Thread by @rachelbusygrl

Looking at photos from a trip to NYC in 2019. Love the Central Park bench memorials & this was a favorite:
In Loving & Eternal Memory
Norma Juliet Wikler
Outraged and Outrageous Kentucky 1940 - Costa Rica 2002

Looked up Norma Wikler & turns out she was exactly the kind of person I'd liked to have met.
"she was well known for her brilliant wit & sense of humor, her astounding energy, intellectual breadth, dramatic flair, & her often-zany sense of the absurd."
senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/inmemor…

Here's a published version of a speech she gave (in 1989) on gender bias in the court system:
nawj.org/uploads/pdf/co…

Per the memoriam, she was a nurse & hated it. She left behind her first career to study sociology at UC Berkeley during the 60s, where she was involved in the anti-war movement, & wrote her doctoral thesis on the political consciousness of Vietnam veterans.

I left out this tidbit about her leaving nursing: She ended that brief career by tossing her uniform and nursing apparatus into a ceremonial bonfire, early on displaying her life-long courage to leave behind what was safe or expected in order to take on new challenges.

In 1979 Professor Wikler published Up Against The Clock: Career Women Speak on the Choice to Have Children. It was one of the first works to explore the new choices & conflicts of women of her generation. Betty Friedan called it a pathbreaking book.
goodreads.com/book/show/1350…

In 1986, with Marilyn Loftus & Lynn Hecht Schafran, she presented on Establishing a Gender Bias Task Force. And the National Association of Women Judges has a Norma Wikler Excellence in Service Award because of all her work.
scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewconten…

In 1992, Norma Wikler moved to Costa Rica & became involved in building an organic pineapple industry.

One life, with lots of chapters & immense impact.

This has been a year of lots of change for everyone, so if you're worried about changing direction, remember Norma Wikler.

PS. Best tidbit: Norma loved dancing & pretended to be a member of the New York Police Department so she could dance in a special performance of “Kids and Cops” at Lincoln Center. The performance was choreographed & directed by George Balanchine, her artistic hero.

A Legend.

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