During Friday's YWCA annual Leaderluncheon, the keynote speaker declined her fee. Inspired by the local women with whom she shared the dais, Tori Murden-McClure told YWCA directors, "you don't need a keynote speaker."
Then McClure gave her speech. There were about 650 people in the audience at the Little American Hotel in downtown Salt Lake City. McClure told them of her achievements, about how she was the first woman and the first American to row across the Atlantic Ocean and the first woman and the first American to ski to the geographic South Pole.
Though her achievements are athletic, McClure admires women who have other gifts. "Some people watch adventures. Some people have adventures. Some people are adventures," she said.
McClure aspires to be the kind of woman who is an adventure. She aspires to be like the Utah women who won awards from the YWCA this week. Anne Burkholder, chief executive officer of the YWCA, introduced them.
Josie Valdez won in the business/industry category. In her 13 years as assistant district director for the U.S. Small Business Administration, Valdez has doubled the amount awarded to minority-owned businesses, Burkholder said. Valdez accepted on behalf of all minorities. "I stand proudly in their honor."
Chieko Okazaki, formerly first counselor to the president of the LDS Relief Society, won an arts award for her writing. In accepting, she showed the audience a cotton sack, decorated with a red flower, that once contained New Rose rice. When she was a child in Hawaii, this small sack was the largest size her parents could afford to buy at any one time, she explained. When they'd eaten all the rice, her mother would pick the seams apart and resew the sack into panties for her daughter.
Okazaki wore them happily, she recalls. They were a symbol — not of poverty, but of love.
The YWCA exists to say "love" in the community, Okazaki said. She urged staff members to never think of their tasks as being too small. "Remember the sack."
Valerie Davis and Kathryn Brooks both won awards for being educators. Davis is a retired public school teacher who does not closely resemble Tina Turner but who amused the audience by accepting her award wearing a badge that read, "No, I am not Tina Turner." Davis graduated from college 30 years ago to the cheers of her five children. She dedicated her award to all mothers in college.
Brooks is the director of the Women's Resource Center at the University of Utah. She thanked her mentors, including those who were feminist scholars before there was such a term. A high school teacher, Shirley Ward, paved the way, Brooks said. Ward introduced students to Willa Cather — an amazingly bold thing to do, Brooks explained, "and she didn't hold her job very long."
Joy Hashimoto, community volunteer, won in the category of health and human services. Her parents taught her how to work for change, she explained. Her father was a doctor and her mother had several college degrees, including one in social work. During World War II, her family was sent from their home in Los Angeles to the Amache Relocation Camp for three years, after which Hashimoto went to college and began a life of civic action.
Although Elaine Weiss would have preferred privacy, she has dared to talk and write about her own experience with domestic violence, said Burkholder, in presenting her with an award for public service. Weiss is a clinical associate professor at the University of Utah School of Medicine. She recently wrote a book, a collection of interviews with women who escaped from abusive relationships.
Dr. Peggy Norton, who was one of the first two women in the nation to become a urogynecology surgeon, won in the field of science/technology. She is a pioneer in the field of prolapse and incontinence. Norton thanked her patients for their candor — and thanked the nurses and secretaries with whom she works.