Alice writing about her mom in the local paper

Here is a link to today's op-ed by Alice, Mary's daughter:

http://www.sonomawest.com/articles/2010/01/28/sonoma_west_times_and_news/opinion/editorials/doc4b60ad696a329099361687.txt

Mary Ruthsdotter Memorial Blogspot

We have set up this site for Mary's friends and family to share stories, memories, feelings, photos, whatever you like. Please add to it.  If you are not yet an author for this blog, let me know and I will make you one.  Click on 0 Comments or 1 comment or whatever is below each post to add a comment.

Some nice thoughts from Mary's friends

"We have lost a bright star in our lives.  I can only hope she is now regularly having tea with Susan, Elizabeth and Alice (for starters!)."


"quote from the Women's Words Daily, 'life loves to be taken by the lapel and told,"I am with you kid,. Let's go!' ~Maya Angelou

I wonder if Mary picked that to put on the calendar, sounds like her. And she DID "go"."
--- from Ampa Drinia (AKA Aunt Virginia)

"It's hard to imagine a world without her."

"We come. We go. And we remember. Mary will continue in my heart..............."

"She was a dynamo with a big heart."

Travels With Mary

Mary and I traveled together frequently conducting teacher training workshops for the National Women’s History Project, attending project director meetings for our grant-funded projects and to attend educational equity conferences. Both being fun-loving and adventurous people, we always discovered great restaurants and found ways to have fun in any city, sometimes staying an extra day or two. In Oregon, we spent the night at the Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood and toured the Hood River valley. In Boise we went skiing twice (hitch-hiking to the slopes the second day when we discovered the shuttle did not run on Sunday). On a trip to New Orleans, we took a red eye flight so we could have maximum time, caught two Mardi Gras parades and ate at as many famous restaurants as we could fit in. We even had fun in Minnesota in the dead of winter.
One year the NCSEE conference was held in Oahu, Hawaii. Mary and I went a few days early and packed in as much exploring as possible. We lay on the beach and ate a plate lunch from a truck, took hula lessons at Wiamea Falls, watched the surfers on the North shore, ate pineapple at the Dole visitors center, climbed Diamond Head, visited the Aquarium, snorkeled at Hanauma Bay and body surfed at Waianae – all in two days before the conference began!
Another memorable travel adventure with Mary was the time we were hired by the Maine State Department of Education to conduct a workshop for teachers, to be held at a very fancy resort on the coast of Maine. On the way, driving from Portland, ME, we encountered a thunder storm so intense we had to pull off the road, but, by the time we got to the coast, the weather had cleared. We were each housed in a separate one bedroom cabin with a lovely view of the water. Fabulous meals were served in the resort dining room. (Lobster anytime you wanted!) The workshop was well received, as usual. From there we went up the coast and spent a few days exploring the legendary Maine coastline. It was on this trip that I discovered lawn sheep, and brought one home in my suitcase. We also brought home live lobsters which we cooked for a marvelous feast.
Another project that put us on the road together was gathering historical photos for the Women in American Life Video series that Mary and I produced for the NWHP. This was a project Mary and I worked on for several years, researching and writing the scripts, then doing the primary photo research on a long trip to D.C. and New York. We took with us an entire copy camera set-up with lights and several dozen rolls of film. Astoundingly, we were allowed to set up shop in the National Archives and Library of Congress where we copied hundreds of historical photographs. I would search for photos in the drawers to illustrate the script and bring them to Mary who was making photographic copies as fast as she could. We must have shot hundreds of pictures that way, using a special black and white Polaroid slide film, which we developed each night to be sure we had what we needed. Then we took the train to New York, where we visited the photo archives of the Associated Press and meeting with photographers who had covered the early women’s movement events on the east coast, a veritable treasure trove of material for the later years we were covering.
On a second trip for this same project, we went to Cambridge to do research at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliff, staying with a woman who had attended one of the NWHP’s teacher training conferences in Santa Rosa. To our delight, she taught Chinese cooking classes at her home, and we were able to attend one of them and share the feast. Research at Radcliff was excellent, as that was the largest women’s history library and archives in the country. We also drove up to Smith College to meet the archivist at the Sophia Smith Library, also a great collection of women’s history archives. On these trips we were able to look at the personal papers of Alice Paul and the Woman’s Party, whose office we also visited, as well as many other treasures rarely seen by the public. (I must say we were a little appalled by how lax the security was at the National Archives and Library of Congress. We were allowed to take anything we wanted out of the files and no one paid any attention to whether or not we put it back. We did, of course!) That was an absolutely amazing and grueling trip, but Mary and I had a wonderful time together.
My travels with Mary were some of the best adventures of my life and will always be my fondest memories of our 20 years of working together. - Bonnie Eisenberg

Obit in Sonoma West Times and news

Co-founder of Women’s History Project dies at 65

Mary Ruthsdotter and her husband Dave Crawford.

Local activist fought for equal rights for women

by George Snyder
Sonoma West Staff Writer

Published: Wednesday, January 13, 2010 2:01 PM PST

SEBASTOPOL – Memorial services are being planned for Mary Ruthsdotter, a Sebastopol-based feminist activist and a co-founder of  the National Women’s History Project.

Ruthsdotter, 65, died January 8 in Santa Rosa and was one of four Sonoma County women who began the project as a path to the acknowledgment of women ignored by history.

Ruthsdotter, who had battled multiple myeloma following retirement in 2004....

http://www.sonomawest.com/articles/2010/01/15/sonoma_west_times_and_news/news/doc4b4e379eae142208864723.txt

Mary's page at the National Women's History Museum

Mary was a supporter from the start of the new effort to build a Women's History Museum in Washington, DC.  Here is their chronicle page for Mary:  http://www.nwhm.org/Chronicles/Ruthsdotter.html

If you are considering a donation in her memory, this is a good place.

From the National Women's History Project

Remembering Mary Ruthsdotter  (1944 - 2010)

Our friend and co-founder, Mary Ruthsdotter, passed away on January 8^th.  Mary was the ultimate women's history convert.  The work she did to ensure that women's history would be recognized, honored, and celebrated is a great gift to all of us.

Mary Ruthsdotter was born on October 14, 1944, in Fairfield, Iowa, Iowa.  Her family was "strong Midwest stock," and Mary followed in the footsteps of her mother Ruth and grandmother Esther.  Both women were smart and independent, and Mary was no different. 

Mary's father was a pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps, and the family moved to many new places. She has lived in Arizona, California, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and overseas in Taiwan. 

 Mary attended UCLA in the early 1970s and threw herself into those exciting times at the beginning of the feminist movement.  Mary was determined to raise her daughter Alice to be brave and bold.  Mary and husband Dave Crawford traveled with four-year-old Alice through South America for several months.  She also helped Alice be fearless about math, unlike her own experience in school, when girls were "not supposed to" be good in math.

So Mary was a feminist and activist from early on.  But it was when she moved to Sonoma County, California, California, in 1977 that she learned about women's history.  She went to a slideshow presented by Molly MacGregor, Bette Morgan, and Paula Hammett.  As Mary later said, "Seeing all those pictures of so many women involved in such momentous events was an awakening.  Women had a long proud history which had been invisible in my schooling. Virtually all the accomplishments and contributions of people like me - women, half the world's population! -- had been blatantly ignored!"   

Mary became passionate about bringing women's history into public consciousness.  She was a volunteer embroiderer for Judy Chicago's art installation, "The Dinner Party."  And along with MacGregor, Morgan, Hammett, and Maria Cuevas, she co-founded the National Women's History Project (NWHP) in 1980.  Her enthusiastic optimism, good humor, ever-expanding knowledge, and dedicated work added immensely to bringing women's history to wide attention. 

As Projects Director, Mary gained funding for materials for students, teachers, librarians, parents, workplace organizers, and the media.   She produced curriculum units, organizing guides, teacher training sessions, and videos on U.S. women's history.  She wrote thousands of press releases to promote women's history through radio, television, magazines, and newspapers throughout the nation When the Women's History Network was created in 1983, Mary linked historians, librarians, performers, and community organizers throughout the country.  She produced the quarterl! y "Network News," packed with facts, practical ideas, and program strategies.  These eight-page newsletters documented the exciting expansion of women's history in the late 20^th century.

Largely because of Mary's efforts, the NWHP became the national clearinghouse for women's history, both in print and on the internet.  Mary built a library of over 6,000 books about women in U.S. history, and filled cabinets with articles and photographs. She and her husband Dave created two award-winning websites.  Mary was an expert at finding and delivering the information people wanted!    

We are grateful that among Mary Ruthsdotter's legacies are the women's history movement she helped create and the organization she co-founded. 

We extend our heart-felt condolences to Dave Crawford, Mary's husband of 46 years, and to her mother Ruth Moyer, to her daughter Alice and son-in-law Geoff, and grandsons Marcus and Ian, as well as to the rest of her family, and to her extraordinary network of friends. 

Her daughter, Alice, described Mary best when she wrote "my dear mother was an amazing gal, kick-ass activist, friend, maker of fun, spreader of wisdom - a truly remarkable rare bird indeed."

A memorial service and celebration of her life is being planned for a future date.


~The National Women's History Project

A truly remarkable rare bird

Mary Ruthsdotter

By Alice Crawford,  October, 2005

On the occasion of Mary being honored by Assemblywoman Pat Wiggins’ at Women in the Wine Country. http://www.wiggins4senate.com/kickoff.html
(Photo is of Mary's front yard)

While my mother was visiting me in Australia a few weeks back, we spent a morning lazing around chatting and reading the Sydney Morning Herald.  I remember Mom reading aloud a bit of an article in which a woman was described as being a “truly remarkable rare bird.”  Mom said something to me about how fine she thought it would be to be described in that fashion and, since then, I’ve often thought of how the phrase fits her very well indeed:  “a truly remarkable rare bird.” 

It’s not easy to spell out exactly what makes this fit her so well, precisely because there is so much about my mother that is remarkable and rare.  In my mind, the mixture of exuberance and STICK TO-IT-iveness that she brings to her work in the garden has become a kind of shorthand for what I so admire in her approach to life.  My mother is always cultivating something – in fact, she is constantly cultivating many things at once.  With an abundance of creative energy, she starts more projects in a day than many of us do in a month, and -- even more impressively -- she has the patience and the persistence to see the majority of them through. 

To be truly remarkable, a garden needs an imaginative vision that sees more possibilities in a plot of land than a rose bush here and a privet hedge there – it needs inspiration and verve.  To thrive, however, a garden needs loads of fairly unglamourous day-to-day maintenance.  In my mother’s garden, she has brought these talents and abilities together – collaborating with others to bring something delightful into the world. 

I see this same dynamic in many of the projects she has turned her hand to.   Her work with the Women’s History Project is a source of enormous pride for me, but is only one of so many bits of beauty she has created:  from the first days I remember, she has been throwing pots, making quilts, cooking feasts, throwing parties, fixing up drab apartments which she has painted to look like (surprise!) gardens, filling a neighborhood with trees by day, and “guerilla pruning” them by night, nurturing a marriage of over 40 years, raising a happy and appreciative daughter who turned out to be a real, live feminist herself after all when the tussles over high-heels and lipgloss were put aside, and working in a wide variety of fashions to create community and a more equitable world.  When I think of my mother, I think of the deceptively simple Buddhist maxim to “let a thousand flowers bloom.”  This is exactly what she does every day, in large and small ways, and is part of what makes her a “truly remarkable rare bird” indeed.  

Link to obituary in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20100111/ARTICLES/100119922/1052/OBITS?Title=Mary-Ruthsdotter&tc=ar

New Year's day, 2010

IMG_5743
Originally uploaded by Marty Roberts

Dave and Mary and friends - Connie and Jeff -  at our Two Acre Wood party on January 1, 2010.

Mary Ruthsdotter – 10/14/1944 to 1/8/2010

 Mary Ruthsdotter, women’s rights activist and long time Sonoma County resident, died January 8 at age 65.  Born in Fairfield, Iowa on October 14, 1944, she traveled extensively in her youth as part of a military family. She lived in places as far-flung as Cherry Point, NC and Taipei, Taiwan.  Ruthsdotter is survived by her husband of 46 years, Dave Crawford of Sebastopol, her mother Ruth Moyer, Santa Rosa, her daughter Alice Crawford, son in law Geoff Langdale and grandsons Marcus and Ian, all of Sydney Australia, as well as numerous relatives and friends.

Ruthsdotter was a founder of the National Women’s History Project (NWHP), past chair of the Sonoma County Commission on the Status of Women, an aide to state Assemblywoman (now State Senator) Pat Wiggins and a supporter and confidante to numerous progressive causes and politicians including Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey.

Ruthsdotter moved from Los Angeles to Sonoma County with her husband and daughter in 1977, attracted by the pristine environment and slower pace of life.  After living in Windsor and Santa Rosa, she and husband Dave Crawford were among the founders Two Acre Wood cohousing community in Sebastopol, where they have lived as active members for the past 10 years. 

Mary was dedicated to women’s history and feminism, changing her last name in 1978 from Pegau to Ruthsdotter, a name she created in honor of her mother Ruth Moyer.  She infused her political work with infectious enthusiasm, organizing an annual women’s history parade in Santa Rosa in 1979 which grew to include school marching bands and hundreds of participants. 

While active on the Commission on the Status of Women, Ruthsdotter also organized the Women’s Support Network, a non-profit organization, which sponsored the women’s history parades, as well as Brown Bag Readers’ Theatre, Women’s Voices News Journal and, for several years, the National Women’s History Project.

During her 15+ years on the staff of the NWHP, Ruthsdotter was the primary researcher and writer on women of historical importance and traveled around the country making presentations, training teachers and lobbying for the inclusion of women’s accomplishments into our nation’s history.  The Project designated National Women’s History Week in March, 1980, and prevailed on President Ronald Reagan to place March as National Women’s History Month on the US calendar.  Ruthsdotter was instrumental in the conception, research and writing of numerous posters, publications and multi-media resources published by the NWHP during her tenure there. She also created and diligently maintained the Women’s History Network, an affiliation of women’s history enthusiasts, educational equity officers and educators across the country.  She constantly wowed people with her encyclopedic recollection of women’s historic details.

In 2006-7, Ruthsdotter saw a longtime dream of hers come to fruition when, at her urging, Sonoma State University undertook a project to document the phenomenal early history of feminist activity in Sonoma County from the 1960s-1980s.  Mary conceived and inspired the idea and worked with Michelle Jolly (professor of history at Sonoma State University) who mobilized students in her classes to begin the work of gathering the stories.

In the first 18 months of work, members of the project conducted 49 interviews with activists, began to index coverage of women in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, analyzed the annual reports of the Sonoma County Commission on the Status of Women, and put together the first presentation of the project. (http://www.sonomawomenshistory.org/)

Ruthsdotter was active in Sonoma County politics, and served for 3 years as an aide to State Assemblywoman (now State Senator) Pat Wiggins.  She has been a constant advocate and supporter for qualified women running for office.

Following her retirement in 2004, she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma.  She successfully fought and contained this disease, but developed congestive heart failure in late 2009 and died suddenly at Kaiser Santa Rosa as she walked around the hospital unit in preparation for her discharge. 

According to her longtime friend Trynn, “It was Mary's mission in life to always have friends around.  The cohousing concept was in her blood from a very young age.  She knew there would always be people to have dinner with and to be there for each other.”  She never passed up the opportunity for a good conversation and cohousing dinners provided that opportunity.  The Two Acre Wood community became her extended family and is feeling the loss of one of their staunchest members.

One of Mary’s greatest pleasures after her retirement was to work in the cohousing landscape almost every day.  Her daughter Alice said, “When I think of my mother, I think of the deceptively simple Buddhist maxim to ‘let a thousand flowers bloom.’”

Her friends remember her as a loyal friend and a playmate that was always up for anything.  Her continuous thirst for knowledge made her a resource to all – especially for anything to do with women’s history.  Ruthsdotter’s joie de vivre included winning ribbons at the county fair for grapevine pruning, riding any roller coaster she encountered, traveling the world visiting 5 continents, and always making time for family and friends.

To her daughter Alice, “my dear mother was an amazing gal, kick-ass activist, friend, maker of fun, spreader of wisdom – a truly remarkable rare bird indeed.”

A memorial service and celebration of her life is being planned for a future date.  Donations in her memory can be sent to the new National Women’s History Museum in Washington, DC.:  National Women’s History Museum, 
Administrative Offices
, 205 S. Whiting Street, Suite 254, 
Alexandria, VA 22304

http://www.nwhm.org/

History gives historian her due

By SUSAN SWARTZ
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Published: Sunday, March 11, 2007 at 6:02 a.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 9:00 p.m.

Mary Crawford turned herself into Mary Ruthsdotter because there were too many other Mary Crawfords. Two at UCLA where she went to school and a sister-in-law.

"It felt like, take a number."

She had no problem with her first name. Mary fit her Midwestern solidness. But Crawford was her husband's name, and though she loves the man - they've been married for 42 years - she wanted something that belonged to her.

"Golly gee," she said. "First I was my father's property and then my husband's."

She legally changed to Ruthsdotter in 1978, a time when many women were morphing their identities into creative hybrids and shaking up the patrimony tradition.

Ruthsdotter seemed a natural because friends of her mother often commented, "You must be Ruth's daughter."

Then there's a Scandinavian tradition (although she's not Scandinavian) where people add "dotter" or "son" to a name, although usually the first part is a Leif or an Erick.

The name sensitivity served Mary when she and three other Sonoma County women started the National Women's History Project in 1980, which is all about names - of women ignored by history.

Mary's role was "to get the word out" to teachers, schoolkids, researchers, librarians and media around the country, which she did so well that the local project grew into a major national resource.

Each March, which is Women's History Month, the national organization comes up with a new list of not-to-be-missed women, and Mary Ruthsdotter is on this year's. Sitting in her Sebastopol kitchen, she's a bit embarrassed about the tribute. "It seems a little unseemly, for an organization to honor a founding member." But despite her reluctance and a recent bout with cancer, she'll go to Washington on March 21 to "some snazzy event" where she'll likely spend more time telling stories about the other honorees than herself.

Mary is a proud and loud feminist who comes from a line of un-proclaimed feminists. Mary's grandmother Esther once told Mary that some men thought women "belonged to them like their cows and pigs."

But Esther had her ways, insisting on going out to vote when she was hugely pregnant and should have properly stayed inside. Esther also raised three kids by herself after her husband took a government job and told her "he travels fastest who travels alone."

Mary's mother, Ruth, married to a Marine pilot, helped start new schools on two military bases and drove a Red Cross relief truck. "I was just a military wife," she said from her home near Chico, "but I felt I had to do something else."

Mary's daughter Alice, a university professor living in Australia with her husband and two sons, calls herself a third-wave feminist. "The core values of feminism," which she picked up pretty much by osmosis, "made as much compelling sense to me as the law of gravity," she said in an e-mail.

Mary scoffs at the off-and-on rumors that feminism is dead. "Those people are just plain mistaken. Ask any single woman about her access to credit or ask a married woman about having separate bank accounts. It's in the culture."

Daughter Alice acknowledges that progress can be questionable. She cites media stories "making a big drama about the low self-esteem of girls - their dieting, boy obsessions, Paris Hilton cheesiness and wearing heels to chemistry class."

But she thinks the real opportunities for women "in work, love and how they conduct their lives" are greater now "than any generation before them."

Put that in your history books.