Summit Suffrage Centennial

At a time when alcoholism was thought to result from irreversibly moral failure, Sister Mary Ignatia Gavin pioneered the concept of medical treatment for the disease of addiction. Dubbed the "Angel of Alcoholics Anonymous," Sister Ignatia founded the first alcohol addiction treatment center in the world at Akron's St. Thomas Hospital in 1939. This revolutionary program serves as the model for the wide variety of chemical dependency treatment programs today.

Sister Ignatia believed in a comprehensive approach to recovery and treated addiction on both physical and spiritual levels. Working closely with the co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, she advocated total abstinence and ongoing support for the lifelong process of recovery. She also counseled spouses and family members of alcoholics thus pioneering the concept of family treatment.

Sister Ignatia joined the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine at age 25 and began working as an admitting clerk at St. Thomas Hospital during the Great Depression. Hospital beds were scarce then and even though physical detoxification was thought to be an important component of the recovery process, alcoholics were not usually admitted unless they were seriously injured or ill. Through Sister Ignatia's foresight and perseverance, this barrier was eliminated.

By the time Sister Ignatia left Akron in 1952, more than 5,000 alcoholics had received professional medical treatment and counseling services. She transferred to Cleveland's St. Vincent Charity Hospital, where she continued to help rebuild broken lives, founding Rosary Hall, where she helped more than 10,000 clients until her death in 1966.

"Once in every hundred years a person like Sister Ignatia is born." said Dr. Robert H. Smith, Akron co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Willa B. Player is considered a rare figure within education, not only for her historic place as first Black woman president of a four-year women’s college, but also for her commitment to the civil rights movement and equal opportunity for women.

Brought up in a devout Methodist family, Ms. Player attended Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio. In 1930, Ms. Player became an instructor of French and Latin at Bennett College, a historically Black college in Greensboro, North Carolina, eventually being appointed university president in 1955. Player the first Black woman to preside over Bennett College and she was also the first Black woman appointed president of a four-year women’s college in the nation. Presiding during the years of the civil rights movement, Player considered student participation in sit-ins and other nonviolent protests as entirely reasonable forms of dissent. She was proud of the Bennett students who attempted to desegregate Greensboro during the 1960's.

After retiring from Bennet College in1966, Player became director of the Division of Institutional Development in the Bureau of Postsecondary Education in Washington D. C. There she developed and maintained funding for Title III programs, a major source of categorical support for historically Black and other minority institutions of higher education. She retired in 1977.

In addition to several honorary doctorates, Player has been the recipient of the Stepping Stone to Freedom Award for her contribution to the civil rights movement. In 1972, she was awarded both the Superior Service Award and the Distinguished Service Award from the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

The daughter of an optometrist, Judith Resnik was able to read and do arithmetic when she entered school and enjoyed academic challenges throughout her life. Always at the top of whatever she did, Judith was accomplished at the piano and knew how to complete electrical repairs and build simple machines.

As valedictorian at Firestone High School in Akron, Judith entered Carnegie-Mellon University earning a bachelor of science degree and going on to receive a doctorate in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland.

Dr. Resnik was a design engineer for RCA and a biomedical engineer and staff fellow at the National Institutes of Health. Immediately preceding her selection by NASA in 1978, she was a senior systems engineer with Xerox.

Resnik was selected as an astronaut candidate in January, 1978. She first flew as a mission specialist and the second American woman in space on STS 41-D which launched from the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in 1984. This was the maiden flight of the orbiter Discovery. They completed 96 orbits of the earth before landing at Edwards Air Force Base, California. With the completion of this flight she logged 144 hours and 57 minutes in space.

Dr. Resnik was a mission specialist on STS 51-L which launched from KSC on January 28, 1986, at 11:38. The crew of seven held the first civilians as payload specialists. The STS 51-L crew died when Challenger exploded when an O ring on the booster failed causing an explosion of fuel during lift off.

In 1993, Rita Dove was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States and Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress, making her the youngest person - and the first African-American - to receive this highest official honor in American letters. She held the position for two years and was reappointed Special Consultant in Poetry for 1999-2000.

Rita Dove was born in Akron, Ohio in 1952. She graduated summa cum laude with a degree in English from Miami University of Ohio in 1973, followed by two semesters as a Fulbright scholar at Universitäte Tübingen in Germany. She earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in 1977 from the University of Iowa. To date, Ms. Dove has received 20 honorary doctorates from across the United States.

Her publications include the Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry collection Thomas and Beulah, The Yellow House on the Corner, Museum, Grace Notes, Selected Poems, Mother, On the Bus with Rosa Parks, the novel Through the Ivory Gate, the book of short stories Fifth Sunday, the verse drama the Darker Face of the Earth and a book of her laureate lectures entitled The Poet's World.

For her writing, Ms. Dove has received "Literary Lion" citations from the New York Public Library, the NAACP Great American Artist Award, the Folger Shakespeare Library's Renaissance Forum Award, the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement, the Carl Sandburg Award from the International Platform Association and the 2001 Duke Ellington Lifetime achievement Award in the Literary Arts from the Ellington Fund in Washington, D.C., among others.

Rita Dove's verse play The Darker Face of the Earth had its world premiere at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in the summer of 1996 before going on to be performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D. C., the Royal National Theatre in London, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and the Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles.

Ms. Dove now holds the chair as Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she lives with her husband, the German writer Fred Viebahn and their daughter Aviva. In her spare time, she enjoys playing the viola da gamba, a 17th century string instrument related to the cello, her classical voice training and ballroom dancing.

Photo Source: Virginia.edu

Henrietta Buckler Seiberling played a key role in the formation of Alcoholics Anonymous. It all began in the early 1900s, when distressed over family and financial problems, Seiberling began attending weekly Oxford Group meetings in Akron. The Oxford Group was a religious revival group that stressed prayer and charitable work as ways of life. She helped to organize the Oxford Group' "alcoholic squad" in Akron and led many of these meetings from 1935 to 1939.

Through the Oxford Group, Seiberling met two men who were struggling with alcoholism. They came to her home at the gate lodge at Stan Hywet Hall and talked about the experiences of alcoholics. They concluded that alcoholics should never take another drink, and that they should live a spiritual-quality life and share their experiences with other people. These two principles have become the cornerstone of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Seiberling, along with her colleagues, developed principles that would become the foundation for the AA organization. Meetings at the Oxford Group sessions with alcoholics proved so popular that they began to hold their own meetings at King School in Akron, the first site of official AA meetings. By 1938, AA had spread to several other cities. Eventually it evolved into an organization that has helped millions of people worldwide to fight alcoholism.

Ludel Sauvageot was a pioneer in the field of hospital public relations and forever changed the women' role in the field.

Ludel Sauvageot made her mark in every stage of her life. In the 1920', she became the first female journalism graduate of Ohio University. In the 1930', her public relations position for a large Methodist Mission group took her to the slums of Cuba and the hills of Appalachia. In 1946, she organized the first hospital public relations program in Ohio.

During her more than six-decade career, she has upheld the highest standards of public relations and served as president of the Akron chapter of the Public Relations Society of America and Kent State University' Public Relations Council. She is past president of the Akron chapter of Women in Communications and served on the Press Club Board. In 1992, she authored a book, Partners in History.

Retiring from Akron General Hospital at the age of 70, Sauvageot returned as a public relations consultant.

Sauvageot never forgot the younger generation of young professionals. She advised, mentored and counseled many young people entering the field and remained an outstanding role model for both aspiring and practicing public relations professionals everywhere.