Document 16: "The Torch Relay," from National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year, The Spirit of Houston: The First National Women's Conference (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, March 1978), pp. 193-203.

Torch relay runners wave from the platform.
From The Spirit of Houston: The First National Women's Conference, p. 203.

Introduction

   Two months before the NWC began in November 1977, a torch relay began at Seneca Falls, New York ending in Houston, Texas the day before the conference opened. More than 2,000 women carried the torch on its 2,610 mile journey to Houston. Seneca Falls was selected as the starting point for the relay because it was the site of the first women's rights convention in 1848.

p. 193

THE TORCH RELAY

During the two-month countdown before the National Women's Conference, a lighted torch was passed hand to hand across 2,600 miles and 14 States on the trail to Houston from Seneca Falls, New York.

   Hundreds of eager runners in the southeast quadrant of the United States bore this symbolic flame down the highways as national and local media jogged alongside, commenting on the historic link between the 1848 Seneca Falls women's rights convention and the 1977 National Women's Conference to come.

   The Torch Relay, one of the most dramatic features of the Conference, was an almost entirely voluntary effort stemming from a suggestion by Sey Chassler, editor of Redbook, one of three men Commissioners and a member of the sports committee.

   Plans for the relay were developed by the sports committee, co-chaired by Tina Santi, vice president of corporate communications of Colgate-Palmolive, and Barbara Fultz, vice president of television programming for William Esty Company. This committee was an outgrowth of the fund-raising committee chaired by Commissioner Lenore Hershey, editor of Ladies' Home Journal.

   Almost the very first problem was to find a torch. No such torch had been made in eight years, and the maker of the last torch had died. A New York expert finally made two torches, one as a spare.

   The 13,000-member National Association of Girls and Women in Sports (NAGS) organized the Torch Relay with the cooperation of the 8,000-member Road Runners of America and the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. At the request of Commissioner Hershey, the Charter Company of Jacksonville, Florida assigned a staff member, Patricia Kery, to serve as National Relay Coordinator. She was assisted by a full-time Washington-based volunteer. Henley Roughton, from the Road Runners. Colgate-Palmolive donated 3,000 blue T-shirts bearing the IWY emblem and slogan "Women on the Move," and womenSports magazine contributed $3,000 for telephone calls and similar expenses.

   Carole Oglesby, president of the National Association of Girls and Women in Sports and professor of physical education at Temple University, appointed NAGS relay coordinators in the 14 States and in New York City and the District of Columbia. These in turn enlisted daily planners to handle countless details.

   Commissioner Maya Angelou, poet and playwright, wrote a new 1977 Declaration of Sentiments entitled, "To Form a More Perfect Union …." Ida Fidelman, a Redbook secretary, handlettered the Declaration on a scroll to be carried and signed by the runners and to be given with the torch to the Smithsonian Institution.

   Judy Carter, daughter-in-law of President Carter, read Maya Angelou's moving words publicly for the first time at a candlelight ceremony in Seneca Falls the evening before the relay got underway. (The text appears elsewhere in this report.) Lieutenant Governor Mary Anne Krupsak, President Sissy Farenthold of Wells College, and Commissioner Sey Chassler joined in the ceremonial lighting of the torch. Newspapers throughout the country received Associated Press wirephotos and United Press International telephotos of the event.

   The relay began formally the morning of September 29, a sunny autumn day, with Millicent Brady Moore, a descendant of Susan Quinn Brown, who attended the 1848 women's rights convention, handing the lighted torch to the first runner.

   She was Kathy Switzer of New York City, who as a Syracuse University student in 1967 had been the first women to compete officially in the

p. 194

Boston marathon. She sped eastward along Routes 5 and 20 to the first of many green and white mileage markers. There she passed the torch to Donna deVarona, a winner of two Olympic swimming medals.

   Carole Oglesby ran five miles. Betsy East of Cortland, a physical education instructor who coordinated the relay in New York, ran two miles and drove the accompanying car all day.

   Mary Jayne Engel's children were excused from school to cheer their mother, a 39-year-old newspaperwoman, as she carried the torch a mile through the Montezuma Swamp in 10 minutes.

   First-day runners carried the torch 54 miles through Auburn and Manlius to Chittenango. The flame moved 48 miles the next day through Oneida and Utica to Herkimer, which boasts a statue of General Francis E. Spinner, who first employed women in government service after the Civil War. Women employed by the Department of Treasury had paid for the statue.

   Rain and cold replaced the sunshine but the torch moved as planned

p. 195

through Albany, the capital of New York, and along rural roads lined with bright wet autumn foliage into Massachusetts. Coordinator Pat Griffin, a University of Massachusetts doctoral student, ran nine miles herself "without any sense of fatigue" and wrote a poem about her experience.

   Connecticut runners carried the torch south to Hartford and New Haven. Secretary of State Gloria Schaffer cheered them on. Some women ran in "packs." Some sang and shouted college cheers as they rode in escorting buses. Many schools excused students to take part in and watch the relay. The New York Times pictured Fairchild and Norwalk high school students carrying the torch and an IWY banner along a wet roadway on October 6.

   Schedules called only for daylight running, but a fatal trailer truck accident near Bridgeport that afternoon backed up traffic for miles on the Connecticut Turnpike and prevented a van of Southern Connecticut State College women from reaching a relay point on Route 1. To make up the lost hours, New York women ran until 11:30 p.m., carrying the torch through White Plains, Scarsdale, and Yonkers to the New York City line at Van Cortlandt Park.

   Sister Dorie Smith, head of the College of Mount St. Vincent, lighted the torch on October 7. Students from John F. Kennedy and other high schools carried it south via Broadway and Riverside Drive and through Central Park. The day's coordinator, Dorie McCaffrey, Herbert H. Lehman College director of athletics, bore the torch down Park Avenue past the Pan American Airways Building.

   Cheryl Toussaint, Olympic silver medalist, delivered it to a midday press conference at Cooper Union. Present were Helvi Sipila of Finland, Assistant Secretary General of the

p. 196

United Nations; Presiding Officer Bella Abzug; Commissioners Sey Chassler and Ruth Abram; Mary Burke Nicholas, head of the Governor's Women's Unit; Carol Bellamy, chair of the New York delegation; and, in a wheelchair, Ruth Begun, a delegate-at-large and member of the Disabled Women's Caucus. There the Ford Motor Company presented the relay with a $13,000 Lincoln Versailles car, as blue as their shirts, to accompany runners from New York to Houston.

   Gail Sheehy, present as a reporter for Redbook, then carried the torch a mile north to Third Avenue and 22nd Street. Suzy Chafee, a former Olympic ski team captain, cheered by her mother, moved it in to midtown. Two women from Cardinal Spellman High School carried it across the George Washington Bridge over the Hudson River. Escorted by New Jersey State Police, women from Lehman College then ran it to East Newark.

   Coordinated by Sandy Petway, Rutgers University cross-country coach, New Jersey athletes carried

p. 197

the torch across the State, via Trenton in ten hours. Often running in the rain, Pennsylvanians took it from the Morrisville bridge through Philadelphia and Harrisburg. Nikki Franke of Temple University, a fencing champion, was Pennsylvania coordinator. Ten members of the West Chester College cross-country team carried the torch from Bryn Mawr to Lancaster.

   Rain continued as the torch was carried across Maryland and into the District of Columbia where the Washington Post frontpaged a picture of "soggy relay runners" trotting into Lafayette Park opposite the White

p. 198

House on October 14. Midge Constanza, assistant to President Carter, spoke and joined the runners in circling the park for television cameras.

   Among those carrying the torch away from the Park were 10-year-old Mbuangi Swed-Gingles and her mother, Sheryl Swed, a member of the IWY Commission staff.

   Escorted by motorcycle police, IWY staff and students ran past the Jefferson Memorial and handed the torch to Virginia runners at the 14th Street bridge over the Potomac.

   Rain slowed rush hour traffic as the torch was carried through Arlington, Crystal City, and past Mount Vernon. Driving the Lincoln Versailles for the first time, Catherine East, formerly of the IWY staff, had trouble keeping abreast of the runners. In Manassas, Officer K. Murray gave her a $30 ticket for "impeding a safe flow of traffic." This was the only difficulty with police during the 2,600-mile run. Many States and cities cheerfully provided police escorts.

   Runners from George Mason College, Mary Washington College, the University of Virginia, and other schools carried the torch through Fredericksburg and Richmond across Virginia. A rally at Durham welcomed the relay to North Carolina. An elaborate program was arranged in Charlotte by Karen Popp, a 19-year-old sophomore basketball player who coordinated the 50-mile run from China Grove to Lowell. Mayor John M. Belk proclaimed October 21-23 "International Women's Year Weekend."

   State Police escorted the relay through South Carolina. While nearly

p. 199

all runners were women, a Spartanburg insurance man earned press and television notice by running with his wife. Crowds cheered the torchbearers in Atlanta, Georgia, and those accompanying them were entertained by Mamie K. Taylor, local feminist leader. A front tire of the Lincoln Versailles went flat from driving on rocky road shoulders as the relay left Georgia. Runners changed it. Since several cars were then accompanying them, there was no delay.

   There were difficulties in Alabama. Yielding to pressure from ERA opponents, Birmingham Road Runners, scheduled to supply runners in that area, cancelled them at the last minute. A high school principal also decided not to excuse from classes some girls ready to run. While Pat

p. 200

Field, official photographer, and spunky Catherine East, who is near retirement age, and others who had been accompanying the relay ran or walked with the torch, other runners were being recruited. Patricia Kery, Torch Relay coordinator, flew from Houston to Birmingham with Peggy Kokernot, a 25-year-old physical education teacher and marathon runner. Both ran, Kokernot for 16 miles. (Her picture appeared on the cover of Time on December 5, when the magazine covered the National Women's Conference.) University of Montevallo women ran more than the planned 49 miles from Clanton to Montgomery. Additional runners came from the Anniston Track Club, McClellan Army Base, and Auburn University.

   By November 3 the relay was back on schedule and The New York Times pictured Diane Westhoven happily

p. 201

passing the torch that warm day to Kate Milly between Montgomery and Selma, where Dr. Martin Luther King led the civil rights march in 1965. Runners from the Mississippi University for Women received the torch on Route 20 at the State line on Nov. 5. It was carried on schedule across Mississippi and Louisiana through Meridian, Jackson, New Orleans, and Baton Rouge.

   As a band played "The Eyes of Texas," a sheriff's posse of orange-vested men and women on horseback and a parade arranged by Carol McGill, head of the Orange chapter of NOW, welcomed the torch to Texas the afternoon of November 16, "Orange did itself proud," reported the Chicago Tribune. A minister asked God to "evoke his blessings on the women of this country." Mike Hoke, a teacher who ran the first Texas mile, said: "I proudly accept this torch in honor of my daughter, my wife, my mother… and liberty."

   Women ran west on November 17 through Beaumont, birthplace of Mildred (Babe) Didrikson Zaharias, who starred in the 1932 Olympics and late was a champion golfer. They received roses and medallions at the memorial to the great woman athlete.

   The final day's ceremonial entrance into Houston was coordinated by Colonel

p. 203

Evelyn Baker. Three Houston athletes carried the torch the final three miles into Houston the next day. They were Peggy Kokernot; Michele Cearcy, 16-year-old track star from Phyllis Wheatley High School; and Sylvia Ortiz, a senior at the University of Houston. (Their photo appears on the cover of this report.)

   Joining them were Olympic gold medal winners Donna deVarona and Suzy Chafee and more than 50 other athletes, some of whom had run earlier. There also were women, including six from Oregon, from States far from the relay route. Many more women—some present at the start in Seneca Falls, joined in for what was billed as "the last grand mile."

   As the flaming torch ended its 51-day, 2,600-mile journey, about 1,000 women—mostly young, but some in their sixties—and many of the Commissioners ran or walked with it, bringing it to welcoming ceremonies at Albert Thomas Convention Center. The next morning they presented it to three First Ladies at the official opening of the National Women's Conference.

   

Previous Document	Document List	Next Document