By Staff
Three women of varying ages were joined due to the chance that their deaths came within the same short time frame. Their mark on the worlds are different, but they have left a mark.
The eldest, Betty Friedan, was homemaker and mother at a time when women ironed their sheets and got dinner on the table when their husbands came home.
Her “The Feminine Mystique” became a guide to other young women like herself who thought their must be more to their lives than washing the dishes and waiting on their family.
She founded the National Organization for Women (NOW), but didn't agree with all of the organization's followers. Whether you share her beliefs, she did change how women looked at their lives.
Almost reaching 80 before she died was Coretta Scott King. Her role of change wasn't entirely due to becoming Martin Luther King's widow. Even before she was left with four children to raise and given the torch of the civil rights movement, she had been an activist.
She was honored by people of every color who passed by her body.
The third woman of note who recently left this world was only 55, brought smiles to the faces of those who recognized themselves in her work.
Wendy Wasserstein will be remembered for her Pulitzer Prize and Tony winning hit, “The Heidi Chronicles.” That work in 1989 had followed “Uncommon Women and Others,” written in 1977. Her most recent play was “Third.”
Whether we agree with the philosophies of these women or simply admire them for having the strength to follow their own convictions, their names will live on long after we are gone. They set goals for themselves and accepted their personal talents and gave to the world what they could offer. In that way, they are to be admired.