by Max Marbut
Staff Writer
When Vickie Cavey, a member of the Mayor’s Commission on the Status of Women, welcomed guests to the 22nd Annual Women’s History Month Kickoff Breakfast Tuesday morning, she pointed out the consistent theme of the event.
“Women are taking flight, both with our keynote speaker who is a former astronaut and with our table decorations which are birds of paradise,” said Cavey.
Mayor John Peyton proclaimed March “Women’s History Month” and said throughout Jacksonville’s history, “it’s women who have been the backbone of the community.”
The breakfast was held not only to celebrate Women’s History Month, but also to honor three women who Peyton said have set an example for the community.
Commission chair Karen Green added all three honorees shared a common passion of working in the interests of children.
Carol Brady is executive director of the Northeast Florida Healthy Start Coalition, which is responsible for planning and funding maternal and child health care needs. She is also a member of the Centers for Disease Control’s Select Panel on Preconception Health.
Joann Manning is administrator for the offices of Dr. James R. Henderson and initiated the Dr. Betty Shabazz Academy II, a mentoring and career path program for young girls. She was also a member of the Leadership Jacksonville Class of 2002 and a member of that year’s National African American Women’s Leadership Institute.
After a 30-year career as a writer and columnist at the Florida Times-Union, Karen Brune Mathis joined Dreams Come True as its executive director last November. As a journalist, she chronicled the doors that opened for women including membership in private clubs and joining the upper echelons of business and City government. She also drew attention to the needs for guidelines against sexual harassment and equal pay for women in the work place.
This year’s keynote speaker was Eileen Collins, who retired from the Air Force as a colonel and test pilot and from NASA as an astronaut and space shuttle commander.
Collins shared her experiences in space as the first female shuttle pilot in 1995 and the first female Shuttle commander in 1999. Collins also recalled her duty as commander of STS-114, the first shuttle mission following the 2003 Columbia disaster.
Before the breakfast, Collins told the Daily Record she has been fortunate to be on the forefront of women’s’ contributions to America’s history and tradition of space exploration.
“The first female astronauts reflected the change in culture in the country,” she said. “For a long time, women didn’t choose a career in engineering and they weren’t allowed to be military test pilots — which was a requirement to be an astronaut — until the mid-1970s.”
Collins also said she discovered her post-NASA career as a motivational speaker by accident in 1999 shortly before she became the first woman to command a shuttle flight.
“I thought I was just doing my job. I really wasn’t paying attention to all the attention I was getting,” She said.
“A few days before the mission, I was walking through the launch facility talking to workers and a woman came up to me and thanked me. She told me because there was a female shuttle commander, all the women who worked at NASA were getting more respect in their jobs. That’s when I decided I needed to share my experiences,” added Collins.
While she was sharing some rarely-seen video of the Shuttle Discovery mission in 2005, Collins said she believes some of her best training to be a shuttle commander came as a result of being a parent.
“We had two crew members preparing for a space walk. When they got in the airlock, I told them ‘Now boys, be back in six hours. Don’t be late for dinner,” she said.