PUF Celebrates You
Lori Burkhart is editor-in-chief of Public Utilities Fortnightly.
Women's History Month has a kind of a short history. At least it seems that way to me. I was still in college in 1981 when Congress first asked for a celebration of Women's History Week starting in March 1982. It wasn't until 1987, that Congress designated a month.
When I think of amazing women, the first one that jumps to mind always is Amelia Earhart, and that's because we share the same birthday in July, although she was born in the nineteenth century. I think highly of women born in the 1800s who we remember due to accomplishments that were in the stratosphere. They had to be to stand out. It could not have been easy for women back then.
Still, many women of accomplishment worked in obscurity. That's mostly true of a woman most of us never heard of, but should, like Alice Parker, who attended Howard University here in the metro area where PUF is based in Washington, D.C. and graduated with honors in 1910. It is recorded she was born in 1895, yet we don't know when she died. Parker was the recipient of patent No. US132590A on December 23, 1919.