Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, August 26, 1995 TAG: 9508280124
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PATRICIA BRENNAN THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
If it hadn't been for a feisty woman named Susan B. Anthony,who insisted on registering to vote and then doing exactly that in 1872, despite the risk of incarceration, the vote would have been a longer time coming. After all, as history shows, those holding power have been reluctant to share it.
So it's the appropriate day for Sherr's hour-long special, ``Susan B. Anthony Slept Here,'' airing tonight (at 10 on WSET-Channel 13).
Part history lesson, part travelogue, the program visits memorials to Anthony and other American women who made their marks in history.
Its genesis is a 1994 book by Sherr and Washington-based writer Jurate Kazickas, ``Susan B. Anthony Slept Here,'' a tome of nearly 600 pages. This year, Sherr has been on the book circuit signing another volume, a biography of Anthony called ``Failure Is Impossible.''
Sherr acknowledged that ``Yes, I'm slightly obsessed with Susan B. Anthony. She's wonderful. She's our hero. She's the mother of us all, to quote Gertrude Stein - the absolutely brightest star in the 19th-century firmament. Imagine going on trial for the act of casting a ballot.''
In addition to visiting landmarks, Sherr's special is itself a landmark of sorts: She said it is the first time anyone has made a television program about American women who paved the way - a look at foremothers, rather than forefathers.
``There's never been an hour on television devoted to women's landmarks. No one else has addressed this topic, and there's a growing consciousness about the contributions of women.''
The idea for the television special took hold, Sherr said, after a conversation she had with Robert Iger, then president of ABC Entertainment. ``Bob loved the idea of it,'' she said.
ABC supplied Sherr with a spiffy red convertible that she drives from town to town on her way to visit the sites where her heroines lived or where they are honored.
Those places include Anthony's home in Rochester, N.Y., and the courtroom in Canandaigua, N.Y., where she was tried in June 1873; a museum in Beaumont, Texas, honoring athlete Babe Didriksen Zaharias; and the Irvington, N.Y., home and Indianapolis offices of Madame C.J. Walker, who developed a line of cosmetics for black women and became a millionaire.
There's also a visit to the stark landscape of New Mexico, adopted home of painter Georgia O'Keeffe; the statue in Greenville, Ohio, of 5-foot-tall sharpshooter Annie Oakley, who thought women should receive equal pay for equal work; the Philadelphia grave of singer Bessie Smith, finally marked in 1970 when two fans - one was singer Janis Joplin - raised the money for it; and a planetarium honoring teacher-astronaut Christa McAuliffe in Concord, N.H.
``We wanted geographical diversity and a variety of talents,'' said Sherr. ``We wanted women to illustrate different aspects of our history, and we wanted to illustrate the landmarks - the point being that this is more than a look at all these wretched inns where George Washington was supposed to have slept.''
There are some living women who join in Sherr's special, too, including astronaut Mae Jemison, former Olympic swimmer Donna de Varona and actress Blair Brown.
First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton also appears, explaining that her personal heroine is Eleanor Roosevelt. Roosevelt's home, Val-Kill, in Hyde Park, N.Y., is featured. (Like Roosevelt, who wrote a column called ``My Day,'' the present first lady has also begun recording her views for a column.)
If she has her way, Sherr would like to make more specials focusing on other women profiled in her first book. Among them, she named three favorites: Mary McLeod Bethune, photographer Alice Austen and nurse Jane Delano, who organized the Red Cross nursing corps.
by CNB