The Women in My Life: Bringing New Meaning to the Phrase, “Never Underestimate the Power of a Woman”

(Adapted from homily given to the Community of the Living Spirit, a nondenominational prayer group in Waukesha WI, by Ken Germanson, Sept. 7, 2025)

Most of you must have remembered the Ladies’ Home Journal, a popular magazine years back.

The Journal created an interesting tagline: “Never underestimate the power of a woman.” And as I grew up, I soon learned that women indeed have power.

Ironically, in looking into the background of that famous slogan of the Journal, I learned it was first used in 1941, created by an ad agency, and that the phrases were never meant to be used as part of the women’s liberation movement or as plea for feminism. It was meant strictly to tell women that they should be more involved in making the decisions of what the family should buy; it was to tell their husbands (remember at the time only the nuclear family counted) to go out a spend money, with their wives’ input, of course. Another ploy of the old capitalistic system!

Remember, too, that in the years of the 1940s and 1950s that women were considered the “weaker sex.”

Yet, if you look at it literally, that old advertising slogan has truly a great deal of truth . . . and wisdom.

Most of society by now has realized that the old image of the ideal women being like June Kleaver, of “Leave It to Beaver” fame, who is dressed in heels, an attractive housedress and fully made-up with lipstick and rouge, awaiting the arrival hubby Ward from work. Yet, there still are many of us who would continue to place women in a second-class role.

Early in my long life, I learned to respect the strength of a woman, her intelligence, her ability to lead and, most importantly, her understanding of morals, ethics and just plain decency.

Here’s a few examples from history. As most of you know, I’ve long been interested in the history of labor and that brings me to two women.

Of course, most of you have heard of Mother Jones. A truly remarkable woman born about 1837.

Typically clad in a black dress, her face framed by a lace collar and black hat, and barely five-feet tall Mother Jones was a fearless fighter for workers’ rights—once labeled “the most dangerous woman in America” by a U.S. district attorney. Mary Harris “Mother” Jones rose to prominence as a fiery orator and fearless organizer for the Mine Workers during the first two decades of the 20th century. Her voice had great carrying power. Her energy and passion inspired men half her age into action and compelled their wives and daughters to join in the struggle. If that didn’t work, she would embarrass men to action. “I have been in jail more than once and I expect to go again. If you are too cowardly to fight, I will fight,” she told them.

She welcomed African American workers and involved women and children in strikes. She organized miners’ wives into teams armed with mops and brooms to guard the mines against scabs. She staged parades with children carrying signs that read, “We Want to Go to School and Not to the Mines.”

Born in Ireland, she emigrated to the U.S. as a child, eventually becoming a dress-maker. Tragedy struck in the famine of 1867, when both her husband, George Jones, a union ironworker, and their four children died. Later, in 1871, her dressmaker shop was destroyed in the famous Chicago fire. Despite, or perhaps because of, all these tragedies she began her lifelong work supporting workers’ and women’s causes. Just before World War I, Mother Jones came to Milwaukee to support women who worked in the breweries washing returned bottles. She was here for two months, seeking justice in the breweries for young women.

Her story is a long and colorful one – too long for discussion today. (See https://aflcio.org/about/history/labor-history-people/mother-jones)

Next comes Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, certainly equally as colorful and courageous as Mother Jones. Elizabeth, born in New Hampshire, became one of the few women and the youngest organizer at age 16 for the International Workers of the World. The story is told of this smallish woman, fully pregnant with her first child, holding thousands of tough miners at rapt attention as she spoke.

She continued to work for worker rights as World War I approached, but soon also spoke against U.S. involvement in the war and for women’s suffrage. Because of her anti-war efforts, she was charged with espionage but never convicted. During the Great Depression in the 1930s, she became a communist (although she opposed the Stalin government) and was jailed for two years during the McCarthy era of the early 1950s.

Later in life she lived with another woman, certainly she was a woman ahead of her time. (See https://wams.nyhistory.org/modernizing-america/activism-and-the-progressive-era/life-story-elizabeth-gurley-flynn/)

Now, both of these women not only were pioneers, but they became true leaders, winning the allegiance of men, tough miners and grizzled factory workers, using their talent and courage. And there weren’t the only women who should inspire us: think of Madame Curie, Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, Maya Angelou, Jane Austen, Sally Ride, Mother Teresa, and, of course, Harriet Tubman, about who you heard recently.

Reflecting on the stories of these remarkable women made me realize the how courageous, smart and principled were the women in my life. And, even though I didn’t realize it at the time, how important they were to making me the man I am today. I owe a true debt of gratitude to all of them.

Of course, at the top of the list is my mother, Alice Marie, born in 1902. Her mother died when she was11 and her father married a wealthy physician’s widow in St. Louis. The widow had two boys and mom and her younger brother were treated as second class to the widow’s boys. Her brother was shunted off to a military academy and mom was sent to the convent to attend high school.

After graduating from high school at the convent and having no home, she moved to Milwaukee to stay with an uncle and work as a secretary at Briggs & Stratton Corp. The nuns taught her secretarial skills well and soon she was secretary to top executive of the company. At age 26, she married my dad and I came along in a year and all that secretarial training was gone . . . and she had to learn to cook … something the nuns never taught her.

My paternal grandmother. Now there was a woman. Born in 1865, grandma had 13 pregnancies (with eight surviving children), and they were all raised to be successful adults. As a child, I remember a family gathering where a number of my aunts and uncles were reminiscing about “the good old days,” and grandma interrupted them saying, “Don’t talk to be about the ‘good old days” which meant, she said, going out in winter to break ice on the water trough to do the washing in the morning. She was still stoking the furnace well into 80s, stopping only after she fell down the basement stairs. She died at 93.

My late Wife Ann. Born and raised in rural poverty just 40 miles south of Superior WI, she was able to work her way through the University of Minnesota, graduating with Phi Beta Kappa honors in journalism in 1951. She went to work for the Dubuque IA Telegraph-Herald where the only job for a woman was working on the Society pages. Eventually, she ended up as police reporter for the newspaper – a true rarity for a woman in those days. So unusual was it that when she visited the newsroom of a daily paper in Rockford IL they ran a picture of her, heading it “girl reporter.”

My daughter, Laurie! She wanted to become a firefighter so badly that she quit her bookkeeper job and worked out for 6 months to build her upper body strength to pass the firefighters’ test. She would have become first female firefighter in Milwaukee, but she washed out because she couldn’t stand the smoke test. (The Fire and Police Commission staff suspected the examiner purposely boosted the smoke level to cause her to fail). She then became one of the first women as a beat cop on the Milwaukee police force, where she had to withstand several years of ill treatment from some of the male officers who resented having a woman on the job.

And, of course, there’s my wife, Jean. Having separated from her first husband and raising four teenage daughters, she left her secretarial job at Allis-Chalmers to become a realtor. After getting her real estate license, she applied at four real estate firms in Waukesha and learned none would hire a woman. Eventually, she found a firm in Milwaukee where she went on to be one of the areas most successful realtors.

So there you have, the story of women, both in history and in my own life experience, who found the courage and fortitude to challenge the norms of the day and become successes. Doesn’t this add more meaning to the old slogan, “Never Underestimate the Power of a Woman?”

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One response to “The Women in My Life: Bringing New Meaning to the Phrase, “Never Underestimate the Power of a Woman””

almostearthquakefa6f232c94

September 10, 2025

Very nice. Maybe I’ll see youses @ lunch one of these fine Wednesdays.

Doug Lueck USAF, 1962-66 [image: image.png] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veterans_for_Peace ******************************** Be well, do good work and keep in touch. * *I hope I make a difference. [image: Twitter logo, Copyright: dpa]

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