By Gloria Stravelli
RED BANK – The contributions of women in fields including education, health and welfare, nursing and the arts are being celebrated at multiple local events marking Women’s History Month.
Programs being presented illuminate the influence and impact of the women, from the social activism of the daughter of an influential local family to a nurse who served her community to a group of artists and activists.
Jane Scimeca, professor of history, will present a program at the Red Bank Public Library that is an outgrowth of her work creating the women’s history program at Brookdale Community College. Scimeca has a degree in women’s studies and said she came to Brookdale specifically to develop a women-centric curriculum.
“I was always interested in women’s issues growing up and I became particularly interested in women’s history in college,” she said. Brookdale has offered the women’s history course for 27 years now, Scimeca said, and she has witnessed firsthand the impact it has had on her students: “It changes their lives.”
At first the course wasn’t popular, she said, because the credit wouldn’t transfer to every four-year institution from Brookdale’s two- year degree programs. To attract students, the class now qualifies as a general history credit.
“As the class got some good word of mouth, it became popular,” Scimeca said. “It took a lot of work to get it to be a viable, highly enrolled class,” she said. The school now offers three sections of the class each semester, one in person and two online.
She sees American history and its teaching evolving because of the way schools are finally embracing women’s roles in that history.
“I think we’re going to look for the ways that women wrote about themselves, talked about themselves and we’re going to have a new American history because we’re going to have an American history that’s complete. It’s not incomplete anymore once you have the stories of women integrated properly,” Scimeca said.
She will present “Looking for Geraldine L. Thompson, First Lady of New Jersey” at 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 21, at the Red Bank Public Library.
According to Scimeca, Thompson was the daughter of a wealthy family who grew up in New York City and moved to Monmouth County when she married. She lived on Thompson Farm until her death in 1967.
Well-educated and socially connected, she used her networking skills to help reform the existing health and welfare programs in the state and county, including the establishment of a county tuberculosis hospital and the founding of the Monmouth County Organization of Social Services, now the Visiting Nurse Association of Central Jersey. Registration is not required to attend the free program.
Scimeca said she appreciates that women’s history is finally being “normalized.”
“You can see the evolution,” she said. “Just think about how many books are now on the shelves that deal with women’s history and the attention that women’s history is getting.”
“When people can see themselves in history, then they understand about themselves – their story – and it’s transformative,” she said.
Other Events
The T. Thomas Fortune Cultural Center presents “On a Sunday Afternoon: The Miss Alma Penn Story,” from 3 to 5 p.m., Sunday, March 19, at 94 Drs. James Parker Blvd., Red Bank.
Penn, according to the cultural center’s website, was the first Black supervisor of nurses in New Jersey and began her career at Marlboro Psychiatric Hospital. She was a founding member of the Monmouth County Business and Professional Women Organization. This story is one of several oral histories documented and archived by the cultural center in partnership with the Monmouth County Historical Commission as part of the Monmouth County Freedom Story Series. Suggested donation is $20. To reserve, or for information, call 732-383-5483.
An exhibit by members of the Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA), will open at the Monmouth Museum’s Main and Nilson Galleries Sunday, March 26, with a reception from 4 to 6 p.m.
According to the website, the exhibit features works by 13 WCA member artists that engage science on varying levels in a common spirit of experimentation. Inquiries range from evolutionary science, new ecologies, biology, and the cellular, to identity and memory, macrocosms and microcosms, deep space and the cosmos.
Free tickets to the opening are available by emailing the museum at art@monmouthmuseum.org.
The article originally appeared in the March 16 – 22, 2023 print edition of The Two River Times.
