Past Perfect: Why We Must Preserve, Share Women's Stories

Contributed

Helen Stone Schluraff, a small-business owner, won election as the first female county commissioner in Erie County and in Pennsylvania in 1931, 11 years after women got the right to vote with ratification of the 19th Amendment.

Helen Stone Schluraff ran for something — Erie County Commissioner — and won, 81 years before She Should Run launched a campaign to encourage women to seek elective office. She died in 1964 at age 80.

Catherine Sekerak Balog broke the glass ceiling in the business world, if only for a single day, decades before that aspirational phrase became commonplace. Born in 1908, she died in 2001 at age 93.

Marylin Bernstein Cohen joined two other Erie women to encourage Erie school kids to become more empathetic by widening their circles of friends, half a century before the words "diversity, equity, and inclusion" were embraced (and subsequently reviled). She was 92 when she died in 2018.

Through her poetry, Thasia Lunger, 69, draws on her memories of fearing for her life to offer hope and encouragement to victims of domestic violence and other traumas. Sharing stories helps the healing process, she said. "I call it taking out the garbage."

I don't know if any of the three deceased women crossed paths; perhaps they ate on occasion in the Boston Store dining room, where Catherine Balog worked for 35 years. Yet as we celebrate Women's History Month, their stories are bound together in my imagination because these women made breakthroughs — in politics, in the workplace, in public service, and in the creative world.

For some of these stories, I have only scant details. But to learn about Helen, I read the extensive research on the women's suffrage movement in Erie compiled by Lori Morse-Dolan, a member of the National Collaborative for Women's History Sites, and Linda Bolla, an independent historian.

In 2020, their research provided valuable information for Erie's celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment. Congress passed the amendment giving women the right to vote in 1919; it was ratified in 1920.

The work of Morse-Dolan and Bolla also led to the placement of a historic marker on Sassafras Street to honor Augusta Brown Fleming, president of the Northwestern Pennsylvania Equal Franchise Association (also known as the Equal Suffrage Association) and founding president of the League of Women Voters in Erie.

It is still up for debate whether Helen Stone Schluraff considered herself a suffragette — Morse-Dolan and Bolla continue to research her story. But there is no doubt that after women got the right to vote, Helen made sure that women's voices were heard, including her own, as she became a leader in the Erie County Republican Party.

"Schluraff felt that women should have a voice in government. Women using their vote was a priority for Helen. She believed in the need to educate the newly franchised citizens on their government and issues. She viewed the vote as a true element of power and felt it should be used wisely," Morse-Dolan and Bolla have written in their proposal to seek a historic marker for Schluraff at a site to be determined.

Helen was resilient and indefatigable, raising two children as a single mother after her divorce, owning a flower business, organizing weekly lunches for businesswomen, co-founding the Erie League of Women Voters, becoming a charter member of the Zonta Club and, in 1931, being elected as the first female County Commissioner in Erie County and in Pennsylvania.

Helen served as commissioner for three terms, earning a reputation as a strong fiscal conservative and not raising taxes, while also supporting human services, such as construction of the Erie County Tuberculosis Hospital, a lifesaver before TB vaccinations were developed.

A grandmother's legacy

Cathryn Griffith, known as Katie Corboy when she lived in Erie, is Helen's granddaughter. She adds rich details to Helen's life in her exquisite family memoir, Weaving Hopes and Prayers: The Richly Textured Story of Five Generations of Women. There is a limited-edition boxed version of her book in the rare books collection at Blasco Library's Heritage Room, another copy in the reference section of the Heritage Room, and also a circulating copy at Blasco.

Now 87 and living in Massachusetts, Cathryn is the daughter of the late Jim and Dorothy Corboy, who met as journalists at the Erie Dispatch. As a college student, Dorothy kept a diary during a two-month trip to Europe, where she was offered, but declined, a job at the International Herald Tribune in Paris, returning to Erie instead.

In keeping a diary, Dorothy followed a tradition begun by her grandmother, Margaret Love Stone, and her mother, Helen Stone Schluraff. During a time of mourning, Cathryn drew upon those family diaries and journals to create her handmade book.

"My husband, my mother, and I all had cancer the same year," she said. Cathryn survived cervical cancer but her mother, Dorothy, died when Cathryn's daughter was two; then Cathryn's husband Jim died. "The entire universe had changed for me. I was no longer able to bear a child. There was no longer anyone older and wiser in my little world," she writes in her book. "Memories sustained me … Photographs and stories guided me in giving my daughter a sense of her personal history."

Her memoir isn't just a look back; it's a keepsake for her daughter, Sarah Gallowhur Griffith, and for her granddaughter, Vivienne Stone Lemieux, Sarah's daughter.

"I've always greatly admired my grandmother, Helen Stone Schluraff, and I feel very fortunate that I knew her well before she died. She was honest, focused, and very hard-working," Cathryn recalled. Even after her grandmother left her elected role as a county commissioner, she stayed on top of county politics and was active in the local Republican party.

"I remember at least once, on election night, going with her to the county courthouse," she said. Her grandmother kept tabs that night on "How did Ward 2 go and how did Ward 5 go," so she could calculate whether her favored candidate would win. "I was so impressed she could talk that kind of language," Cathryn said.

Cathryn is also the author of Havana Revisited: An Architectural Heritage and has another family history in the works, based on the journals of her great-grandmother, Margaret "Maggie" Love Stone. You can learn more about Cathryn at cathryngriffith.com.

I like to keep in mind her observation that Erie County has been home to "a lot of really intelligent, caring, sensitive women … with depth, with character, and it's important that their voices be heard."

This 1963 menu was included in memorabilia shared by the late Catherine Sekerak Balog, from her time working at the Boston Store Tower Dining Room. On March 2, 1970, she became Boston Store president for the day. Women's Day was an annual celebration at the historic downtown department store, which closed in 1979 before being repurposed years later.

A day to be in charge

I wish I had the chance to hear Catherine Balog's voice before she died in 2001. In 1996, she sent a letter to the Erie Times-News features department, where I was managing editor, after we asked readers to share memories of the Boston Store.

Catherine enclosed four menus from the Boston Store's Tower Dining Room, where she began working in the late 1930s. From these menus, I learned that coffee cost 10 cents in 1943, vegetable soup with saltines cost 15 cents in 1956, a tuna fish sandwich with salad, tea, or coffee cost 45 cents in 1957, and a lobster salad went for $1.05 in 1963. Old menus, in addition to making you hungry, can also give you a glimpse into Erie history.

In her letter, Catherine enclosed a March 1970 story from the Erie Daily Times Women's Section reporting that Catherine had been named president of the Boston Store for one day — the annual Women's Day, on March 2.

I read that story when I was a college freshman, incensed that women could only be trusted to run the Boston Store one day a year.

Older and wiser now, I understand that change often comes in small steps.

In the newspaper story, Catherine talked about being inspired by the motto from Corry High School: "Enter to learn. Depart to serve."

She served customers at the Boston Store for a long time, starting in the dining room as a checker, then becoming a cook, waitress, hostess, and assistant manager before moving to work in the receiving department.

I enjoyed reading that "her good spirits are always on hand and she is quick to offer help to anyone in need."

Kids make new friends

I picture those good spirits also surrounding Marylin Cohen, Myra Carathers, and Hannah Smith, who volunteered to teach the Green Circle program at Edison Elementary School in 1972, under the direction of coordinator Elaine Knorr, a member of the American Association of University Women.

Erie Daily Times Managing Editor Len Kholos wrote in a column about the Green Circle program on Feb. 2, 1972, "Children were exposed to the radical concept of treating people equally regardless of their size, color, physical condition, wealth, religion, country of origin, or even if they live in those countries," making clear that his use of the word "radical" was satirical, as he slammed a "local hate group's diatribe" that the fourth-graders participating in the Green Circle program were "being brainwashed and estranged from their reliance on God, family, and country by 'certified governmental child molesters.'"

I was disturbed to see that language employed today to ban books and to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion programs was also bandied about in Erie in the 1970s.

Kholos' column, which I found in a file at Blasco's Heritage Room, made me wish I could learn more about the Green Circle program. The only reference I could find online is from the National Archives, which noted that the Green Circle Program "was conceived in 1957 by Gladys Rawlins, a Black social worker for the Race Relations Committee of The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). … The program focuses on helping people develop an appreciation and understanding of diversity while developing self-worth."

I worry about how much longer this archived material will be available, now that President Trump has fired the National Archivist and the deputy National Archivist is retiring.

That upsetting news, among other developments, sparked my quest to find some interesting nuggets about Erie women's history, so that information isn't erased, downplayed, or rewritten.

This marker on the west side of Sassafras Street honors Augusta Brown Fleming, a prominent Erie County suffragette. Her home, around the corner at 210 W. Eighth St., served as the headquarters for Erie's suffragette parade on July 8, 1913, part of Erie's weeklong celebration of Oliver Hazard Perry. News coverage described the parade as a "spectacular pageant," followed by passionate speeches by advocates for women's rights on the courthouse steps.

Poetry helps healing

Fortunately, we can be assured that women will continue to write and speak about their lived experiences, as poet Thasia Anne Lunger has been doing for many years.

"I always say that poetry saved my life," said Lunger, who has a degree in social work and began her career working with teens aging out of foster care. "Those kids have lived through a lot of garbage that no kid should see," Lunger said.

Married as a teenager, Lunger left her husband twice after violent episodes but went back, before she realized that he would likely follow through on his threats to shoot and kill her, the kids, her mother, their pets, and "anything I cared about."

She is the founder of the Women of Word poetry program, the author of six books of poetry and is working on her eighth novel. You can learn more about her work and upcoming poetry events by visiting her Facebook page at Thasia Anne Lunger.

Men also participate in her poetry events. "Male poets have a lot of important things to say, too," Thasia said.

Author Cathryn Griffin acknowledges men's roles in researching personal histories. Her family's "early story is a story of men, because the genealogical records are based on the history of the family name. Later, it becomes a woman's story. Beginning in the 1860s, women gathered and recorded family information, which has been added to and passed on from mother to daughter."

And now, to Erie Reader readers.

Liz Allen was thrilled to learn that her late aunt, Anne Allen, wrote an Erie Daily Times story, "Silhouette of Success," about Helen Stone Schluraff, which is included in Cathryn Griffith's family memoir. You can reach Liz at lizerie@aol.com.