Women Changing our World

 HS #93 2013.4.13

 

Women Changing our World

 

My late Hope College mathematics colleague, Mary DeYoung, had a quote from anthropologist Margaret Mead on her office door, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” 

 

Indeed, Mary was one such person herself. Dying suddenly of cancer in the summer of 2011, Mary and her husband, Steve, provided my first home when I moved to Holland in 1988 – in the appendage to their house on Pine Ave and 18^th Street which was originally constructed as a doctor’s office. Through her 25-year career of teaching and inspiring K-8 math education students at Hope College, Mary has impacted hundreds of thousands of lives. 

 

Mead’s quote came to mind recently as I listened with fascination to a BBC account of a new biography, “The Empress of the Nile” by New York Times best-selling author Lynne Olson. The book cover describes its subject, Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, as “The Daredevil Archaeologist Who Saved Egypt’s Ancient Temples from Destruction.” 

 

Born in Paris in 1913, Desroches-Noblecourt attended a progressive all-girls school in which she became hooked on Egyptology. Her life was one adventure after another. As a curator for the Louvre during WWII, she braved interrogation by the Gestapo and twice moved, hid, and secured its contents, including the “Mona Lisa” from the advancing Nazis.  

 

But her most stunning success was the following decade when Egypt’s President Nasser decided to build a dam across the Nile River. Looking to its future rather than its history, Egypt was willing to sacrifice twelve sacred temples, including the statues of Ramses II dating back 3000 years for the economic benefits that a dam would provide. 

 

Challenging Charles de Galle and the Kennedy administration for funding, planning the details with Egypt’s President Nasser, Desroches-Noblecourt won the day by gathering contributions from 50 countries.  She was a real-life Indiana Jones in her love for antiquity and her willingness to fight any battle to save it. She saved all of the sacred monuments even though the largest had to be cut into small pieces and reassembled much as once happened to the Dutch Windmill on Windmill Island.

 

Indeed, local parallels to Christiane’s life go deeper than that. Reading her story, I was reminded of a West Michigan woman who also had a unique vision for saving history and who clung to her mission like a bulldog. 

 

I’m speaking of Saugatuck’s Felt Mansion. Built in the 1920s by the inventor of the first mechanical calculator, the Felts died within a couple years of its completion. The Catholic Church owed it for a while – it was a convent for nuns secluded from the outside world. There was a turn-style in the front entrance so messages could be transported without human contact.  The grand rooms were gutted to make space for many small living quarters. 

 

In the 1970’s a state legislator had the idea of securing this beautiful land for a state park. There was no money designated for parks, but ample available for prisons. So the state bought it, built and used the prison long enough to satisfy legalities, then tore the prison down and kept the land as a state park.  (Bravo for creative imagination!)

 

The land was retained for the Saugatuck State Park, but there was no use for the mansion. So Laketown Township bought it from the state for $1 in 1996 with the plan to let it fall to ruin so that eventually the only choice would be to tear it down. 

 

But then in 2001 Patty Meyer and her husband took a walk through the park. Seeing the potential, she badgered the township for permission to restore it. After multiple refusals, the township board decided the easiest way to discourage this determined woman was to let her have it for six months so she would realize what a useless effort it was. 

 

Remarkably and gladly, their plan backfired.  Patty and her husband filled six haul-away garbage trailers with dead bats, birds, rats, foxes, raccoons, opossums and other trash. They eventually found the grand mantle for its fireplace in the barn of a local farmer, and after years of work the mansion is now restored to its former glory and available for rent and general viewing. 

 

But Patty is not satisfied with restoring historic buildings. Taking this essay full circle, her new mission is raising childhood literacy throughout the state. Mary would approve. Kudos to these women changing our world.