Spring 2012 - Clarion University

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Kathryn graham, Ph.D.
retired Faculty, english
Chair, ws Founding Committee and advisory Council
November 1982. The chill, drear of the
interstate world outside the car, the warmth and
camaraderie on the inside, where we were far
away from the immediate world of winter, from the
bleak, grey landscape of central Pennsylvania
and on our way to a new horizon, one that lies
ever before us.
Cass Neely, Deb Burghardt and I didn’t
know where we were going that day; we only
knew that we were, as Adrienne Rich said, carrying
“a book of myths in which our names do not
appear”; and that we wanted to change that.
And for the first time, maybe for all of us—certainly
for me—we knew we could.
On that homeward trip from the November
Women’s Consortium conference in Bloomsburg,
we were filled with visions of power, of woman
magic. We drove back to Clarion as if it was a
new land filled with the promise of a new life. We
had taken our first steps in subversion and were
anxious to get back to the arena and try out
what we had learned about leadership. Never
again could we be bested, we thought, because
we had been armed with the skills of leadership.
But with our new power came new
HoRizon
Knowledge; we knew that our power source was
other women, meeting together, working together,
fighting the good fight together. We knew that
in leaving the conference all of those women
like us from across the state, we were leaving the
fountainhead and we were leaving it for a whole
year. How were we to sustain the energy, and the
spirit that filled us to the brim that day
The answer, of course, was to create
another power source closer to home, another
conference of sisters, so that when the cold snows
of winter had just about blasted our souls we
could reach out to the warmth of a new fire that
would chase away the winter and offer a womangreeting
to spring. And thus, the Clarion Women’s
Conference was conceived. Our first conference,
“Leadership: Steps and Strides,” was held the
following spring March, 1983. We began with
steps; today we fly.
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