For supporters of the ERA, the time was NOW

Lisa Hammer / staff Nita Frink was teaching at Sherrard Junior High in 1970 when she first became involved with Women for Equality. She went on to chair the committee working on passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.

Steve Drucker joined Quad Cities NOW in 1977 after Nita Frink, chairman of a committee working to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, asked for help.

``My arm just shot up by itself,'' Ms. Drucker said.

A panel discussion that night led to creation of the first Quad Cities Women's Center.

``I had never thought about this before in my life,'' Ms. Drucker said. ``Two or three women in the room talked about their own experiences as victims of abuse, and it was just like electricity in the room.''

Ms. Drucker spent six or seven years working on the Illinois ERA movement, which heated up as the amendment stalled a few states short of the three-fourths majority needed to ratify. Supporters believed that if Illinois approved it, other states would follow.

In early 1977, Quad Cities NOW staged a protest when then-Gov. Jim Thompson came to Moline. He said he was for it, but he wasn't helping to move it along, Ms. Drucker said.

``His security men with walkie-talkies were walking around, watching us like we were going to blow the place up,'' she said. ``It was ridiculous.''

She said Ms. Frink ``was an inspiration. She told him, `You're not doing anything to get it passed.' She had him nailed, and he couldn't deny it.''

Steve Drucker

Hannelore Huisman

David Stewart joined the National Organization for Women in 1982 and is currently Iowa president.

Linda Vermeire, above, and Judy Vrana (below) organized the first meeting of Women for Equality. 'It was time to bring the women's movement to the Quad-Cities,' Ms. Vrana said.

After the Equal Rights Amendment was defeated in 1982, Ms. Drucker went back to college for a master's degree in women's studies. Then she returned to the Quad-Cities and helped start Hersong, a women's choir.

Ms. Frink remembers coming home from teaching at Sherrard Junior High School in 1970 when a neighbor invited her to a meeting with ``those women that wear those floppy hats that have buttons.''

She went to the first organizational meeting for Women for Equality and was hooked. She began spending four hours after work each day making phone calls for the ERA campaign. NOW delegations often went to Springfield to speak in favor of the ERA.

David Stewart, a social worker for the developmentally disabled, joined the local NOW in 1982, the year the ERA was defeated. He said he was impressed that the activists were ``giving up chunks of their life, literally,'' for the ERA campaign.

At his third NOW meeting he was named chapter secretary. From 1986 to '87 he was chapter president. As a man, that earned him ``mini-celebrity status for a couple seconds,'' he said.

From 1990 to 1994 he served on the national NOW board, and he currently is state president of Iowa NOW.

``I didn't join to empower myself; I joined to empower women,'' he said. ``You can read and listen to the women who talk to you, and understand, and know that oppression affects you when they pay a women less per hour and call her `the secretary,' and call him `the office coordinator.'|''

He said today's issues include abortion, equal pay, shelters, and unfair treatment in the media.

Hannelore Huisman of Rock Island became involved in NOW's work in the school system. After growing up in West Germany, she said, she was appalled at the lack of opportunity in girls' sports here. She said she talked about it with the state superintendent of schools when he came to Rock Island.

Ms. Huisman remembers attending a Rock Island School Board meeting after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it was discriminatory to fire a pregnant woman. The school board was preparing to vote on a handbook which called for not retaining a teacher who was pregnant before start of the school year. She protested, and by a one-vote margin, the board voted not to adopt the policy.

She also remembers a woman mayor who was denied a credit card, and a neighbor who finally received a credit card after applying for it in her late husband's name. When Ms. Huisman applied for a car loan in her own name, her neighbors were called and asked if they knew whether her marriage was in trouble.

In some ways, the women's movement in America has been ``not too noble,'' Ms. Huisman said. ``In some ways, we are still lagging far behind. It's little consolation (that) Arab nations are far worse.''

Judy Vrana and Linda Vermiere of Davenport remember when women's groups across the country called a national women's Strike Day Aug. 26, 1970, in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the legal right to vote.

In the Quad-Cities, the women's strike reportedly fizzled. ``Most female employees reported to work as usual,'' according to an article that night in The Daily Dispatch.

Two days before the strike, about 80 people attended an organizational meeting for Women for Equality.

Ms. Vrana and Ms. Vermeire helped organize that first meeting. The women and their families had a communal lifestyle and were running the Catholic Worker Movement, a hospitality house loosely affiliated with the Catholic church.

About two dozen people lived in the home, including married couples, singles, college students, and 16 children. They had a shelter and soup kitchen and were involved with the anti-war movement.

Ms. Vrana said younger women today take so much for granted. ``Their attitudes are so different than mine was at that age -- that you get married and have kids. Obviously, things have changed massively, and I think that's wonderful.''

Despite the so-called enlightened times, men always were seen as the leaders, Ms. Vrana said. ``It made me see it was time to bring the women's movement to the Quad-Cities. Two of us kind of got the thing rolling. We were the impetus for the first meeting, yes, but so many women were involved.''

That first Women for Equality meeting drew four to five times as many women as expected, Ms. Vermeire said.

``It's never been as exciting as it was those first couple of times,'' she said. ``Now we're really down to the business of it. Then it was so innocent and joyful and very, very hopeful.''

``I look back on that day, and I'm really proud of it,'' Ms. Vrana said.