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Show Hatch 0MmRBart by wr a m& Women's History Week If you lived in Kanab in 1912, you wouldn't have been bitten by a stray dog, your crops would have been better irrigated because of a dike above the town, and you wouldn't have had to go too far out of your way to cross an irrigation ir-rigation canal. That's because Kanab's accomplished accomplish-ed mayor in 1912 saw to it that stray dogs were controlled, a dike was built, and bridges were constructed over the town's canals. That mayor was Mary W. Howard, one of the first women mayors in America, who wasn't content to stick to causes women at that time were expected ex-pected to promote. The accomplishments ac-complishments of Mayor Howard and women like her are being commemorated com-memorated this week, March 7-13, which is designated by Congress as "Women's History Week" under the resolution I sponsored aimed at spurring spurr-ing awareness of the contributions women have made in the building of America. History traditionally has been a study of the great men of the world; as such, it has ignored a large part of our heritage by overlooking the great women who have also shaped our past. As long as we're studying history, we might Just as well learn all of it. Since understanding the past can promote a grenter understanding of the present and future, it can also help us see ourselves and our possibilities in the context (if our forebearem. It is fitting to recall, for example, when driving through the farmlands of Cache or Sanpete or Sevier County, that it was often early Utah women who planted the first crops there, milked the first cows, and, in some cases, built the first cabins, as their husbands and sons were often away on Mormon missions or business or other assignments. It adds something to Utah's reputation reputa-tion as a family-centered state to remember that it began as "a partnership partner-ship of men and women," as Utah historian Leonard Arrington says, where women were given the right to vote some fifty years before other American women gained that right, and some, like Kanab's Mayor Howard, became among the first in the nation to fill elective or civic offices. In 1896, Martha Hughes Cannon became the very first woman in America to be elected to a state Senate seat, when she beat a number of other candidates, including her husband, to take a seat in Utah's first legislature. Sen. Cannon, a phygician, spoasored the bill that created the State Hoard of Health, which operates today as the State Health Department. ' Women's History Week is not one of the major acts of the present Congress. It won't alter the course of history. But it does remind us what women In Utah's and America's past have done, and what possibilities await them in the future. |