Women’s Museum honors Laura Simon, 108

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO–The Women’s Museum of California paid tribute Friday morning, Dec. 20, to 108-year-old Laura Simon, whose art works and a silver service are part of its permanent collection.  The museum also sells the book–I’m Still Here–that has won Simon designation as the oldest living author in the collection of the U.S. Library of Congress.

Now recovering from a fall that for some months has confined her to a wheelchair, Simon sat quietly as the museum’s executive director, Ashley Gardner, escorted through the museum’s current exhibits a group of fellow residents who came by bus from Belmont Village in Cardiff by the Sea.  She then showed a video about Simon that was made on the occasion of her 100th birthday by students at Point Loma High School.

Sadie Harness, executive director of the  senior residence, said just the day before the centenarian determinedly got out of the wheel chair and walked with assistance at the Belmont Village complex.

In a short lecture, Gardner told about the museum’s mission to “preserve women’s stories because women were not always in the history books.”  She said that the museum was founded by Mary B. Maschal, the daughter of a minister, who early in life was told she couldn’t follow in her father’s footsteps as a preacher because “girls don’t do that.”

In her maturity, Maschal had other ambitions that weren’t stifled, including telling women’s stories in what became known in the 1980s as  the Women’s History Reclamation Project.  Her collection of materials eventually became the nucleus for the museum’s collection, to which other materials are continuously added.

Along with her book, the artifacts donated by Simon will help children who visit the museum to understand “women who really had to struggle to get the things done they wanted to get done.”  Gardner said.  Simon’s self-portrait hangs in the lobby, and the silver set that she donated is on display with a current exhibit on glamour.

“You know what happens to silver when it sits around,” Gardner said. “We had to demonstrate to our students how you clean silver.  They had never seen such a thing.  So it was a historical demonstration– cleaning silver.  And silver works really well with this exhibit because it really was about the glamour of the time, when everyone wore hats and you didn’t even go out to your mailbox without wearing hats and gloves.”

The Women’s Museum of California is located in  Barracks 16  at 2730 Historic Decatur Road on the grounds of the former Naval Training Center–today known as Liberty Station.

One portion of the exhibit on glamour tells the story of Helena Rubinstein, a Polish-born immigrant who developed skin care products in Australia before expanding operations to England and France and later immigrated to the United States, where her name and brand became synonymous with cosmetics.

On Sunday, January 12,  pianist and story teller Jacquelyne Silver will present at 2 p.m.  “The Extraordinary World of Glamour” as part of the exhibit.  She will be joined in the presentation by Carolyn Ayres who will portray actress Lauren Bacall.

Another current exhibit at the museum deals with California suffragists who campaigned successfully in 1911 for women’s voting rights, nine years before women won the right to vote throughout the nation.  California was far from first, however; that honor belongs to Wyoming, where women have legally voted since 1869.

Helena Rubinstein, Laura Simon, Jacquelyne Silver, Lauren Bacall– the museum is no stranger to Jewish women.  In fact, since 2002, the museum has maintained a Hall of Fame, which soon will have a minyan of Jewish women represented once  Deborah Szekely, operator of Rancho La Puerta in Tecate, Mexico, and the Golden Door Salon in Escondido, is  officially inducted in a ceremony planned early next year.

Other Hall of Famers have included Jewish and Chicana activist Gracia Molina de Pick; Older Women’s advocate Jean Stern;  Ruth Heifetz, a founding member of the San Diego chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility; District Attorney and former Judge Bonnie Dumanis; Gloria Harris, an expert on such behaviors as assertiveness and harassment; Vivian Reznick, an advocate for gender equality in medicine; Big Kitchen owner and feminist Judy Forman,  Voice of San Diego founding editor Barbara Bry, and former Congresswoman Lynn Schenk.

Along with Hannah S. Cohen, honoree Gloria Harris wrote Women Trailblazers of California, a collection of short profiles of important California women, which also is on sale at the museum.  Exhibits and gift shop are open to the public from noon to 4 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays.

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com