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Show The Women's Room BY KATE MC CUTCHEN Want to know how this column got started? It's kind of always been running around in my head subconsciously subcon-sciously taking notes on happenings that fit into my theories of why life is the way it is but the reality of having this space to extrapolate extrapo-late in is another story. The story starts with David Fleisher. I wait tables in the Claimjumper Restaurant and David is one of our most beloved regulars. We'd start these great conversations about men and women, their respective psychologies, the ERA and the prospects of political nightmares over David's steak, and sometimes some-times finish over a cocktail in the Down Under. One night I was raving incredulously over Reagans pre-election rejection of the ERA: "How could any presidential candidate candi-date in this day and age go against the ERA and expect to be elected?" I fumed, naively. , "How about publishing pub-lishing and article on women's wo-men's rights in the Record? I'll write it." (David had been working on the Park Record for years.) "Sure," he said. "How about making it a weekly column?" I sat back and blanched white. "Me? Every week? Idon't know..." David acted as though he had every confidence confi-dence in me. "You can do it, don't worry." So I was off and running, or writing. And joy of joys, I loved it. David encouraged me to get out and talk to successful women in our town and soon my interviews were proving to be good for other women as well as for , me. I like to think we all learned and benefited from . my stories a little more pride, a little more self-respect. David Fleisher has that quality of unselfishness in human relations that is a rarity. He showed it to me over and over again and several times in the last month, has written it out in articles in the Record. He wrote of the harassment of waitresses by the worst kind of tourist turkey and he wrote of his appreciation to the PC Police Department for still being there to help a citizen in distress. He's been writing in just such a vein for the last four years, working tirelessly on the Park Record, Rec-ord, giving it his feeling of justness and humor. He's a friend of mine because he believes in human rights and human dignity; and he has this great sense of humor and the craziest laugh you ever heard... Now, he's off on another project. He's been working on a story that's finally close to being a book: the story of Fundamentalist John Singer Sing-er the Mormon husband and father killed by a Sheriff's possee on his own land. David has taken a leave of absence from the paper to pursue the birth of his book. It keeps him very busy and exhausts him, too. But I want to wish him the best of luck in his endeavor; to thank him for his faith in- me; to extend these works of wisdom from the pen of Walt Whitman: "Now understand me well it is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary." |