Mink to be inducted
in Women’s Hall of Fame

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By Ben Dobbin
Associated Press

SENECA FALLS, N.Y. >> The late U.S. Rep. Patsy Mink is one of 12 women who will be inducted in the National Women's Hall of Fame, organizers announced yesterday.

Mink joins Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to swim across the English Channel, and Sacagawea, the Shoshone woman who helped guide Lewis and Clark to the Pacific, in this year's honor roll.

In announcing Mink as an honoree, Hall of Fame officials praised the congresswoman as someone who "opened doors for women and minorities." Special mention was made of Mink's push for passage of Title IX, the legislation recently renamed in her honor which mandated equal treatment of women in academia and school athletics.

Mink was also lauded as the nation's first Asian-American congresswoman who "worked tirelessly to open opportunities" for other immigrants.

Mink, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives for 24 years over two different stretches, died Sept. 28 at age 74.

The hall of fame was established in 1969 in this village in western New York's Finger Lakes region where the first known women's rights convention was held in 1848. Women won the right to vote in 1920.

Chosen by a national committee of judges, the women will be inducted at a ceremony Oct. 4. So far, 195 women have been selected, from Susan B. Anthony to Mildred "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias.

This year's honor roll includes Sheila Widnall, the first woman to command the U.S. Air Force, and Stephanie Kwolek, who invented a chemical solution in 1965 that led to the creation of Kevlar, the stronger-than-steel fiber used in bulletproof vests.

It also includes Ederle, who swam from England to France at age 19 and was rewarded with a ticker-tape parade back home in New York.

Another honoree, photojournalist Dorothea Lange roamed the country during the Great Depression to capture a dispossessed America of bread lines, migrant workers and sharecroppers. She is best remembered for her portrait of a migrant mother in California in 1936 and her depiction of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

The other living honorees are Linda Alvarado, 50, the first Hispanic-American to own a share of a major league baseball franchise -- the Colorado Rockies; 1960 Olympics gold-medal swimmer Donna de Varona; and philanthropist Mildred Robbins Leet.

Also saluted was Patricia Roberts Harris, the first black woman to serve in the Cabinet. Harris, who died in 1985, was ambassador to Luxembourg under President Johnson and held two Cabinet posts under President Carter.

Other nominees honored posthumously are Martha Matilda Harper, who ran a beauty-salon chain that boasted 500 branches worldwide at its peak in 1928; Sacagawea; and educator Annie Sullivan Macy, who was best known as Helen Keller's teacher.