Who’s Honored and Who Is Not
Only the Wizard Knows
There is an anonymous wizard who decides who will be famous and who will gather dust, unrecognized, unremembered and while I don’t know this wizard, I’m pretty sure he is a white, man of European descent. The wizard does not accept recommendations and just acts on impulse and his impact on our world is immeasurable and very often destructive and he even decides who will be honored with their own special days and he is accountable to no one and has a non-published phone number.
It’s about time we get rid of this wizard and hire one who will recognize great people not for their gender or their skin tones or their nationality but for their accomplishments. I’ll start with four women who deserve a lot more attention then they ever received, whether dead or alive.
The first is Vivian “Millie” Bailey, the first Black woman pilot in World War II who turned 103 on Feb. 3, and is still going strong. Indicative of her vigor, last year, the veteran skydived for the first time in her long life. She also is one of the first African American officers in the Women’s Army Corps and served as a commander of the Women’s Colored Detachment.
Her life has been one of groundbreaking distinctions in the most difficult circumstances. Born in Washington, D.C., she was young when her mother moved the family to Tulsa, Okla., after her father was deployed for World War I. She attended segregated schools and as a young woman, met and was no doubt encouraged by John Hope Franklin, an American historian best known for his work, “From Slavery to Freedom.”
Bailey served in the Women’s Army Corps from 1943–46 and experienced her share of discrimination on two fronts, as a woman and a Black member of the Army. Speaking of her experiences in 2018, she said the first time she went off post alone at Fort McClellan, a white woman spat at her and said, “Look at that black bitch.” Bailey pretended to not notice, citing fears of lynching.
After leaving the Army, Bailey moved to Chicago and worked for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Social Security Administration. In 1970, she transferred to the Social Security office in Baltimore as a division director and retired in 1975. She has been an active community volunteer and fundraiser and since 1966, has collected, packed and shipped CARE packages for U.S. military service members. Bailey also served for 23 years on the Howard County (Md.) General Hospital board of trustees and raises more than $10,000 annually for students at the Running Brook Elementary School.
The next unheralded woman I would like you to meet is Ada Lovelace whose work may have been unfairly overshadowed by her fellow British mathematician, Charles Babbage, known as the “father of computers.” Lovelace began working with Babbage as a teenager in 1833 and was known for her contributions for a proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. Lovelace is credited with recognizing that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation and she published the first algorithm to be carried out by the machine, earning her recognition as the first computer programmer.
The daughter of poet Lord Byron and mathematician Lady Byron, Lovelace was born on Dec. 10, 1815, and had educational and social connections with great scientists of the day like Babbage, Andrew Crosse, Sir David Brewster, Charles Wheatstone, Michael Faraday and the author Charles Dickens. She died of uterine cancer in 1852 at the age of 36.
Elsa Brandstrom may be one of the least known and most selfless women of World War I. Brandstrom, dubbed “Angel of Siberia,” was a nurse and philanthropist and during World War I, she tended to the German and Austrian POWs and dedicated her life to the improvement of the condition of injured soldiers in POW camps and also later during peacetime. Born on March 26, 1888, Brandstrom died on March 4, 1948.
Next, meet Hypatia, who was born in 360 and was an Egyptian mathematician, philosopher, astronomer and writer. She is considered by many to be the first female mathematician, astronomer and philosopher. Despite her accolades and maybe because of them she was murdered and is hailed as a martyr of philosophy. Hypatia also was a symbol of the opposition to Catholicism during the Age of Enlightenment and is today honored as an icon of feminism and women’s rights.