Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 18, 1992 TAG: 9202180122
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NEAL THOMPSON EDUCATION WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
SCOUT'S HONOR KEEPS MEMBER OF SCHOOL BOARD SPEAKING OUT
As a lifetime member of the Girl Scouts, Wendy O'Neil is a lifelong believer of an old Girl Scout philosophy: Leave a place better than it was when you found it.That's what she is trying to do in Roanoke as executive director of the YWCA of Roanoke Valley and a member of the Roanoke School Board, to name just two of her affiliations.
But lately it's been no picnic.
As the newest School Board member, O'Neil has also become the most outspoken.
In that role, O'Neil feels a little bruised and beaten. And she keeps looking behind her for a cavalry to support her. But none comes.
"Does it get lonesome every once in a while? Yes. Am I going to change my position because of that? No," she said.
"I don't think silence is a virtue in all instances. . . It's incumbent upon us to speak our mind on relevant issues. Otherwise, why serve?"
Why serve? That's what some critics ask.
O'Neil recently ignited a controversy when she publicly said schools need to address the problem of students with guns before someone dies. That led to a memo from School Superintendent Frank Tota urging board members to let the administration do the talking on such issues.
Both Tota and fellow board member Sallye Coleman say O'Neil has a political agenda and political aspirations.
O'Neil denies any interest in political moves, such as running for City Council.
"I do not perceive the School Board as a steppingstone to anything else. . . . I don't even know if I could afford to do that," O'Neil said.
Devout Catholic. Former teacher. Single parent. Community activist.
Supporters say those things add up to a concerned person who's simply trying to raise issues that some people don't want aired. In Roanoke, speaking out is not always popular.
"I think maybe Wendy is raising some issues that people aren't comfortable with," City Councilman William White said. "But I think it's excellent. Because if people don't bring them up, they don't get dealt with."
White, a former School Board member, said it is O'Neil's job to speak out, knowing that her voice will not always be popular. "She's got to get used to that," he said.
O'Neil thinks that if she sticks with the old Girl Scout motto, she will. Girl Scouts became her family during her childhood, and she's relied on those teachings all her life.
"Girl Scouting was the single greatest influence on me, outside my church, when I was growing up. . . . That was my outlet," she said.
And scouting is, in part, what brought her to the Roanoke Valley eight years ago.
Martha "Wendy" O'Neil, 43, was born in Springfield, Mass. She grew up near Philadelphia and attended high school in Trenton, N.J. Her father was a drug addict and alcoholic, and her family was "dysfunctional - before the word was coined."
"It was not a happy childhood," she said.
A product of Catholic schools, O'Neil became a protest marcher in the 1960s in Washington. She married in her junior year at Catholic University in Washington and left school to follow her husband from job to job, working as sales clerk, secretary and typist along the way.
"As women frequently did during that time, I thought my purpose was to support his career," she said.
They divorced in 1983, but not before O'Neil was able to complete college and work nine years as a teacher in Baltimore and Washington.
O'Neil and her daughter, Gillian Fischbach, now 20, then moved to Roanoke, and O'Neil became development director of the Virginia Skyline Girl Scout Council. In 1988 she left that job to work almost two years for Roanoke schools as director of educational partnerships.
It gave her insight into the schools and school policies she would oversee three years later on the School Board, she said.
O'Neil took what she called a "huge pay cut" in 1989, leaving the school system for the YWCA job, which became "a very happy merger of a personal and a professional philosophy."
As executive director of the YWCA, O'Neil works to meet the goal of empowering women and their families through educational programs, free seminars, health and fitness programs and counseling.
"It's not a job for me. It's a sense of active participation in the community," she said.
So is her membership with the Roanoke Valley Historical Society, the Roanoke Drug and Alcohol Abuse Council and the United Way.
That's why it angers her to be accused of having political motives on the School Board, when she says all she is doing is acting and speaking out on her concerns, the top ones being students and women. Those two threads have woven neatly into place as she has settled into her dual role as board member and YWCA director.
"What I value here at the Y is what I value in education and what I value in Girl Scouting. . . . It's all very comfortably consistent."
There's still work to be done for the women of the Roanoke Valley, O'Neil said. The empowering she strives for is a slow process, she said, and men and women in the valley need to do a better job of accepting women in leadership roles.
"Women in the valley don't speak out. It's kind of lonesome," she said. "I wonder if some of the heat comes because women, traditionally, have been treated more passively."
But the heat won't stop her.
"Anyone who knows me well would not expect me to sit and remain quiet if I had a question on something I felt required discussion," she said. "The dialogue is critical if we're going to achieve the goals we've set."
O'Neil said that when she speaks publicly about things she perceives are problems, she's not blaming anyone.
"I'm just standing my ground on some issues I think we need to take a look at."