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20 The GUIDE to YELLOW SPRINGS 2019 – 20 YELLOW SPRINGS NEWS Cheryl B.Levine, Psy.D. • Kathleen Galarza, Ph.D. Mike LeMaster, LPCC • Eileen Potter, LPCC, IMFT Ken Drude, Ph.D. • John Beer, LISW • Alicia Robinson, LISW 642 E. Dayton-Yellow Springs Rd., Fairborn The Lotus Center, 4949 Urbana Rd., Springfield 390-3800 PHOTO BY MATT MINDE An impressively attended Sister March to the Women’s March on Washington, D.C., made its way through Yellow Springs on Saturday, Jan. 21, 2017. Among the many young, determined marchers, from left, were Oskar Dennis, Malaya Booth and Vivian Bryan. YS NEWS ARCHIVES PHOTO Gene Trolander was an influential local feminist involved in the formation of Women, Inc. and the Women's Park, among other iniatives. By YS NEWS STAFF From homegrown initiatives to nation- shaping events, Yellow Springs women have been active in support of women’s rights, experiences, contributions and diverse roles. A few elements of this rich history are recalled here. The first film of the modern women’s movement emerged from Yellow Springs. “Growing Up Female,” a 1971 documentary written, directed and produced by Antioch College students Julia Reichert and Jim Klein, explored female socialization through the lives of six girls and women, ages four to 35. The film is now preserved in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for its cultural significance. Locally, the women’s movement was sparked by events at Antioch College. As well as organizing consciousness-raising groups in which local women took part, col- lege women brought in feminist speakers, including Gloria Steinem and Alice Walker, and in 1970 organized a women’s liberation conference. In the early 1970s, a group of local feminists, including Dee Krieg, Gladys Wes - sels and Imogene (Gene) Trolander, formed Women, Inc., a feminist activist group that persisted for at least two decades. The women rented a Xenia Avenue store- front and brought in furniture and decor to create a homey headquarters. When a local woman became ill but had no insurance, the group created the Feminist Health Fund, which took up donations to pay her bills. The fund still exists. Local feminists were also instrumental in creating Greene County NARAL, an abor - tion rights group, as well as the Dead Bolt Gang, a group that purchased and installed dead bolt locks for women who lived alone. Women in the Women’s History Project, led by Trolander, researched local women’s his- tory, then wrote a book on the subject. The feminist movement also touched local schools, and in 1975, Superinten- dent Ed McKinney formed a committee to study ways in which school curriculum and activities lacked gender equity. The com - mittee recommended that the schools hire a full-time resource person to help teachers enhance their teaching about women. Ann Koppelman, who previously taught Spanish at Yellow Springs High School and led the WOMEN’ S MOVEMENT, SECOND WAVE AND BEYOND— From feminist film to sister march Hoying, Becky Brown-Wellerman, Cher Burnham, Roseann Miller-Wethington and Micki Adams, worked to form a women’s business co-operative to provide affordable space for new and expanding women-led businesses in downtown Yellow Springs. With help from WEAV, a local women- oriented economic development group, the co-op took shape in the spring of 1993 and had its grand opening that June. The WEB Center, or Women’s Enterprise Builders, located at 100 Corry St., boasted six businesses at opening, a mix of service and retail enterprises expected to bring in at least $100,000 to the Yellow Springs economy, according to a News article at the time. “The WEB is already attracting national and local media attention as a model for innovative market access solutions,” the article stated. The WEB Center also housed four librar- ies, including a Women’s Studies Library that brought together the June Ruth Rose Library and the collections of Jean Barlow Hudson and former Ohio First Lady Dagmar Celeste. Local women’s activism took a different, more botanical turn later in the decade. In 1998, longtime women’s rights activist Gene Trolander gathered together like- minded friends to bring to life a vision she held dear: a park to celebrate the lives of Yellow Springs women. A pollinator garden along the bike path headed south out of Yellow Springs, the Women’s Park features a variety of native wildflowers, benches and a serpentine path — as well as more than 800 hand-crafted ceramic tiles that honor specific Yellow Springs women. Original organizers Trolander, Deb Hen - derson, Connie Crockett, Phyllis Jackson and Emily Fine planned and organized for eight months before opening the park in July 1998. Trolander died not longer after, but the park she helped create continues to thrive. Master gardener Macy Reynolds leads local volunteers who care for the park’s wild- flowers. At the time of this writing, a new section of tiles honoring even more local women is being planned. Yellow Springs women also came together in turbulent times. In January 2017, villagers took to the streets to protest what many saw as a rising anti-feminist zeitgeist following the election of Donald Trump as president. Angered by Trump’s election — despite revelations of the president-elect’s sexual misconduct and accusations of assault — and anticipat - ing policies harmful to women and girls, protesters from Yellow Springs took part in the massive national Women’s March in Washington, D.C., as well as joining “sister” marches in Dayton and elsewhere. Closer to home, local middle-schoolers Ava Schell and Carina Basora organized a sister march in downtown Yellow Springs. Over 250 people turned out to affirm women’s rights and dignity. ♦ study, stepped into the role. On the Antioch campus, feminism remained a potent force throughout the ’70s. In 1970, female students began demanding a tenure-track women’s studies position, which finally became reality in 1991, although women’s studies courses were offered during the intervening 20 years. In the early 1970s, Antioch feminists gathered at a lively and dynamic Womyn’s Center on campus, and a series of rapes propelled female students to offer an escort service for women who needed to walk alone on campus at night. Feminism took to the pages of the Yellow Springs News in the late 1970s when the newspaper column “Women’s Voices” began appearing on a regular basis. One regular contributor was poet and commu- nity activist Jean Barlow Hudson, who went on to become Yellow Springs’ first female mayor, serving from 1987 to 1991. Other regular columnists included Joan Margaret, Dorothy Smith and Susan Carpenter. In 1980, feminist organizers hosted the first Women’s Voices Out Loud performance, an annual event that continued until 2015. A changing social and political climate informed feminist initiatives in the 1990s and beyond. In Yellow Springs as elsewhere, sexual violence was one focus of women’s efforts during the 1990s. In 1990, following a responding to campus events, women activists at Antioch College’s Womyn’s Center came together to create a formal policy on sexual offenses at the college. That policy, adopted by Antioch administration in the winter of 1991, became the Sexual Offense Preven - tion Policy, or SOPP, a pioneering affir - mative sexual consent policy. In addition to the policy itself, the women created educational curriculum around the concept of consent. SOPP was notable and notorious during the “culture wars” of the 1990s, but has since become a model for colleges and universities nationwide. “[The policy] was mocked by much of the rest of the world. Since then, campuses across the country have caught up. Educa- tion about consent is now part of college life,” a 2018 New York Times article noted. Female entrepreneurship was another area of activity for Yellow Springs women. In 1993, a group of about 15 local women, including Laurie Eastman, Mary