|
|
Girls just like you are doing great things. Here are some articles about some extraordinary girls. If you know an awesome girl, or are one yourself, e-mail me. I may post it here!
|
Battling Cancer The story of Victoria Culpepper, 6 Girl Power The story of Cheryl Haworth, 16 Point Woman The story of Nancy Mace, 21 Vested Interest The story of Stephanie Taylor, 10 Feature Creatures The story of Alyssa Buecker, 15 Matrix Master The story of Joann Estevez, 20 More Awesome Girls Excellent Women | 
| |
Six year old Victoria Culpepper isn't an average first grade student. She has met Bill Cosby on the Oprah show. She was a poster child for a campaign warning parents about asbestos poisoning. And she was diagnosed with cancer in February of 1999.
| I spent summer 1999 with Vic, and her sister Audrey, as their nanny. During the time I spent with her, I watched her get stronger and healthier. She was excited about starting school in the fall, and I helped her with some exercises in a school readiness workbook. [picture: from left to right: Audrey, Gine, me, Vic, my mother] |
Her parents, (Gine and Pete), put together a web page about her. It has pictures and a series of diary entries about her progress. Please check out Vic's page to find out more about what this brave little girl went through.
|
Battling Cancer Girl Power Point Woman Vested Interest Feature Creatures Matrix Master Top of Page |
|
Cheryl Haworth is going where no girl has gone before- into the record books with Herculean feats
At 5'9" and 290 pounds, 16-year-old Cheryl Haworth might not appear to want to put on weight. But the Savannah, Ga., teen is indeed eager to add poundage- to the already eye-popping amount she has lifted en route to staking her claim as the strongest girl in the world. "I want to hold all the records," says the outgoing Haworth, who, on Live! With Regis & Kathie Lee April 7, set a new U.S. mark of 297 pounds in the clean-and-jerk. "I'm going to try to be the best, no matter what."
She's already a gold medal favorite at the 2000 Sydney Games, where women's weight lifting will make its Olympic debut. All the more impressive is that, due to years needed to build muscle, weight lifters don't generally peak until age 30. Says coach Michael Cohen of his muscular prize pupil, who is flexible enough to do splits and boasts a standing 30-inch vertical jump: "You only come across this level of athlete once in a blue moon. She's the only school-age child to ever hold adult U.S. records."
The second of three daugthers of Bob, and auto broker, and Sheila, and RN, Haworth found her calling in August 1996, when she walked into the gym where Cohen coaches to work out with her softball team. "It looked like a lot of fun," says the prize-winning artist and sophomore at the Savannah Arts Academy. And it gave her a lift, she says, to realize for the first time that her weight could be a plus. "Even though I'm walking around school and I'm way heavier than everyone," Haworth says, "I just think, 'I'm in better shape than you are. It just doesn't look like it.'"
Courtesy of People magazine, 5/17/99. Captions to pictures say: "If she thinks she can do something, that's it," says dad Bob of Cheryl (competing in '98). and "You don't have to be a model toothpick," says Haworth (giving sister Beth, 18, a lift).
|
Battling Cancer Girl Power Point Woman Vested Interest Feature Creatures Matrix Master Top of Page |
|
Unshakable Nancy Mace excels as The Citadel's first female graduate
The greeting Nancy Mace received when she arrived at school three years ago was not of the sort to warm hearts. One upperclassman seemed particularly put out by her mere existence. "He did not like Nancy Mace," recalls Mace, 21. "The first weekend, I was so intimidated by him. He has these big brown eyes, and he stared a hole through my head."
No more. One of four women to enroll that year in The Citadel, the venerable military college in Charleston, S.C., Mace beat 145 out of 150 cadets in a two-mile run and knocked off 59 push-ups in two minutes to become one of only four freshmen to pass their first fitness test. Following her physical triumphs with magna cum laude academic performance, Mace on May 8 became the first woman to graduate from a 156-year-old institution. Though some still lament the school's new coed ways, that glaring upperclassman, now a divinity student, returned to town just to see her pick up her sheepskin. "She won him over," says her mother, Anne, 56. "As she did many others, because of who she is and her absolute commitment to do well, to excel."
Though the major military academies, including West Point, had begun admitting women in 1976, The Citadel resisted coed education and was forced by court order in 1995 to enroll its first woman, Shannon Faulkner. Though she droped out after only six days, a 1996 United States Supreme Court ruling requiring the Virginia Military Institute to accept women spurred The Citadel to vote to end its single-gender policy. Mace was one of just four women to enroll that fall semester.
"She has become not only a pioneer but a pacesetter for those who will follow her," says Citadel president John Grinalds. And many will. With 1,620 cadets, The Citadel now counts 41 women in its ranks, a number that may rise as high as 100 next year. A recent survey of cadets also showed that 72 percent of the corps believe progress has been made in assimilating women.
Much of the credit goes to Mace. Two of the four women in her class quit in their first year and sued, citing hazing and harassment. The Citadel responded, first by installing alarms in the women's rooms, and later expelling or disciplining several upperclassmen. Even then, Mace recalls, students continued to hiss when her name was mentioned in assemblies, professors at first called her "Mr. Mace" and, "in class, the last seats filled were those around me." Still, Mace remained stoic. "You see positive leadership and negative leadership," she says. "You take the positive."
Toughness runs in the Mace family. Her father, Emory, 58, a retired Army general, is the Citadel's most decorated living graduate. And two of Nancy's three siblings are West Pointers. (Sister Mary, 28, graduated in 1992; brother James, 19, is a freshman.) Nancy grew up on various military posts, a disciplined Army brat who graduated from high school a year early. She had completed a year at a technical college when she heard The Citadel would admit women and knew instantly that she wanted to followin in her father's footsteps.
The general, having just been offered the job of toughening discipline at the school as the new commandant of cadets (the equivalent of a dean of students), tried to dissuade his determined daughter. He gave in, but not without a warning. "I told her if she wanted to leave, she'd better start walking, because I wasn't going to drive her home," he says. Nancy understood: "He had his job to do and I had to do mine."
Mace attracted considerable attention for taming The Citadel. Courted by the FBI, the staff of South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond and classmate Chris Niemiec, Mace opted for an engagement ring from Niemiec, 21, and a job with Andersen Consulting as an analyst trainee. For all the abuse she suffered, Mace says she learned some valuable lessons at The Citadel. "It's taught me not to be critical, not to be mean, not to judge a book by its cover," she says. "I've learned a lot about myself, how I react under stress. And I've done well."
Courtesy of People magazine, 5/24/99. Captions to the pictures say: "As a woman, you have to go above and beyond," says Mace, who bested many male cadets. and "The Citadel is lucky to have had her," cadet Chris Niemiec said of her fiancee. and "She's made it on her own," says Emory Mace (left) of his daughter (with niece Kate, right, and mother Anne, in black skirt).
|
Battling Cancer Girl Power Point Woman Vested Interest Feature Creatures Matrix Master Top of Page |
|
Stephanie Taylor goes beyond the call of duty to protect canine cops
When Stephanie Taylor arrived at the Oceanside, Calif., police department on June 14, she was welcomed with many wet kisses- and an estatic display of tail-wagging. While the six-dog canine unit would probably greet any 10-year-old that way, Stephanie was an honored guest: During just three weeks last spring, she raised $3,000 to buy bullet-proof vests for Oceanside's dogs in blue. "Boy, it was hard work," says Stephanie. "But I learned how generous people are."
Stephanie started her Vest-A-Dog campaign after reading about a Newark, N.J., police dog killed in the line of duty. still mourning her own dog Kela- "my best friend, who had to be put to sleep because of crippling arthritis"- she was inspired by Newark residents who raised money to buy vests for their city's police dogs. "I thought, 'If they can do it, I can,'" she says.
Her mother, Kathy, suggested Stephanie call a friend of the force, Officer Jim Wall, who offered to be the campaign's poster officer, along with his canine partner Tiko. Stephanie's parents are divorced- her father, Jeff, lives nearby. Kathy advised her determined daughter and chauffeured her to pet-care centers and veterinary clinics, where she dropped off flyers and handpainted donation boxes.
While the Oceanside police are grateful for the 3 1/2-pound vests, the dogs themselves are still getting accustomed to them. "It's like wearing a pair of new blue jeans- uncomfortable at first," says Officer Greg Rainwater, speaking on behalf of his partner Nitro. "But then you break them in."
Courtesy of People magazine, 8/16/99. Captions to the picture says: "I just had a lot of fun!" says Stephanie (with Tiko, one of six police dogs she vested)
|
Battling Cancer Girl Power Point Woman Vested Interest Feature Creatures Matrix Master Top of Page |
|
How talented are director Alyssa Buecker's guinea pigs? They opened a screen door
Why do some movie directors have such a low opinion of actors? Listen, for example, to what Alyssa Buecker has to say about her female lead: "Hazel is very sweet, but she's just so dumb, she doesn't even know the camera is there."
To be fair, Hazel is one seriously limited thespian. In Buecker's 1996 debut movie, Hazel, the Guinea Pig's Package, Hazel played the guinea pig. And she played a guinea pig again in the followup, 1997's The Christmas Caper. Artistically, Hazel is sort of spinning her wheels. But so what? Hazel is a guinea pig, and guinea pigs like to spin wheels. Buecker doesn't. She sold her series of film shorts to the new HBO Family channel (all of them are cast from her resident repertory company of 19 guinea pigs, whom she squeezes into Barbie costumes for their roles).
The budding director, 15, is taught at home in Lawrence, Kans., by her mother, freelance writer Nancy Pistorius (dad Brad is an engineer). Buecker took a local filmmaking class when she was 11 - the same year, coincidentally, that she acquired Hazel, her first guinea pig. It seemed only natural that the two pet projects should converge. "I was going to do a film about my dog Squwiger," explains Alyssa, "but he doesn't like people very much."
Using lettuce and grass as incentives, Buecker got Hazel to perform in Package, a two-minute short about a guinea pig opening, well, a package. The Christmas Caper is a crime thriller, while Guinea Pigs from Mars is a sci-fi adventure. "All three [films] were just so darling and very funny," says HBO Family vice president Dolores Morris, who selected them for its "30X30: Kid Flicks" series. "I just had to put them in."
Next in the Buecker development pipeline: a Star Wars spoof commissioned by HBO Family. Its working title: The Carrot Wars. What did you expect, Return of the Gerbil?
Courtesy of People magazine, 5/24/99. Captions to the picture says: "I give them lots of treats," says Buecker (with Hazel). "They do any hing for lettuce."
***NEW!!!*** Alyssa emailed DREAM!!! Here's a link to her home page!
|
Battling Cancer Girl Power Point Woman Vested Interest Feature Creatures Matrix Master Top of Page |
|
Joan Estevez
Systems Analyst/Technical Support Administrator
Age: 20
Nationality: Dominican
Hometown: Queens, NY
School: Richmond Hill High School, Class of 1998
Accomplishment: Forget the digital divide! Joann Estevez paid no attention to gender, race, or age hurdles and became the youngest information technology systems analyst and technical support administrator at UniWorld Group, a New York advertising agency.
Beginnings: After a "totally boring" semester of fashion, Joann realized that computers interested her more than anything else. She registered for a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer course, which taught her everything from how to turn on a computer to how to build her own computer. She has sine built her own Pentium computer and become the tech-savvy source for friends and family.
Day-To-Day: Armed with a cell phone, page, walkie-talkie, and her office cordless phone, Joann gets to work at 7:30 A.M., surfs the Web, and checks for new computer viruses. "There's always something new coming up," she says, "Something you've got to know so that you'll be able to fix it." Then she checks UniWorld's network system to make sure it is running properly and to see if any employees need computer help.
What's Next: A bachelor's degree in computer science and her own computer consulting firm! "Pretty much doing the same thing I'm doing now. Servicing other companies, showing them how to set up networks, and troubleshooting."
Home Life: Joann still lives with her proud parents, but by the time she has a family of her own, she wants her life to be a little less hectic. "I plan to do everything while I'm young," Joann points out, "so that I can spend my later years with my family. I want them to be able to enjoy all the things I've worked so hard for."
Advice: "To be in this field, you have to really love computers," says Joann. "You have to have a passion for it. To help someone out, you have to have the patience, and you have to like what you're doing. I just love doing this."
Courtesy of Latin Girl magazine, February - March, 2001. Article written by Karen Juanita Carrillo.
|
Battling Cancer Girl Power Point Woman Vested Interest Feature Creatures Matrix Master Top of Page |
|
