Sandra McLeod Humphrey's Blog, page 7

DARE TO DREAM BIG!: From "Average" Student" to "Father of Physics"

Imagine This: You're twenty-two years old, and you're sitting beneath a tree in your mother's orchard. You have already been trying to understand what keeps the moon in its orbit around the earth and the planets in their courses around the sun, but after an apple falls on your head, you begin to search even more seriously for the answers to your questions.

You're born prematurely just after midnight on Christmas Day 1642 (the same year that Galileo died) at Woolsthorpe Manor in Lincolnshire, England, and you're not expected to survive. Your father, a fairly prosperous farmer, has died three months earlier, leaving your mother, Hannah, to raise you by herself.

Your mother remarries when you're three years old, but her new husband, a wealthy clergyman, insists that you remain with your grandmother at Woolsthorpe. Your stepfather dies when you're ten, and your mother then returns to Woolsthorpe with the three children from her second marriage.

Your childhood is a lonely time. You make few friends and keep to yourself, often spending the day in your room making models, kites, sundials, and little mechanical devices.

You're considered only an average student by your teachers and antisocial by your classmates. You admit later that you ignored your studies and spent most of your time making models and carrying out your own experiments.

When provoked by a school bully much larger than you and who also happens to be first academically as well, you fight back and end up winning the fight. After your victory, you decide that if you can beat the bully physically, then maybe you can also match him academically. You begin to pay more attention to your studies and you become an intellectual leader, gaining the respect of both your teachers and your classmates. Before the fight, you were near the bottom of your class. After the fight, you work your way up to becoming the top student at your school.

 You're admitted to Cambridge University when you're eighteen, but your mother refuses to pay your tuition because she wants you back home to help run the family farm. You remain at Cambridge anyway and earn your keep by cleaning the rooms of the paying students, serving meals, and doing menial jobs.

At Cambridge you read everything you can by the great mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers of the time and graduate in 1664. You then remain at Cambridge for further graduate study.

In 1664 you begin your experiments with light and discover that when white light is shone through a prism, it splits into a rainbow which you call the spectrum–the light ranging from violet at the top to red at the bottom.

Once an experiment is devised, you repeat it many times in order to eliminate errors or any possibility of chance. You also keep impeccable records of your findings.

You call 1666 your "Miraculous Year" because it's there in the solitude of Woolsthorpe that you begin to make incredible breakthroughs in mathematics and physics. You even find the answer to a problem that has eluded the most gifted mathematicians for years, the binomial theorem

It's also in 1666 at Woolsthorpe where an apple falls on your head while you're napping in the orchard. You wonder why the apple always fall downward and conclude that the apple falling and the moon orbiting are governed by the same force: gravity–or what you later refer to as the Law of Universal Gravitation.

The work you do during "The Miraculous Year" becomes the basis of mathenatics and physics for the next 300 years, and you are considered by many to be one of the greatest scientists of all time.

You die a painful death on March 20, 1727, at age eighty-four from gout, lung inflammation, and kidney stones, and you're buried among Britain's kings and queens in London's Westminster Abbey, the first scientist to be so honored.

"If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants."

Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

Excerpted from They Stood Alone!: 25 Men and Women Who Made a Difference by Sandra McLeod Humphrey

For More about

http://www.biography.com/people/isaac-newton-9422656/videos/isaac-newton-answer-to-everything-2080059996

 Giving Back: In addition to his scientific work, Newton devoted an enormous amount of his time and energy to the study of the Bible and wrote over a million words of notes regarding his study of it.

Did You Know that Newton's discoveries about light and movement of planets were used to make the first flights to the moon possible?

 Something to Think about: Why do you think winning the fight with the bully was so important to Newton?

 

Willoughby and I hope you enjoyed this week's true story and will be back next week for another story to inspire you to DARE TO DREAM BIG!

 

DARE TO DREAM BIG!: From Powerless Slave to the "Moses" of Her People

Imagine This: You're a black female slave whose old master has died, and your new master is going to sell you and three of your brothers. You know there's a secret escape route to the North called the "Underground Railroad," but you also know that the odds are against you if you try and escape. You have been told that escape is "impossible!"

 You're born Araminta (Minty) Ross around 1820 on a plantation in Maryland, one of eleven children, to Harriet Greene and Benjamin Ross, both slaves.

 At age five you're hired out to neighbors to do housework by Mr. Edward Brodess, the owner of the plantation. You work hard all day, and at night you sleep by the fire, burying your feet in the ashes to keep them warm.

At age seven you're hired out to a woman to do chores during the day and to take care of her baby at night. Whenever the baby cries at night and wakes the mistress, you're whipped, and whenever you don't do your chores well enough to please your mistress, you're whipped. You're whipped so often that you have scars on your neck for the rest of your life.

When you're returned to the plantation, you're sent out to work in the fields. While you plow the ground, hoe the weeds, chop the wood, load the wagons, and take care of the mules, you hear about the Underground Railroad–a network of people who lead slaves to freedom in the North. And you sing about Moses in the Bible who freed his people from slavery.

While helping another slave try to escape when you're thirteen, you're hit by a heavy weight and you nearly die from a fractured skull. When you recover, you have a scar that marks you for life. But people respect your courage, and they no longer call you by your nickname Minty. Instead, they begin calling you by the name you have chosen–Harriet, your mother's name.

When you're about twenty-three, you marry John Tubman, a free black man, but that doesn't change your slave status. You're different from many of the other slaves because you believe that you have a right to go free or die. But your husband refuses to listen to you talk about freedom and tells you that he'll betray you if you ever try to run away.

In 1849, your worst fears come true. The owner of the plantation dies, and the plantation's bills are to be paid by selling some of its slaves. Two of your sisters have already been sold and are in chains.  You persuade three of your brothers to escape with you, but they turn back in fear and force you to return with them.

Two days later you find out that you've been sold and you know that this time you'll have to go alone. You've learned  from your failed escape attempt that freedom is only for those bold enough to take it.

Philadelphia and freedom are ninety miles away, but you know you have to try. You hide by day and travel by night, and with the help of Quakers who are members of the Underground Railroad, you finally make it to Philadelphia and freedom!

You're free at last, but you don't forget your people. Again and again, you risk your life to lead them on the same secret, dangerous journey to freedom. From 1850-1861, you make nineteen trips to the South and lead over three hundred slaves to freedom. You never lose a slave and you're never captured!

In your later years, you continue to devote your life to the needs of others, and your last cause is women's rights. You tell women "to stand together" a month before you die of pneumonia, at approximately age ninety-three on March 10, 1913, in Auburn, New York.

You've been called the "Moses" of your people because of all the slaves you led to freedom and you leave an indelible mark on American history.

"There are two things I have a right to. Either freedom or death. If I can't have one, then I will have the other."

Harriet Tubman (1820-1913)

Excerpted from They Stood Alone!: 25 Men and Women Who Made a Difference by Sandra McLeod Humphrey

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Giving Back: Harriet Tubman spent her entire life helping others. After serving as an Underground Railroad conductor, she served her country as a Union spy and nurse and finally as a Women's Rights activist.

Did You Know that Harriet Tubman never learned to read or write?

 Something to Think about: Why do you think Harriet Tubman risked her life so many times to lead other slaves to freedom in the North?

 

Willoughby and I hope you enjoyed this week's true story and will be back next week for another story to inspire you to DARE TO DREAM BIG!

 

DARE TO DREAM BIG!: From Inquiring Scientist to Founding Father of Astronomy

Imagine This: For centuries everyone has believed that the sun and all the planets revolve around the earth. But you have studied all the old books and by studying astronomy and the heavens, you have concluded that the sun, not the earth, is the center of the solar system and that the earth and all the other planets revolve around the sun. Your theory is so radical that you are hesitant to even tell others about it.

 You're born in 1473 in Torun, Poland, the youngest of four children. Your father dies when you're ten years old, and your mother's brother steps in to help the family.

You attend the University of Krakow in Poland where you study mathematics, optics, and perspective. You then continue your study of both astrology and astronomy at the University of Bologna in Italy. After Bologna, you attend the University of Padua where you concentrate on medicine.

After you finish your education at age thirty, you return to Poland where you serve your uncle as his personal physician and secretary for the next several years.

When your day's duties are done, you spend your nights studying the heavens, and you notice things that don't make sense to you.

The astronomy books you've studied were written by ancient Greek philosophers and scientists such as Ptolemy who believed the earth was the center of the universe and that the other planets and the sun revolved around it.

But you disagree! You believe that the sun is the center of the universe and that the earth is just another planet that revolves around it.

You work on your theory your entire life, but you know that for such a revolutionary theory to be accepted, you will need to have mathematical details.

So you write a book explaining your heliocentric theory (that the sun is the center of the universe and that all the heavenly bodies, including the earth, revolve around it). You begin your book around 1515 and finish most of it around 1530, but you continue to revise it for years afterward.

Your findings go against the teachings of Aristotle and Ptolemy and the classical astronomical view that the earth is the center of the universe which people have believed for 1400 years. If your theory is correct, then that means the church is wrong, and the church refuses to believe that it's wrong.

In 1543, you finally publish your astronomical findings in your book On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres which is often now regarded as the starting point of modern astronomy and the beginning of the scientific revolution.

That same year you also suffer a stroke which leaves your right side paralyzed. You live just long enough to see your completed work on the day you die on May 24, 1543, at the age of seventy.

Although initially your beliefs are denounced and ridiculed, scientists with more advanced instruments and telescopes will later prove that the earth does indeed revolve around the sun.

Many of our modern advances in science would not have been possible without your heliocentric theory which is why you're considered to be the founding father of modern astronomy.

"To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do

not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge."

 Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543)

 Excerpted from They Stood Alone!: 25 Men and Women Who Made a Difference by Sandra McLeod Humphrey

For More about Copernicus:

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/scien...

Giving Back: Copernicus spent his entire life developing and refining a view of the universe that was in opposition to the established beliefs of his day.

Did You Know that during this period of history, the Church was so powerful that it could imprison in dungeons, inhumanely torture, and kill by burning or hanging anyone who disagreed with their teachings?

 Something to Think about: Why do you think Copernicus took such a risk to publish his astronomical findings when he knew the possible consequences of his actions?

Willoughby and I hope you enjoyed this week's true story and will be back next week for another story to inspire you to DARE TO DREAM BIG!

 

 

 

 

DARE TO DREAM BIG!: From Adventurous Young Woman to Trailblazing Photographer

Imagine This: You are a young woman who wants to do all those things "that women never do." Your passion is photography, but this is a man's field in a man's world, and you aren't a man. So what do you do? Do you give up your dream?

You're born in the Bronx, New York, on June 14, 1904, the second of three children. Your father, Joseph White, is an inventor and an engineer, and your mother, Minnie Bourke, is a forward thinking and loving mother.

Your parents encourage you to read books, study nature, and think for yourself. One night the whole family stays up to watch a butterfly slowly emerge from its chrysalis.

As a child, you're shy and serious and, unlike your classmates, you love bugs and snakes. One day you take your pet snakes to school and cause such a panic that the principal forbids you to ever bring them again!

In addition to being a mechanical engineer and an inventor, your father is also an amateur photographer in his spare time, and your home is filled with his photographs. You often follow him around the house, pretending to take photographs with an empty cigar box and you help him develop his prints in the bathtub.

On Sundays he takes you on trips to factories. He tells you that the beauty of machines is as great as that of nature and that their beauty is in their usefulness to humans.

After graduating from Cornell University in Ithica, New York, in 1927, you return to Cleveland, Ohio, where your family is living. You open your own photography studio in your one-room apartment and specialize in architectural photography. You set up your stack of developing trays near the kitchen sink, do your printing in the tiny breakfast alcove, and rinse your photos in the bathtub.

The money you earn from shooting elegant houses and gardens by day allows you to spend your time photographing steel mills at night and on the weekends.

Your adventurous nature and your dedication to your craft lead you to become a world-famous photographer by age twenty-five. You take great risks whenever necessary to get just the right picture, and you tell yourself that you will do all the things that women never do!

The industrial photos you take are used in a book, The Story of Steel, which creates such a sensation that you become famous almost overnight.

In 1929, you become a staff photographer for Fortune Magazine and your documentation of a hog processing plant is a major step in the development of the photo essay.

In 1930, you spend five weeks in Russia, the first Western photographer allowed into that country. You take nearly three thousand photographs and in 1931 you publish your book Eyes on Russia.

In 1936, you become one of four photojournalists for the pictorial magazine Life and you make history with the publication of your haunting photos of the Depression in your book You Have Seen Their Faces.

You're the only photographer there in Russia in 1941 when the first bombs fall on Moscow and your pictures are a major scoop for both you and for Life.

 You become the first female war correspondent and for the next four years, you work in combat zones during World War II and you're one of the first photographers to enter and document the death camps.

You have become a trailblazing photographer who photographs the major events of the day. You show Americans the beauty of industry and its machinery in the 1920s, document poverty and suffering during the Great Depression in the 1930s, and bring home World War II in the 1940s.

You die on August 27, 1971, at age sixty-seven after spending the last seventeen years of your life fighting your Parkinson's disease (a degenerative illness which attacks the nervous system) with the same bravery and determination that made you a great photographer. You were, and still are, one of the most important photographers of the twentieth century.

"Work is something you can count on, a trusted lifelong friend who never deserts you."

 Margaret Bourke-White (1904-1971)

 Excerpted from They Stood Alone!: 25 Men and Women Who Made a Difference by Sandra McLeod Humphrey

For More about

Giving Back: Margaret Bourke-White's photographs emphasized the human side of the news and are in a number of museums, including the Brooklyn Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Did You Know that at one point in her life, a rumor had spread that she was really a man because of some of the daring feats her photographs required, so she had her assistant photograph her while she was actually taking some of her more daring photographs?

Something to Think about: Why do you think Margaret Bourke-White took such risks to get "just the right picture?"

 

Willoughby and I hope you enjoyed this week's true story and will be back next week for another story to inspire you to DARE TO DREAM BIG!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DARE TO DREAM BIG!: From Social Nonconformist to World Renowned Philosopher and Writer

Imagine This: Although you are Harvard educated, you decide at the age of twenty-seven, to build a small house with your own hands in the woods where you can study nature and not get caught up in the materialistic pressures of the world around you. Your aim is not to escape civilization but to simplify it. At the time, people criticize your simple way of life, but you have always been an independent thinker, and you continue to live your own life the way you want to.

You're born near Concord, Massachusetts, in 1817, the third of four children. Your father is a shopkeeper, but by the time you're born, his business is failing and your family is very poor even by the standards of 1817.

While your father is quiet and studious, your mother is friendly, outgoing, and has a generous heart. She always finds a way to help those poorer than herself and welcomes everyone into your home. She is also known to speak her mind on the social and political issues of the day, particularly on such subjects as slavery to which she is strongly opposed.

You enjoy growing up in Concord where you can spend your time outdoors enjoying nature. You enter Harvard at sixteen where you're deeply influenced by writers such as Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

You graduate from Harvard in 1837, but you're not a particularly outstanding student because of your independent ways. After your graduation, you return to Concord and begin recording your thoughts and experiences in a journal.

In the fall of 1838, you and your brother John open a private school which becomes very successful, but you have to close the school in 1841 when your brother becomes ill and can no longer teach.

You have always loved living a simple life, away from the intense pressures of a competitive society. You champion the independence of the human spirit over materialism and social conformity.

There is a pond near Concord named Walden, and this is one of your favorite places to just sit and think. In your late twenties, you build a little house on one of Walden's shores where you can be alone. Your house is very simple and has only one room, one table, a bed, and three chairs.

Nature is like a living being to you and you want to do more than just enjoy its beauty. You want to get so close to it that you become one with it. One entire morning, you lay on your stomach and watch a war between red and black ants.

By living at Walden, you want to prove to yourself and to other people that someone can live very, very simply. Living so simply frees you to do what you really want to do: to see, to learn, to think, and to write.

Your most famous book Walden is published in 1854, but it is not recognized as one of the great American classics of nonfiction until after your death. It has never gone out of print and it has appeared in more than 150 different editions, often selling in the hundreds of thousands of copies.

Despite the emphasis in Walden on solitude, you're not a hermit. You have many friends including the novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne and the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. Your friends are important to you and you once write that "Friends are kind to each other's dreams."

When you die on May 6, 1862, at age forty-four from tuberculosis, Concord loses its most distinguished son and the nation loses a man and writer unique in any age.

But that is not the end of your story. After your death, you achieve an eminent place as one of the most influential writers in the world and influence national leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi in India and Martin Luther King, Jr., in America.

 "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer."

 Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Excerpted from They Stood Alone!: 25 Men and Women Who Made a Difference by Sandra McLeod Humphrey

For More about

 Giving Back: Thoreau believed that he could best help others by encouraging them to "simplify" their lives.

Did You Know that when Thoreau graduated from Harvard, he did not think it was worth it to pay the $5.00 fee to receive his diploma, so he left without a diploma?

Something to Think about: What do you think about Thoreau's statement that he felt many people live lives of "quiet desperation?"

 

Willoughby and I hope you enjoyed this week's true story and will be back next week for another story to inspire you to DARE TO DREAM BIG!

 

 

 

DARE TO DREAM BIG!: From Music School Reject to Celebrated Vocalist and Activist

Imagine This: You are a young black woman with a magnificent voice, but you have no money for singing lessons, and even if you could take singing lessons, where would you sing? As a young black woman, many restaurants refuse to serve you and some hotels refuse to give you a room. So where would you sing? Certainly not in any American concert hall. So do you give up your dream?

You're born in South Philadelphia in 1897, the first of three daughters. Your mother has been a teacher and your father sells coal and ice. Your father is also an usher in the church your family attends, and you join the junior choir when you're six.

Mr. Robinson, the choir director, encourages your musical talent and, when you're eight, you talk your father into buying an old piano. There's no money for music lessons, so you teach yourself enough to play music to sing by.

Following your father's death when you're ten, your family moves in with your paternal grandparents, and your mother supports the family by taking in laundry and working as a cleaning woman–the only kind of work available to black women back then.

Music and the church are important to you, and by age thirteen you're the youngest member of the senior choir at your church where you thrill audiences with the three-octave range of your voice.

Three women are major influences in your life. Your mother's faith instills a core of stability which lasts your entire life. Mary Saunders Patterson, a black music teacher at your high school, gives you free music lessons and even loans you a dress to wear to a concert. And Dr. Lucy Wilson, principal of your high school, rescues you from the business courses you're taking to become a secretary, so that you can have more musical training as part of your high school curriculum. She even arranges many opportunities for you to sing in public.

With the help of your church and Dr. Wilson arranging benefit concerts for you to raise money, you're able to take private lessons from Guiseppe Boghetti a much-sought-after music teacher. When he hears you sing "Deep River," he is moved to tears.

After high school, you're denied admission to a music school in Philadelphia because you're black, but you continue to study with Boghetti. You win an important singing contest in New York City in 1925, and a top concert manager offers to represent you. But you can not escape the racism so deeply embedded in American life, and for almost a decade until 1935, your primary musical audiences are in Europe.

Although you receive rave reviews in Europe, American audiences are not yet ready to accept you and you encounter a great deal of discrimination. Some restaurants refuse to serve you and some hotels refuse to give you a room. And, in 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution refuse to let you sing in Constitution Hall in Washington, DC because you're black.

In 1954, Rudolf Bing, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, invites you to sing at the Metropolitan. January 7, 1955, is a historic occasion. You're the first black singer to ever sing with the Metropolitan Opera and at the end of your performance, the audience thunders your name.

In 1963, you receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor, and ten years later, you're elected to the National Women's Hall of Fame.

By the time you die from congestive heart failure on April 8, 1993, at age ninety-six, you're considered one of the greatest classical singers of all time. Perhaps your greatest legacy to the American people, however, is your demonstration by your own example that talent, dignity, and courage are more important than skin color and that one person can be an instrument for social change.

"I have a great belief in the future of my people and my country."

Marian Anderson (1897-1993)

Excerpted from They Stood Alone!: 25 Men and Women Who Made a Difference by Sandra McLeod Humphrey

For More about Marian Anderson

Giving Back: Marian Anderson took her responsibilities as a  public figure seriously and from 1939 on she refused to sing at any segregated event. And in 1942, she established the Marian Anderson Scholarship Fund to aid emerging singers who needed financial assistance.

Did You Know that Marian Anderson sang at President Dwight D. Eisenhower's and President John F. Kennedy's inaugurations?

Something to Think about: Why do you think it took American audiences so long to accept Marian Anderson?

 

Willoughby and I hope you enjoyed this week's true story and will be back next week for another story to inspire you to DARE TO DREAM BIG!

 

 

 

DARE TO DREAM BIG!: From Mediocre Student to Visionary Inventor and Scientist

Imagine This: You want so spend your time working on your new invention, but your investors think a "talking telegraph" is a big waste of time and demand that you devote all your time to improving the telegraph. So what do you do? Do you give up your dream?

You're born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1847, the second of three sons of a speech therapist father and a deaf mother. You're very close to your mother, and she inspires you to teach other deaf people to speak.

Even as a young boy, you're fascinated by sound. When you're only three or four, you sit in a field of wheat and listen to the sound the wheat shafts make as they blow in the wind. And you wonder if you might be able to hear the wheat growing if you listen carefully enough.

Even though you're very bright and very curious, you don't do very well in school because you're more interested in daydreaming and thinking your own thoughts.

In 1862, your father sends you to live and study with your grandfather in London, England, hoping you'll finally settle down and begin studying harder. Although your grandfather is very strict, he inspires you in a way that your father and teachers haven't been able to, and you begin taking your studies seriously. You particularly enjoy the science of sound and speech, and after a year, you return home a changed person.

In 1871, at age twenty-four, you accept a job at the Boston School for Deaf Mutes where you become a very successful teacher.

In 1873 you begin teaching at Boston University, and although you're busy teaching, you still find time to experiment and dream of new inventions.

You're particularly interested in improving the telegraph which sends dot-and-dash messages through electrical wires. The problem with the telegraphs in the 1870s is that only one message can be sent and received at a time.

Wealthy fathers of two of your students like your ideas for improving the telegraph and agree to invest money in your project which means you can now spend more of your time inventing. It also means that you can hire Thomas Watson,  a young electrician, to be your helper. You're a genius at coming up with ideas, but you know very little about electricity, so Watson is just the person you need.

You and Watson work long hours trying to solve the telegraph problem, but then you become interested in a much more exciting idea. Instead of just sending lots of coded messages at the same time, you think there might be a way to send the sound of a human voice through telegraph wires.

Your investors aren't happy with this new idea. They think a "talking telegraph" is a big waste of time, and they demand that you spend all your time and efforts on improving the telegraph.

You have to keep your investors happy, so you decide the only thing you can do now is work longer hours on both projects. After long months of experimenting, your hard work finally pays off. You find a way to convert sound into electrical impulses and send them over a copper wire!

In February 1876 you apply for a telephone patent even though your invention isn't completely ready yet. You receive your patent on March 7, 1876, and you're very lucky to get it because just a few hours after you apply for your patent, another inventor, Elisha Gray, also requests a telephone patent. Those few hours make all the difference! You get the patent; Gray doesn't.

Your invention of the telephone changes the world! Unlike many other inventions, the telephone is easy and safe to use, and unlike the telegraph, anyone can use it.

You die on August 2, 1922, at the age of seventy-five, and during your funeral two days later, all telephone service in North America is suspended for one minute as a mark of respect to honor the father of the telephone.

     "When one door closes, another opens, but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us."

Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922)

 For More about Alexander Graham Bell

Giving Back: Bell always considered his work in educating the deaf his most important work—-more significant and more important than the invention of the telephone. His methods for teaching the deaf are still used in schools throughout the world, and the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf is now the largest organization for the education of deaf people.

Did You Know  that Bell considered his real work to be as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study for fear it would intrude on his work?

 Something to Think about:  What if Bell had followed the advice of his investors and given up his work on the telephone and worked only on the telegraph?

 

 Willoughby and I hope you enjoyed this week's true story and will be back next week for another story to inspire you to DARE TO DREAM BIG!

 

 

DARE TO DREAM BIG!: From Medical School Reject to Medical Pioneer and Activist

Imagine This: You are a young woman who really wants to be a doctor, but there is a big problem. There are no women doctors because women are not admitted to medical schools. So what do you do? Do you give up your dream?

You're born in Bristol, England, in 1821, one of nine children. Your family is a most unusual family because the principle of equality is a guiding rule in your home, and your parents believe that girls should be as well educated as boys.

In 1831, hard times come to England. People lose their jobs and rioting breaks out in Bristol. People are killed and buildings are set on fire. Your family is deeply upset by the violence and your father sees little hope of saving his sugar refinery business, so he decides to make a fresh start in America where there are more opportunities.

You're eleven when your family moves to America and settles in New York City. When your father suffers great losses during the financial depression of 1837 your family moves from New York City to Cincinnati, Ohio, on the advice of a cousin.

Only three months after your move to Ohio, your father dies and your family is left destitute. Your mother opens a boarding school in your home while your brothers and sisters also work to help provide income for the family.

At age twenty-three, you're asked to take charge of a girls' school in Henderson, Kentucky, but you're so upset by the treatment of the slaves and the proslavery attitudes of the South, that you return to Ohio within a year.

By age twenty-four, you're longing for a purpose in life. You want to do something important, but you're a girl, so what can you do?

Mary Donaldson, a family friend, is dying of cancer and she finally convinces you that you can become a doctor. She tells you that somebody has to be the first woman doctor. Why not you?

You apply for admission to twenty-nine medical schools and you're turned down by twenty-eight of them. Then finally, when you're twenty-six, little Geneva College in upstate New York, the twenty-ninth school says YES!

You find out later that the Geneva medical students had been given the final say on your admission because everyone thought your application was a joke. No one had even taken it seriously.

You earn the respect of your fellow students, however, and in 1849, you graduate first in your class—-the first woman to receive a medical degree from a medical school in America. January 23, 1849, is a day that will forever change the world of medicine!

You move to Paris to continue your medical education, but your dream of becoming a surgeon is shattered after you contract a severe eye infection from an infected baby you're treating.

You return to New York City in 1851 where you open a one-room clinic to serve women, but you do much more than treat sickness. You're a strong believer in preventive medicine and you teach your patients the importance of good hygiene and nutrition. You believe that prevention is better than cure!

Your one-room clinic expands to become a hospital in 1857 and becomes known as the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. Other women can study to become nurses at your hospital and in 1868, you add a medical college for women which means that now women can become doctors as well as nurses.

By the time you die on May 31, 1910, at the age of eighty-nine, you have left a legacy that paves the way for the countless generations of female physicians who follow you.

"If Society will not admit of woman's free development, then society must be remodeled."

Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910)

 Excerpted from They Stood Alone!: 25 Men and Women Who Made a Difference by Sandra McLeod Humphrey

 For More about Elizabeth Blackwell

Giving Back: In 1869, Elizabeth Blackwell returned to England and spent the rest of her life working to expand medical opportunities for women there as she had in America.

Did You Know that eventually Elizabeth Blackwell's damaged left eye had to be replaced with a glass eye?

Something to Think about: What if all twenty-nine colleges had rejected Elizabeth Blackwell's application? How do you think that would have changed the history of medicine?

 

Willoughby and I hope you enjoyed this week's true story and will be back next week for another story to inspire you to DARE TO DREAM BIG!

 

 

 

DARE TO DREAM BIG!: From Penniless Immigrant to Scientific Genius Who "Lit the World"

Imagine This: You're twenty-eight years old, and you have just arrived in the United States with four cents in your pocket. You're fortunate to be interviewed by Thomas Edison himself, but when you try to explain your invention of the induction motor which uses alternating current (AC) to Mr. Edison, he calls it "nonsense" and "dangerous." He tells you that he and all Americans are quite satisfied with direct current (DC) and plan to use no other system. Mr. Edison hires you, but he wants to hear no more nonsense about alternating current.

 You're born in Croatia in 1856 during a fierce thunderstorm, and during the precise moment of your birth, the sky lights up with a huge bolt of lightning. The midwife who has just delivered you, calls you "a child of the storm," but your mother calls you "a child of the light."

Later on, you attribute all of your inventive instincts to your mother who comes from a family of inventors and who herself invents household appliances to help with all the jobs around the home and the farm.

Even as a young boy, you are very aware of the tremendous power of nature and your boyhood dream is to one day come to America to harness the power of Niagara Falls in New York.

After completing your higher education at the University of Prague, you work for the Edison Company in Paris before emigrating to the United States in 1884 with only four cents in your pocket.

You're hired by Edison to work at his Menlo Park research laboratory in New Jersey, but differences in your beliefs lead you to leave a year later.

You believe that alternating current is vastly superior to Edison's direct current because it can be altered or converted to suit a variety of situations.

You establish your own laboratory where you give dramatic demonstrations, hoping to allay fears about alternating current. You even light lamps without wires by allowing electricity to flow through your body.

By the time you become a United States citizen in 1891, you are at the peak of your creative powers. You have developed the induction motor, new types of generators and transformers, a system of alternating-current power transmission, fluorescent lights, and a new type of steam turbine.

Although your inventions receive many awards, you always consider your United States citizenship more important than any of the scientific awards you receive.

You are a visionary genius who discovers the rotating magnetic field, the basis of most alternating-current machinery. You also introduce us to the fundamentals of robotics, remote control, radar, computer science, and missile science and expand our knowledge of ballistics, nuclear physics, and theoretical physics.

You are considered the father of our modern technological age but also one of the most mysterious and controversial scientists in history. You lay the foundation for modern wireless communication and energy research and although you're one of the twentieth century's greatest scientists and inventors, you don't always get the credit you deserve.

Although it was you who harnessed the alternating electrical current we use today and which fundamentally changed the world, you are frequently included only as a footnote to the stories of the more renowned inventors and industrialists of your day such as Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse.

At the time of your death in 1943 at age eighty-six, you hold over seven hundred patents, but you die nearly penniless because of serious financial setbacks.

"Science is but a perversion of itself unless it has as its ultimate goal the betterment of humanity."

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943)

 Excerpted from They Stood Alone!: 25 Men and Women Who Made a Difference by Sandra McLeod Humphrey

For More about

 Giving Back: Nikola Tesla's dream was to harness the tremendous power of nature for the good of humanity, and everything he invented was for the benefit of mankind.

 Did You Know that even today, many still credit Guglielmo Marconi with the invention of the radio despite the 1943 Supreme Court decision that overruled the Marconi patent and awarded it to Tesla?

Something to Think about: Why do you think Nikola Tesla never received the recognition he deserved?

 

 Willoughby and I hope you enjoyed this week's true story and will be back next week for another story to inspire you to DARE TO DREAM BIG!

 

 

DARE TO DREAM BIG!: From "Powerless" Young Woman to Women's Rights Pioneer and Activist

Imagine This: It's the early nineteenth century and women have few legal rights. Married women can't own property, they have no right of inheritance, and their wages belong to their husbands. You know the laws are unfair, but as a young woman yourself, what can you do?

You're born in Johnstown, New York, one of six children in 1815. Your father is a judge and the town's most prominent citizen.

You dislike restrictions of any kind and you especially dislike your restrictive clothing: the long skirts, the red stockings, the heavy red flannel dresses with starched ruffles at the throat that scratch your skin, and the black aprons.

Growing up, you spend a lot of time in your father's law office where you see how few legal rights women have. Women don't even have the right to the guardianship of their own children. A father can apprentice his children without their mother's consent and he can even appoint another guardian to raise them in the event of his death.

When your brother Eleazar is killed in an accident right after his graduation from Union College, your father is devastated, and you are determined to be all that your brother had been. To do this, you believe that you have to have a good education and also great courage.

You ask the Presbyterian minister next door to teach you Greek—something usually taught only to boys—and you learn to ride a horse and jump fences as well as any man.

Since colleges do not accept women, you enroll in the Troy Female Seminary. It is the best education available to a young woman, but you know that there is still a great difference between a young men's college and even the most advanced female seminary.

After graduating from the Troy Female Seminary in 1833, you spend time with your cousin Gerrit Smith in Peterboro, New York. While there, you are introduced to a young escaped slave girl named Harriet who is on her way to Canada. After hearing her story, you become a confirmed abolitionist yourself.

At Peterboro, you learn about racial injustice and you're in constant contact with reformers of all kinds: abolitionists, temperance workers, philanthropists, and religious reformers. You feel drawn to the idea of an active life with purpose and you spend the rest of your life fighting for women's rights.

You believe that the right to vote is the key to women's equality, and you and your friend, Lucretia Mott, decide to hold a conference of your own where you can debate the burning issue of equal rights for women. It takes you eight years to organize the conference, but on July 19, 1848, the first Women's Rights Convention is held at Seneca Falls, New York, and three hundred people attend.

You give the first speech yourself which shocks many people because they think it's "unladylike" for a woman to address a crowd. Your controversial, radical ideas about the equality of women and their right to vote sparks a struggle that will last for seventy-two years—-the struggle for women's suffrage in America.

The two-day Seneca Falls Convention marks the birth of the Women's Rights Movement, and the United States will never be the same again! You devote the rest of your life to the movement and on October 25, 1902, at age eighty-six, you write a letter to President Theodore Roosevelt urging the complete emancipation of thirty-six million women just as Lincoln had emancipated the slaves. It is the last letter you ever write because you die the next day.

It will take another seventy-two years for women to gain the right to vote, but finally on August 26, 1920, the United States passes the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution granting all women the right to vote. You have finally succeeded in doing what you set out to do!

"We hold these truths to be self-evident:

that all men and women are created equal."

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902)

 Excerpted from They Stood Alone!: 25 Men and Women Who Made a Difference by Sandra McLeod Humphrey

For More about

 Giving Back: Elizabeth Cady Stanton devoted her entire life to fighting for women's rights and equality for all women.

 Did You Know that when Elizabeth married Henry Stanton, she insisted that the word "obey" be dropped from her marriage vows because she believed that she and Henry would be equal partners?

 Something to Think about: Why do you think the issues of women's rights and equality for all women were so important to her?

Willoughby and I hope you enjoyed this week's true story and will be back next week for another story to inspire you to DARE TO DREAM BIG!