Celebrating and Making History
History is the byproduct of daily life.
Dip a toe or jump into Maryland Day celebrations and you drift into that conclusion.
That’s the plan. It’s been maturing for eight years under the direction of the Four Rivers Heritage Area, Anne Arundel County’s variation on the statewide program devoted (and funded) to keeping our culture alive. Some four-dozen partners join in this historic weekend. Each brings its particular interest. So much of Maryland history is on display. So many real people guide you into the human archaeology of the places we now occupy.
So finally it dawns. We’re the top strata, laying the record of our lives on top of the layers deposited by all the people who’ve come and gone before us.
Of course, history is a big deal in Anne Arundel County, and Maryland Day — make that weekend — makes it a party drawing lots of us in.
History is going on just as fervently all around us.
Just last weekend, Calvert shined the light on women writing 21st century history by the lives they are living. For 14 years Calvert has brought its Women of the World to the fore at Women’s History Month. This year, nine organizations collaborated to honor 14 women and girls at work all around us, as teachers, Scouts, judges, mediators and civic volunteers.
Seven organizations join the Calvert Commission on Women and League of Women Voters to show the breadth of the reach of women making history by improving the quality of present life.
Among them, the youngest were schoolgirls, seventh-graders Nina St. Hillaire and Danielle Frye and ninth-grader Dia Brown. Their achievements were History Fair projects celebrating “the heroine in our own backyard.”
Their subject, Harriet Elizabeth Brown, probably knew she was making history when she enlisted NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall to sue for equal pay for black teachers. But her real goal was equality: Her $600 salary bought a lot less living than the $1,100 salaries of white teachers in 1930s’ Calvert County.
So too, each of the 14 is making history as the byproduct of daily work for our times.
They are Amber Bayse, Calvert Memorial Hospital Foundation … Madeleine Buckley and Dayna Jacobs, Girl Scout Council … Marjorie Clagett, County Administrative Judge … Ella Ennis, volunteer … Jennifer Foxworthy, business leader … Nancy Highsmith, educator … Joy Hill, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Southern Maryland … Gladys Jones, Chamber of Commerce … Morgan Lang, student and woman of tomorrow … Daniella Lenzly, Concerned Black Women … Julie Morrison, Calvert Collaborative for Children and Youth … Janet Scott, Community Mediation Center … and the League of Women Voters Study Team on Transparency in County Government.
Sandra Olivetti Martin
Editor and publisher; [email protected]