Honoring those who touch lives
Joan Wanamaker was stunned. The woman on the other end of the phone was congratulating her for winning a Women of Wisdom award from the women of Sandpoint.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Joan says now, a year after she received the award. “There are so many women in the community who do so much. This means a great deal to me.”
Joan is one of several dozen women honored since 1999 for their daily contributions to lighten the loads of Sandpoint residents, brighten faces around them and generally improve life. Like all the women honored, Joan never expected or even desired thanks for her volunteer work with the Pend Oreille Arts Council, Panida Theater, Festival at Sandpoint, Community Assistance League and the Rotary Club, which is one reason Marsha Ogilvie started the award in 1999.
“It’s the absolute least we can do for these women,” Marsha says. “They set the standard for all of us.”
Marsha was volunteering with Kinderhaven, a group home for abused and neglected children, in 1999 when she noticed women caring for adults with disabilities in the other half of the building. She was moved by the compassionate care and fairly certain it wasn’t noticed outside the center’s walls.
She wanted to honor the women and began thinking about all the women she knew who deserved honors. The seed for Sandpoint’s Women Honoring Women took root.
Marsha decided the end of the 20th century was a great time to hand out special awards. It seemed an appropriate time for a committee of 20 women to choose Bonner County women to honor. Marsha shared her idea with a friend who helped her find the Women Honoring Women committee.
No one they asked said no. The committee blossomed with a writer and school principal, magistrate, fund-raiser and businesswomen. The group decided to honor 10 women who, as Women Honoring Women’s mission statement says, had contributed to the betterment of the community through their service and leadership and who had served as inspirational role models.
The committee asked the community for nominations. Sixty poured in. Marsha was astonished as the group read each nomination letter and learned more about the women around them.
“I started crying,” Marsha says. “A few of my nominations didn’t make it, and I thought it was the only year we were going to do it.”
The women nominated were hard-working, humble, behind-the-scenes people who most likely never thought about honors for themselves. Winners included a bus driver, Olinda Wolters, who taught kids songs as she drove, and Jean Brown, who anonymously helped dozens of kids pay for college.
Women Honoring Women had no money for a celebration, so the members each chipped in $100 and decorated the Community Hall with white linen tablecloths, pastel napkins and flowers from their home gardens.
Local artist Kathleen Hubbard designed a Women of Wisdom pin for the winners. Local writer Marianne Love, a lifelong Sandpoint resident, shared memories and personal stories about many people in the packed hall.
“I was floating on air,” Marsha says. “It was a holy moment. I could feel the love and joy.”
The community expected Women Honoring Women to continue, so it did. Nominations pour in all year. This year’s winners – Betty Ann Diehl, Joyce Fenton, Elisabeth O’Meara, Virginia Ross, Marian Ruyle and, posthumously, Dora Pennington – give so much time and energy to Sandpoint that the city certainly couldn’t function without them. But it seems that way every year.
Elisabeth O’Meara, 66, resisted the honor when she was notified she was one of this year’s Women of Wisdom. Elisabeth routinely visits nursing homes to chat with residents and to dance with people in wheelchairs. She makes wreaths from the nature around her and hangs them in nursing home rooms so the residents can smell the season.
“My first reaction was I can’t possibly accept this. It makes me feel very humble,” she says. “I finally agreed with myself to accept in the name of all the women who deserve this. They’re too numerous to recognize.”
Which makes Sandpoint an exceptional place to live.