county's first affirmative action officer.
Savage said the choices, particularly the creation of an affirmative action position, were “long overdue.” “I've tried to make appointments that reflect diversity. I think that just makes us stronger,” she said. “In county government, women and minorities have been under-represented. We need to hear from people who represent different backgrounds in the community.”
ROLE MODEL
Savage was also recognized as a good role model for women because she has balanced work and her responsibilities as the mother of nine children. “I get up early and I stay up late,” Savage said when she was asked how she did it all. “Family and community – I think those things go together.”
Frederica Anderson could agree with that. She was honored this year because of her work creating the Schenectady Ski School at Maple Ski Ridge in 1966. At a time when many women were stay-at-home mothers, Anderson was a mother and a business owner. She began teaching children how to ski in 1947 and created the ski school when parents started lining up for lessons with their children.
At 84, she still runs the school with one of her three daughters and estimates that thousands of lifelong skiers and snowboarders learned at her school.
Read More
