Women of Character
by chris becicka

Wekc, or Women Executives of Kansas City, has been an Ingram’s magazine on-going event for the last nine years. The events has become more intimate, according to Vice President Michelle Sweeney because, “Our goal is to make a difference, and we prefer to use these opportunities to gather input from a manageable number of diversified community leaders.” Last year Ingram’s convened advanced educators; this year we gathered some prominent women who are well respected and well admired in Kansas City. We wanted to know what they thought about current events and issues, both in and out of Kansas City. Meet them all in the following pages.

Ronald Reagan once said, “You can tell a lot about a fella’s chararacter by his way of eating jelly beans.” Seventeen women, “forced” to eat a jelly bean when they gathered last month for breakfast, belied the former president’s insight—the jelly beans had nothing to do with the thoughtful analysis, firm convictions, and outstanding conversation that came from these women’s mouths. Maybe it’s a gender thing.

The women had gathered, at Ingram’s bequest, to talk about issues and concerns—both local and national. Lawyers and company presidents, community activists and volunteers, writers, mayors and judges were there where an early morning fog outside the glassed-in room created the perfect setting for serious talk. Conversation flowed smoothly, gathered force, and crystallized into five major topics: the aftermath of 9/11, education, leadership and community volunteerism and interaction, and even racism, Kansas City style. These pages cover the highlights.

Fateful September
Sept. 11 still weighed heavily on these women’s minds—not the event itself, but its consequences. Gabe Kaniger started the conversation by saying it’s clearly the time for participation, engagement and volunteerism. “This whole incident has people craving to participate. Volunteerism is up locally, people are keeping it closer to home. I would encourage people to participate, to be engaged, to become more active.”

Peggy Dunn added, “We’ve also seen a renewed spirit of cooperation. Before we saw divisiveness and factions, there is now a real spirit of cooperation for a common goal.” Barbara Nelson saw “… a return to values, to what is right. We do have basic strengths and values that perhaps
somehow in the past were overshadowed.”

Patricia Breckenridge was concerned, too, about those values, citing a newspaper article that morning that discussed the possible use of torture or deportation against uncooperative suspects. “I was horrified,” said Breckenridge. “What makes our country grand is our values and I was shocked that after 35 days, we might be willing to abandon them.”

“This is our time to show what we’re made of,” appended Anita Gorman. “That includes our commitment to families, communities, and professions. Every time we show that we’re not going to miss a beat, that we will not be intimidated, then we’re winning. Every time we don’t do something that we planned, then they are winning. And we expect to win.” Sandra Lawrence looked at the positive side in a different light. “We’ve found friends in so many parts of the world we did not know we had. We need to come together as a world. We all need to realize that it doesn’t work unless we’re all pulling for the same goal.”

Another result of 9/11 was a more complete view of the world. Susan McGreevy pointed out our tendency in the past to be isolationist and said, “If there’s any lesson of last month, it’s that we need to care about the quality of life on the other side of the world. Need to think of what’s not just good for us, or for them, but how it all ties together.”

“I now realize how much I didn’t know about the world,” Nelson said. “We must care about what’s abroad. It became very obvious last month how disassociated we’ve become from the world. We still must care about the president and our home. For the first time, I care about both.” She added that we have lost a generation of Muslim children to fanatical schools and pointed out the $187 billion we spent last year in Afghanistan as aid. “Think of what that money could have done in America—it’s such a dilemma. Half the Muslim population is under 20 years old. We’re trying to balance this—how are we going to find the money to do what we want to do, what we must do? How do we balance this with an economy that’s shrinking—what we must do internationally and nationally? I don’t see an easy answer to it.”

Education
The group emphatically agreed with this sentiment. Shirley Helzberg added, “It’s not just the children around the world. Ignorance is growing here, too. The role of education has become even more important as we have seen what ignorance has created in the world situation. These challenges are now even more important than we ever dreamed.”

There is a formidable task in front of us said Diane Hershberger, and it’s wrapped around the fact that it doesn’t always seem like an emergency. “We’re good at crisis. We really have a crisis of education, but it’s not ‘in your face.’ We have to gain that stamina because we haven’t been so good at the longer term issues in the past.”

Breckenridge was emphatic about the crisis in education in Kansas City. As a day-care center reading volunteer, she sees kids who can’t do simple math or can’t read—and they’re 10 years old. “We’re losing kids, and that has a great impact on Kansas City. This is a crisis—a generation or more of inner-city kids are already lost.”

When asked what we’re doing about that, Nancy Green referred to the book, Comeback Cities: A Blueprint for Urban Neighborhood Revival by Grogan and Proscio saying, “There’s a lack of leadership. When you compare us to cities like Milwaukee, Cleveland, Cincinnati, even Chicago—they had strong mayoral leadership. They literally put their political careers on the line and said, ‘We’re going to do this.’ Sure, they didn’t have state-line problem or the school-board mess we have, but until someone steps forward and takes responsibility, we are losing generations of kids.”

Jeannette Nichols said that the consensus at a national seminar she recently attended on building good cities was that in places with school-board problems, the answers had to come from the state. Trudi Galblum was more concerned with preschool education, however, saying it was as bad now as it was 20 years ago when she was struggling with it. “There is no recognition of basic facts,” she said. “Preschool teachers make less money than parking-lot attendants. Turnover in this field is ridiculous. We pay people more to work on the boats than we do to take care of our kids.”

Gorman remembered her days as a teacher at Southeast High School. If she had a problem with a student, she said, she called the principal from her room, the child was pulled out, and very quickly there was a parental meeting. She has a friend teaching there now, she says, who has 130 students. In two nights of parent-teacher meetings, not one parent showed up. “I don’t care who the school board is, who the mayor is, what groups are involved. Unless the parents are involved . . . it just doesn’t matter what you do.”

But then she went on to bring up another issue—the community involvement and faith-based initiatives brought up earlier by several women. The principal of a North Kansas City school that is as disadvantaged as any school in the city showed up at her church and said the children needed help. The church members decided to provide food and tutoring. The Salvation Army joined in, providing full after-school daycare. The high school provided an honor-student mentor for every child there. What was so encouraging, she said, was that when the children took the state MAP tests, they scored above the national average. “There are steps you can take, things that can be done.”

The Community
Lawrence agreed, “People are all doing so much – but generally, it’s fragmented. We recreate the wheel. We end up spending dollars two or three times.”

Nelson heartily concurred. “That occurs on a number of levels…we are a manageable town, and we should be able to pool together better. I don’t know if it starts with the mayor, politically, or with the civic organizations, which are perhaps too isolated and may need to look critically at themselves and ask if they are inclusive enough. We need to use the brain power that we have.”

Susan Stanton felt that “cooperation in the metropolitan area is not as strong as it once was and certainly not as strong as it should be. There are multiple individuals and so many small groups—we’re not seeing as much cooperation as we should.” While the group agreed, they also detailed several initiatives that are the result of collaboration and cooperation.

Nichols pointed out, “We do network our resources. We have databases, we can work efficiently and do with fewer resources. It’s easy to communicate here, we know who to call and how to get something done.” Joy Wheeler said that she has been struck by the sense of collaboration and consensus building that is now apparent. “We can take this as a model; both profits and nonprofits can create coalitions that are much more powerful than they were separately.”

Helzberg said that accomplishments occur only with the private dollars included and that success stories must be shared and built upon. Beth Smith pointed out the success, for instance, with Women’s Employment Network, which has graduated over 4,000 women, helping them to find work, value and self-sufficiency.

Leadership
Whether it’s education or community building, the group agreed that a new generation of leadership needed to appear. They were concerned about the next generation—the 20-30 year olds who have not in the past shown much interest in volunteerism or civic responsibility. Though Susie Haake pointed out that most of the new volunteers at Hallmark are young, and others felt that recent events might inspire because of a renewed zeal for country and family, Lawrence said that we are not yet “creating another pool of people to become tomorrow’s leaders. We work from our old experiences. We need to bring in new young people. They look at the world differently, think differently. They feel we are not listening to them. We need to make them feel part of our community. Otherwise, eventually, we’ll be lost.”

The group also considered the other end of the spectrum—the retirees. These people need to be better valued and better used. They are retiring at a younger age said Dunn. “They are capable and experienced and they can help.”

The conversation about racism and prejudice in Kansas City came up first in reference to education and the school board and broadened from there. Wheeler thought it was about differences, “differences we don’t understand.” Hershberger said that in her work at Kansas City Harmony, she has heard repeatedly from people of color that viewpoints are so different because of race. “We need to continue putting that on the table,” she said.

Lawrence, a Kansas City convert, said this city is very segregated, but that is seldom discussed. “It is present in civic activities, in cultural events, in where we choose to live, the activities in which we participate. We have to address this issue.” Stanton suggested that part of that solution was for whites to go where minorities are, not just to expect others “to come to us.”

The group adjourned with much still to discuss, much to think about. As leaders and thinkers in this community, they
perhaps left with a new sense of resolve and commitment. Certainly, they had miles to go—like Kansas City and the nation.