From Clara Barton, angel of the Civil War battlefield, to retired Rear Adm. Marsha Johnson Evans, who heads the organization today, the American Red Cross has been led by courageous and inspirational women for more than 122 years.
Mary DeKuyper - Bonnie Gillespie
"The role of a leader is to inspire hope," said Mary DeKuyper, national chairman of volunteers for the American Red Cross, quoting social activist John Gardner. DeKuyper delivered the 2004 Women's History Month keynote address at the Library on March 23. The national theme for this year's celebration is "Women Inspiring Hope and Possibility."
"Red Cross societies had existed in Europe since the 1860s, but they had responded solely to war," said DeKuyper. "When Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross in 1881 at the age of 60, she envisioned an organization that would respond to natural disasters as well as to disasters that were man-made," she said. "Her thinking was ‘out of the box,' as we say today."
Providing assistance first to those devastated by a forest fire in Michigan and then to flood victims up and down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, the newly formed American Red Cross demonstrated its profound impact on victims of natural disasters. During the Third International Red Cross Conference in Geneva in 1884, Clara Barton proposed an amendment to the Geneva Treaty, which called for the expansion of Red Cross Relief to victims of natural as well as man-made disasters. Despite opposition from some European societies, the resolution passed and became known as the "American Amendment."
Barton served as the organization's president for 23 years before resigning in 1904. She left not because of her advanced age but because she was forced out by her archenemy, Red Cross volunteer Mabel Boardman. Even President Theodore Roosevelt (a member of the Red Cross Board) failed to successfully mediate the bitter public dispute between the two women.
Nonetheless, the organization thrived during Boardman's tenure. Under her guidance, the Red Cross became involved in public health nursing, first aid and water safety training. A skilled fund-raiser, she secured $15 million for the fight against tuberculosis and initiated organized campaigns for continuing contributions. However, when President Woodrow Wilson created a Red Cross War Council in 1917, Boardman was not made a member. Instead, she headed the Women's Advisory Committee, coordinating volunteer activities for women who wished to demonstrate their patriotism. After the war she served as the organization's first director of volunteer service, which evolved into the position held by DeKuyper.
DeKuyper paid homage to a host of other notable women who have served the organization—and their country—during the intervening years. She cited Jane Delano, a member of the Army Nurse Corps, whose work led to the development of the U.S. Public Health Service; Lois Laster, an African American Red Cross recreation club worker who served in Europe and later in Korea in the first integrated club; and Maggie Duffy, a Red Cross worker in the South Pacific during World War II, who helped build the Japanese Red Cross.
"This was easier said than done," said DeKuyper. "At the time, the Japanese did not have a word for ‘volunteer' in their vocabulary, so Maggie helped invent a word, ho-SI-den, to explain the concept of people working in groups. According to one historian, ‘Maggie Duffy left a permanent mark on that country's culture,'" said DeKuyper.
According to DeKuyper, Eleanor Roosevelt was an ardent supporter of the American Red Cross. During the first World War, she helped run the Red Cross canteen in Washington's Union Station. She was a regular blood donor and even wrote about the organization on occasion in her syndicated column. As first lady, she inspected Red Cross recreation clubs in London during a 1942 trip to visit American troops and other Red Cross facilities in the South Pacific the following year. She wrote that Red Cross workers were doing "a fine job and a big one; [they are] devoted and remarkable people."
The past three presidents of the American Red Cross have been women. These included Sen. Elizabeth Dole (1991-1999), who retired from the organization to explore a U.S. presidential bid; Dr. Bernadine Healy (1999-2001), a cardiologist and the first woman director of the National Institutes of Health; and current president Marsha Johnson Evans, who chose a career in the U.S. Navy and then headed the Girl Scouts of America before coming to the American Red Cross in 2002.
Serving under these leaders have been courageous women such as Vickie Bengston, director of operations for the organization's Iraq Contingency Team. Bengston and her 23-person team were deployed during Operation Iraqi Freedom, serving side-by-side with the men and women of the U.S. military in the Middle East.
"Wherever the Red Cross is serving—either on the battlefront or the home front—women have successfully answered the challenge and have inspired hope and possibilities in their own time, and for future generations," concluded DeKuyper.
