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Speaking
of Women’s Health®: |
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The KTEH Speaking of
Women’s Health® Conference was something to talk about.
This sold-out Feb. 10 event at the San Jose Fairmont Hotel had
the look and feel of the highly successful gathering.
The
look stemmed – the correct operative word here –from the
giant sunflowers that are the Speaking of Women’s Health® Foundation’s
national trademark and were everywhere.
Also were the purple “mums” cascading from the porcelain
flower pots (urinals) in the men’s restroom, which had been
temporarily re-gendered. This
was definitely ladies’ day at the Fairmont.
To
no less degree the look was provided by the artful signs and hanging
banners donated entirely by Power Print Colorways, Inc., Eileen Tichane,
proprietress. That’s where the feeling comes in. For a conference to feel it has to be touched. Mid-way through the day it was. By the speech of a woman who has no speech. Doris Dillon’s voice has been stilled by the debilitating ravages of Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS), as inevitably the rest of her slight person will be. |
This
brave, persevering little Almaden-area educator simply stood by the
podium as Graystone Elementary School media aide Teresa McCarthy read he
acceptance speech for an award presented to her by conference chair
Carla Cobb Davis. Along
with three other heroic Valley Women, Dillon was honored as a Speaking
of Women’s Health® Community Champion at the SWH luncheon.
With a Madonna-like smile, she communicated, her bright,
expressive eyes in perfect sync with the words she had written as she
looked out on the stone-quiet hundreds.
Acknowledging
that her disease is terminal, Dillon wrote “I have found my voice in
other ways” to teach children and to create awareness for ALS. “Women and health,” she penned. “What power in just those two words!” Thunderous applause you write in a notebook. Everyone choking back tears. Ironically, it is learned, Doris Dillon is a fan of sunflowers, her house if full of them. Amazing to think how a lot of people worked so hard over the past four or five months to create this day. Could General Patton or Knute Rockne have been so ebullient as was Carla Cobb Davis in driving her 58-member steering committee? Could their troops have been any more resolved than these businesswomen who took leave of their livelihoods and their sense of self over an extend time to plan one day? |
The
path to an informative conference was paved by the apparently
inexhaustible connections to the medical community of Lynn Barricks
Fossum, who delivered 18 healthcare experts for breakout seminars;
KTEH’s Judy Armstrong, who by working out all the logistics, played
Eisenhower to Cobb Davis’ Patton; and Jo Ann Lauer, who led the army
of volunteers.
Add
to this more than 30 sponsors, the foremost being Guidant Corporation,
which along with Proctor & Gamble, deliver the lion’s share to the
conference funding. Additional
sponsors provided various forms of support.
Health screenings, photography, airtime, ad space, printing,
talent and funding were among the
What
else worked was Guidant executive Ginger L. Graham’s ability to make a
keynote speech on heart disease highly interesting, even fun.
Soaking
up the environment, Speaking of Women’s Health® Executive
Director Kathy DeLaura marveled, “If you were selling tickets here
today, you’d be sold out all over again.”
Almaden Times - March 2001 |
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