Sample Portion of Chapter 12
Are Women Better Positive Thinkers Than Men?
“The world and all things in it are valuable; but the most valuable of all is a virtuous woman.” -Mohammed-During my research for this book I discovered many interesting facts that surprised and delighted me. At first I had a hard time believing these definitive pieces of information, but as I continued to research, and look back on personal experiences it started to make sense. Of course when I was much younger it would not have made sense, but my research has been as a more mature and more pragmatic person.
I was raised in an era where the women stayed home and took care of the home and family. My grandmother always stayed home, as most women did. She would be up early to make breakfast for the men in her family and then after they went off to work, she did the housework. She then prepared supper, as almost everything in that day and age was homemade and therefore took a while to prepare and cook. To this day I can visualize her slaving over a hot stove in the summertime, with beads of perspiration pouring down her lovely face. During a brief recess, she would sit and crochet beautiful chair arm guards or a tablecloth. She was so methodical and skillful, and as I think of her now, she was mostly stoic. She always had supper ready for the family on time and she and only she would clean up, unless my Uncle Frank was there to help. How insignificant I used to think her chores were. But now as I think about it, my grandmother and all women were and are the glue that keeps the family strong and bonded.
Women, as sensible men have happily discovered, are and have always been more than housekeepers and cooks. They are and have always been the shining lamp that brightens a home or place of business. Women are the oil that keeps the machinery running. And in a majority of cases these beautiful Positive Thinkers are the machinery itself. They have been taken advantage of, and thank God they now have a bigger say pertaining to policies in not only business, but government as well. Women have come a long way in this country since President Grover Cleveland in 1905 emphatically stated, “Sensible and intelligent women do not want to vote.”
I do not want to expound on the inequities women have faced throughout history, because for the most part they have more than made up for them. There are still cases, however, like the taliban, (cap purposely left out), in Afghanistan, where women were and are still treated as lower class citizens. We could do several chapters on that subject, but this chapter is to expound on the successes and the way women have made a difference and helped shape history. More than anything, I prefer to stay focused on the positive, because that is what this book is supposed to be about.
I personally, in my years of researching for this book, have come to the conclusion that women are God's beautiful gift to men, and we should do all we can to appreciate that gift. Now that statement might ruffle a few feathers on both sides, but I am entitled to my opinion too. My plan here is not to keep the fires of controversy burning, but rather report the facts as I happily discovered them. I have formed my personal opinion as to who is the better Positive Thinker, but I will let you figure that out. Let me add though, that in my opinion after all my research, women have overcome more barriers than men ever dreamed of facing.
I personally love to pamper my lady and treat her as a Princess on occasion. I have been known to bring my lady breakfast in bed and treat her to half hour-long back and foot rubs. For me, she is a beautiful creature to behold and I love to tease women and harmlessly flirt with them. After all, I am a Libra!
While my wife and I were not destined to stay together, I feel that she is a very competent lady. We did not get along very well, because unfortunately our opinions and personalities clashed, and she thought pampering was silly, but to this day I will defend the fact, that she is, in my opinion, the best nurse ever born. She is the most devoted person to a profession I have ever met. I say that even though I have not seen her for over seven years. But, I know she would not change. She is a gracious hostess as well and always believed her children deserved the best. She is a perfectionist, and in her profession that is extremely important, because she works in life and death situations. One little mistake can cost a life. She is typical of women Positive Thinkers. They know what they want and believe in themselves.
Women played a very important part in the Civil war, not as combatants, but as spies and nurses. Let me go one step further. During the American Civil War, the Surgeon General of the Union Army was a very talented, resourceful, well-respected doctor. It was discovered to the absolute amazement of everybody concerned that the Surgeon General turned out to be a woman, during “his” autopsy.
The following was stated about the following pertaining to the civil war: “In some of the more recent studies of the subject it has been strongly suggested that the prime reason for the defeat of the Confederacy was a decline in, or loss of, the will to fight. There is certain merit in the point, though the more remarkable fact, considering the course of the conflict, is that the will to fight remained so strong so long.”
“For that, the women of the confederacy were in large measure responsible. Not every woman could be classed as a “heroine of Dixie,” but it was commonly observed at the time by friend and foe alike, and has repeatedly noted since, that among the women of the South that the spirit of resistance flamed highest. The harder part of war is the woman’s part.”
“Though their Southern patriotism was intense, for the women devotion to the family came first-always--and none of them would knowingly and willingly have chosen a course of war that reversed this order of devotion. At the very start-just after the Act of Secession was passed-a woman of South Carolina stated, “What do I care for patriotism? My husband is my country. What is my country to me if he be killed?” “As they faced the grim reality of a long and bitter struggle, this came more and more the secret or avowed question of their deeply troubled hearts.”
During the Civil War, Southern and Northern women acted as very competent spies. Many put their lives on the line and some were captured. Several of these brave women on the side of the Confederates were the charming Belle Boyd, and the dangerous, Rose O’Neal Greenhow. For the Union, there was the brilliant Emma E. Edmonds, who successfully passed herself off as a black man. The course of the war was changed many times due to the bravery of these intrepid women.
Every war has its share of women heroes. We can talk about Joan of Arc, and Florence Nightingale. The list goes on and on. Throughout history there have been many other women besides those during our Civil War, who have saved their nation from disaster or being annihilated. One of these women saved her nation during the time of Xerxes, who ruled from 486-465 BC over 127 provinces, stretching from India to Cush. This is a thrilling story of how Esther saved the Jewish nation when she put her life on the line and ignored the royal decree. Even though she was Queen, she could not appear in the presence of the King without his invitation, yet in order to save her people she appeared before the King and said, “If my life be taken so be it.” The King was stunned by her daring and agreed to listen to her plea. Esther was intelligent enough not to blurt out what the problem was, but rather invited the King, and Haman, the possible future destroyer of her race, to a banquet the next night. She knew she needed to relax the King and the evil Haman first. The next day the King and Haman went to dine with Esther, and the King told Esther that he would grant her request even if it meant giving her half the kingdom. Even though Esther now “had” Haman, she still acted with cunning and diplomacy. As a Positive Thinker, Esther knew she still had to keep herself and the King relaxed before she told him of the plot to kill her and her people. She also knew she had to heighten the drama by not telling the King on his first visit, so she begged him to come with Haman a second time and she would then make her plea. This naturally aroused the Kings' curiosity to greater heights and put Haman completely off guard. [I hope I never tangle with an Esther]. The next night the King and Haman arrived to a sumptuous feast and after small talk, Esther then told the King of Haman's plot. The Jewish nation was saved and the villain Haman went to the gallows, which ironically was erected by Haman for Esther’s uncle Mordecai.
I make no apologies for bringing the Bible into this book. There are millions of Bible believers in this wonderful world, who can, through historical and scientific evidence, prove the validity of these stories. There are other great stories about Biblical women who saved their nations or performed other heroic or unselfish acts, like the widow, Ruth, who refused to let her elderly mother-in-law, Naomi, fend for herself. Her mother-in-law begged Ruth and Orpah not to go with her to her hometown to support her, but to take care of themselves. Ruth refused to allow her mother-in-law to fend for herself, and because of that unselfish act she later became the wife of Boaz, a wealthy and honorable man.
Ruth was indicative of devotion to another person, and there are many more stories showing devotion to a cause or a friend or relative. One in particular is a wife’s devotion to her husband’s memory. For fifty-seven years Elizabeth worked tirelessly to clear her husband’s reputation after he lost his life.
After he died he left her in debt to the tune of thirteen thousand dollars, because of his poor decisions in the stock market. Elizabeth was left with several hundred dollars after the smoke cleared, and she was forced to move to New York to take a job as a secretary. During her life with her husband she was the driving force during his sterling career, and while he wanted to quit the Army and become a businessman, she kept him on course. Even though she faced hardships (that none of us can even imagine) while living as an Army wife, she stayed with him and never complained.
After the fiasco someone had to be the scapegoat and along with the top Army brass even President Grant accused her husband of causing the slaughter. But Elizabeth became a writer and tirelessly worked to clear her husband’s reputation, until finally after dozens of years President Taft and she unveiled a statue of her husband sitting on a horse, which stands to this day in Michigan. This wonderful lady died a few days before her ninety-first birthday, and even in death she proved her devotion. On her gravestone it is written, “Wife of George Armstrong Custer.”
Who was the first real woman hero of the Twentieth Century? There are many diverse opinions. Amelia Earhart was born on July 24, 1897, in Atchison, Kansas. During the Great War, she worked unselfishly as a nurse in Canada and then as a social worker in Boston. In 1928 she became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic as a passenger. Amelia opened the door for women by flying solo across the Atlantic in May of 1932, and in 1935 she completed a solo flight from Hawaii to California. She was in the forefront of opening commercial aviation for women. Because of her efforts, airplane passenger companies hired women as stewardesses to show men how safe it was to fly. After all, if a woman was not afraid to fly, why should a man be afraid?
One of the great mysteries of the 1900’s is: what ever became of Amelia? In 1937, Amelia and her copilot, Commander Fred J. Noonan, took off from Miami for a flight around the world in a twin-engine Lockheed. Search teams from the US Navy and Army searched in vain for her missing plane, which disappeared in the South Pacific. Was she really a spy for the US government, hired to spy on the Japanese war preparations? Was she shot down and killed by the Japanese? Perhaps we will never know what happened to this brave trailblazer. You might be interested in reading her husbands biography of her titled, Soaring Wings, published in 1939.
Throughout this book you have read about the great Babe Ruth, and I decided this chapter was a good place to write about his seventeen-year-old, one hundred thirty-pound nemesis, named Mitchell. One of the greatest promoters in baseball, Joe Engel, was the president of the Chattanooga Lookouts, and he decided in 1931, that it was time for Mitchell to help him pull off his greatest publicity stunt, by having Mitchell pitch in an exhibition game against the Powerful New York Yankees. The game took place on April 2, 1931 and Clyde Barfoot started the game for the Lookouts. The first two batters got hits off him and the manager of the lookouts, Bert Niehoff, called time and brought Mitchell in to face the feared Babe Ruth. Babe tipped his hat to Mitchell and reminded Mitchell that there was a batter on first base. Babe swung at the first pitch with his usual enthusiasm and the ball landed in the catcher’s glove. The next two pitches were balls and the next pitch sailed by Babe’s swinging bat again. The umpire, Brick Owens, called strike three on the next pitch, and as the crowd roared Babe gave an angry look to Brick and sulked to the dugout after kicking the dirt and tossing his bat in anger. The next batter, “The Iron Horse,” Lou Gehrig, stepped up to the plate and faced the same fate.
The Yankees went on to win the game 14-4, but the news from that day was historical as seventeen-year-old Mitchell was shown in movie houses all over the country striking out Ruth and Gehrig. Oh, one small detail I forgot to mention. Mitchell was none other than Jackie Mitchell, the first woman to sign a professional baseball contract. Unfortunately, the commissioner of baseball, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, voided her contract banning all women from competing in baseball.
Cosmonaut, Valentina V. Tereshkova, of the former Soviet Union was the first woman in space from June 16-19, 1963, and so another barrier was broken by women. When American, Sally Ride, at age 32 entered space in June 18-24, 1983, she made history by becoming America’s first woman astronaut-repeating the feat in 1984.
Throughout history, whenever there was a war, the pictures we saw on the newspapers and magazines were the faces of men, like Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Patton, Truman, MacArthur, Omar Bradley, Marshall, Nimitz, Halsey, Churchill, Westmoreland, George Bush, George W. Bush, Schwartzcoff, Franks, and many other Generals and leaders. My personal feeling is that alongside those great men’s pictures should be pictures of their wives, because behind every great man it has been proven time and time again stands a great woman.
In time of war there are never enough men to get the job done. And some of the jobs are better suited to women, who were simply better at the job in the first place. But women have always been held back in the Armed Forces, because the prevailing feeling in the services was women were only qualified to do certain jobs, and they did not deserve to be promoted too often. And so women were left out at time of promotion. Then two Positive Thinking dynamos, Mary Hallaren, and Jeanne Holm, came along. Mary was a junior high school teacher at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. She had no doubt (after all her brothers had enlisted) that her duty was to her country too. This five foot tall dynamo was a hitchhiker, traveling through Canada, Mexico, Europe and China. Mary’s confidence and determination was a major factor in her rapid rise through the ranks, until she was finally promoted to full Colonel, taking over the new branch, named appropriately, the Women’s Army Corps (WAC’s). Women struggled in a male dominated military force, and Mary was a promoter for women’s rights for a bigger role in the military. Because of Mary’s efforts, women were eventually integrated into all the branches of the Military. Right before her ninetieth birthday this trailblazing, positive thinker was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
Jeanne Holm was living in Oregon and working as a radio technician for the US Forest Service. Jeanne also felt a need to help her country; started out as a truck driver in her WAC career, and eventually was promoted to Captain. She completed her tour of duty and attended college on the GI Bill, but still was not sure what her career should be. That all changed, as she received a letter from the Defense Department asking her if she would consider duty in the Women’s Armed Services after the implementation of the integration act. There was no thinking it over for Jeanne, as she jumped in her car, without much money to her name. She slept in her car as she drove from one end of the country to the other. Jeanne was the first woman to attend the Air Force Command and Staff College. She was a crusader for women with children in the Air Force, who were forced to be discharged, and she convinced the powers to be that the Air force could not make a determination on a woman’s ability to raise her children. In 1971, Jeanne was promoted to Brigadier General, and two years later received her second star. Even after retiring in 1975, Jeanne was asked by President Ford to instruct the Justice department on issues that discriminated against women. And finally, Jeanne was instrumental in changing the attitudes and behaviors on sexual harassment. A former woman truck driver took on a man’s world and came out a star with two additional stars on each shoulder. Jeanne and Mary knew the three-word motto.
- Chapter continued in book -
