Thursday, June 02, 2011

Two scholarly and feisty ladies recalled

the-bench.jpg
This is a very San Francisco story. Ever noticed this bench in an obscure corner of Golden Gate Park? Probably not. Either had I when I stumbled on it.

It memorializes Miss Fidelia Jewett and Miss Lillien J. Martin, respectable lady friends in San Francisco in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who, without the bench, we'd have forgotten.

They were quite a pair: one a public school teacher, the other a professor of psychology at Stanford when such posts were seldom available to women. In old age, they studied aging and proposed how we might live full lives to the end.

If I've piqued your interest, head on over to the elderblog and community at Time Goes By to read the stories I found about them there.

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