On a cool, cloudy morning a gusty spring wind tosses the gray-green waters of Back Bay. Here on the western shore—a spot known as Horn Point—waves sweep over a spit of land.

Broken pieces of old docks clutter the shore near signs showing entry points for kayaks and canoes. Plans are afoot to clean up this spot—with help from the Back Bay Restoration Foundation, one of our area’s environmental groups—and create a living shoreline where land and water meet in Virginia Beach’s rural south.

Our region is blessed with abundant waterways, adding beauty to our landscape and providing recreational opportunities, which increase our quality of life. Creeks, inlets, and rivers flow into the ocean, each waterway important to the growth and development of the fisheries that surround us—from the tiny menhaden in the Chesapeake Bay to the rockfish and oysters we consume. Unfortunately, industry, the military, and the explosion of neighborhoods along our waterways have challenged—and in some cases, nearly destroyed—the vitality of our waters. Thankfully, determined area women have been leading the way in efforts to restore local waterways and revitalize the native species that once flourished in our waters. Let’s meet a few of these conservationists who are cleaning up the waters.

IN OUR BACKYARD

In 1991, Marjorie Mayfield Jackson left her job as a writer at The Virginian Pilot. During a six-month sabbatical, she sought clarity about what to do with her life. Sitting in her backyard on Scott’s Creek in Portsmouth, she delighted in the beauty of the natural waterway and the sounds of frogs and birds. But the headlines reported another story—cancer in fish and toxic poisons in the Elizabeth River, the largest river in our region. Some said the river was dead, and nothing could be done about it.

At 35, Marjorie decided to clean up the Elizabeth, home to one of the busiest ports in the world. Its fragile balance of life was being snuffed out by the by-products and actions of busy marine industries, residents, and a dense urban environment. At a kitchen table in 1991, Marjorie and a few friends organized what has become a successful, well-funded non-profit, the Elizabeth River Project—with big goals and exciting partnerships.

“We were not incorporated until 1993, we were all volunteers until ’94, and I was the first staff person—and I’m still here!” Marjorie said, grinning, in ERP’s waterfront offices in downtown Portsmouth.

Nearby ERP’s solar and wind-powered floating classroom, the Learning Barge, rests at anchor. Designed and built by staff at the University of Virginia, the floating classroom has hosted 19,000 children and adults since it entered into service in 2009. Robin Dunbar, ERP’S education director who’s known locally as “Princess Elizabeth,” leads children in learning activities on the barge during the school year.

Marjorie and her staff know that education is the key to keeping the river in the minds of the children and their parents. This summer, in July and August, the Elizabeth River Project and Nauticus are teaming up to offer a camp for kids ages 8-12. Campers will experience modern technology aboard the Learning Barge and the old-world charm of the 1916 replica Schooner Virginia, recently upgraded to take on adults and children for sailing adventures.

Early enthusiasm for cleaning up an urban river developed because local families, musicians, and artists were moved to fight against pollution in their own backyards, Marjorie says. Each year Riverfest, a festival celebrating the efforts of those behind ERP, pays tribute to the organization’s successes.

Marjorie may be the “mama” of ERP, but a staff of eleven helps bring the word to the community and get the job done. Pam Boatwright, assistant director for finance and administration, pops in to the office with some exciting stats. Since 1997, 1,194 acres of habitat have been restored or conserved and more than a billion pounds of refuse have been removed from the Elizabeth River.

“I think that greening and restoration are coming to the forefront of everyone’s mind, but we have a long way to go,” Pam said. “It’s going to take everyone’s help.”

PASSIONATE CARETAKERS

Concern about water pollution and its impact on the region’s seafood and wildlife inspire other local women whose efforts focus on smaller waterways with special challenges. The Lynnhaven River—actually a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay—was once a thriving, living ecosystem, feeding families in the early settlements of Princess Anne County. As the area grew, homes, hotels, and condos developed along the shores, while boaters, tourists, and businesses flooded the area with activity. As a result, levels of pollutants in the Lynnhaven River increased dramatically, bringing health concerns to area residents and making the river’s legendary oysters unfit to eat.

Early in the new millennium, a group of local residents formed an organization called Lynnhaven River 2007 to address the river’s bacterial levels and improve the health of marine ecosystems. Their goals? To clean up the Lynnhaven River and bring back the legendary Lynnhaven oyster. Currently known as Lynnhaven River Now, the organization continues to fight for cleaner water, and happily their efforts are paying off.

Lynnhaven River Now’s first executive director was Laurie Sorabella, who currently heads a small non-profit called Oyster Reef Keepers. Laurie also coordinates more than 8000 area students who participate in LRN’s volunteer oyster program every school year. Since 1997 students and teachers have helped transplant more than five million oysters to safe reefs in the Lynnhaven and other rivers, like the Elizabeth and the Lafayette.

Oysters are vitally important. They serve as filter feeders and can filter as much as 50 gallons of water a day. Growing in reefs, they provide the perfect habitat for smaller aquatic animals like little fish and crabs, who feed bigger water creatures. When more oysters grow, it’s good news for the river.

“It is critical to restore water quality to the rivers because if the water quality isn’t restored in the river, it can never restore the Chesapeake Bay,” Laurie said. “And any pollutant that washes off the watershed, flows into the bay, so the rivers have to be clean.”

Laurie, her husband—a science teacher—and their children, ages 7, 5 and 2, live on the water, not too far from the Lesner Bridge. They are unabashed water lovers, swimming, playing or kayaking whenever they can. Laurie knows that what happens in the 64 square miles of the Lynnhaven has a direct connection to the 64,000 miles of the Chesapeake Bay. It matters to Laurie that her children know the connection of their household habits to the health of the bay, and now her oldest child is planting seed oysters as part of a school project.

In April, Lynnhaven River Now celebrated its 10th anniversary. The members of this vital group can celebrate the renewal of the oyster population, the reduction of bacteria levels and sedimentation in the river, the encouragement of living shoreline building, and the focus on homeowners’ healthy practices in their yard and gardens—LRN’s “Pearl Homes” program, which has enrolled 500 members in just 5 months.

An important part of being a strong environmental organization is knowing when to sound an alarm. The group’s recent newsletter includes a public stand against the proposed coal plant in Surry County, potentially the largest coal burning plant in the state. Executive Director Karen Wilson Forget, who once brought her Virginia Beach Friends’ School science classes to plant oysters in the river, believes that the region would suffer from excess nitrogen and pollution from the plant.

Laurie, Karen, and their colleagues are passionate caretakers of the environmental health of our region. Lynnhaven River Now continues to offer all of us a way to participate in keeping the river, the bay, and the oceans clean.

RICH DIVERSITY

The shoreline of Back Bay, Virginia Beach’s largest watershed, touches a third of the city’s land mass. This part of Tidewater is home to a 25-year-old non-profit, headed by Mary Tilton, a New England native who moved to this area almost two years ago. Southern Virginia Beach’s agricultural and hunting practices have impacted Back Bay, and for the last two decades, the Back Bay Restoration Foundation has focused its work on education, stewardship, and pollution prevention. This group of conservationists is a little different from many environmentalists; most of the board members are farmers, hunters, and fishing enthusiasts.
“This area was a haven for duck hunting and bass fishing all through the early 1900s , but by the 1970s, they saw that the fish weren’t around and the ducks weren’t coming back. So these folks formed a group to improve the health of Back Bay,” Mary explained.

The Blue Goose Tram Tours, which take tourists from the Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge to False Cape State Park, are run by BBRF. When visitors and residents see the rich diversity in the woods and waterways of Back Bay, it helps them appreciate this treasure. Mary embraces a new awareness of environmentally friendly farming and lawn practices, but admits there’s room for improvement.

“Many people with waterfront property like the idea of a manicured look, but that’s not best for water quality. Having a buffer between the water and your yard is really better in the long run,” Mary said. “If you get used to creating that little nature curtain with some native plantings, it can really help!”

Mary believes Back Bay is a gem for Virginia Beach. “It’s amazing for me to go up to the Lynnhaven watershed with the congestion and concrete, and then in 30 minutes, you’re in wide open spaces,” she said. “And in the winter time when the birds are migrating in tens of thousands, you see the nature that is using this place.”

What’s most exciting for Mary Tilton is the foundation’s new project, the construction of a living shoreline at Horn Point. “What we’d like to do is take away the shoreline and put in plants,” Mary said. “It will improve the ability of the shoreline to take storm events, decrease the erosion, and much more.” The Back Bay Restoration Foundation hopes to bring more attention to this precious natural area through its annual forums, fundraisers and training programs, partnering with other area non-profits, and creating opportunities for residents to help.

NEIGHBORHOOD ACTION

Sometimes it takes new eyes to see potential problems and create solutions. When Meredith Cummings, 32, left Charlotte, North Carolina, to marry a Virginia Beach man five years ago, she had no idea she was headed for a course in environmental action. An avid bird and animal lover, Meredith says she feels as though she’s on vacation every day. She and her husband live in the Shadowlawn neighborhood right beside Rudee Inlet. After learning to surf, Meredith started a women’s group, the Surfing Gals, which combines love of the sport with community action. She sees a connection between the enjoyment of the ocean and the responsibility for its cleanliness and health.

“Everyone who lives near Rudee Inlet, all the businesses and residents, have chosen to be there,” Meredith said. “The water that comes all the way from 19th street flows into our watershed. It’s so important to raise people’s awareness that everything they do affects us.”

Last July Meredith founded a non-profit called Rudee Inlet Foundation. The group’s goals are to preserve, protect, and nurture Rudee Inlet and Owl’s Creek. The organization’s first fundraiser at Rocka-feller’s Restaurant raised several thousand dollars, and Meredith is taking “baby steps,” as she moves forward.

Currently, the foundation is run by volunteers, and modest membership fees help fund the early administrative costs. RIF has a website, a board composed of local women, a Seahorse mascot in its logo, and plans for clean ups and neighborhood action initiatives. On June 2, which is Clean the Bay Day, the Rudee Inlet Foundation is hosting “Clean the Inlet Day.”

Meredith believes that everyone with a connection to the area has an obligation to keep it healthy and beautiful. Though the oceanfront is filled with hotels, restaurants, and businesses, Meredith hopes we retain natural habitat for the animals who live with us.

“I’ve always thought that you can take business and environmental needs and combine them together and make it work,” she said.

In a region connected by water, bridges, and common interests, these organizations share a vision of restoring our rivers, shorelines, tidal waters and the bays that feed the Atlantic Ocean. And the determined women behind these groups are ensuring that our waterways remain beautiful and vibrant for future generations to enjoy. 

These fine organizations are always seeking new volunteers to help them in their efforts. For more information:

• elizabethriver.org

• lynnhavenrivernow.org

• bbrf.org

• rudeeinletfoundation.org

Kathleen Fogarty writes regularly for Tidewater Women. Contact her at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Golden rays of afternoon light slip by the window shades into a little room where I am laying face down on a comfortable table, covered in a light sheet from my feet to my lower back. I smell eucalyptus, and I hear flute music playing in the background. I am sinking into a deep relaxation with no concerns; time is truly standing still. I know there are slender, stainless steel needles along my spine, but I can’t feel them. This acupuncture treatment feels as restful as a massage—minus the moving hands of a therapist.

Utilizing acupuncture, dietary consultation, and herbs, Chinese medicine is a complete system of understanding the body based on more than three thousand years of practice and wisdom teaching. Here in Hampton Roads, women trained in these traditions are making great changes in the lives of people who want to maintain wellness. For many who have lived with debilitating and life-threatening conditions, discovering acupuncture has led to restoration of health—without drugs or surgery—sometimes after years of seeking relief with standard medicine. In some cases, Western-trained doctors are joining forces with Chinese medicine practitioners, and the results have been life changing. Let’s meet three women in our region who are sharing the gifts of this ancient healing tradition.

THE BODY’S BALANCE

As you enter Stillpoint Acupuncture and Wellness Center, you notice shelves filled with giant jars of herbs. Two friendly receptionists offer a cup of tea. Soon a lovely, dark-haired woman wearing a flowing, earth-toned sweater and slacks approaches. This is Vivianne Hippol Gantous, Chinese medicine practitioner, nationally board certified in acupuncture and Chinese herbology.

“I grew up in a medical family,” Vivianne said. “All my life I was around internal medicine, antibiotics, and radiology, but all the time I always felt there was something else.”

On a childhood trip with her physician parents to the Philippines, Vivianne witnessed children her own age in poverty and illness. This was the moment when she knew she wanted to help heal people, “to change the world.” She studied international relations and visited China, where she encountered T’ai Chi and Kung Fu. Vivianne witnessed acupuncture for the first time and began exploring Chinese herbs.

After training as an RN, she shadowed alternative practitioners—naturopaths and homeopaths and Chinese medicine practitioners. She moved to California and worked with transplant and cardio patients while attending Emporer’s College, a Chinese medicine school in Santa Monica. As she treated hospital patients, she also saw their conditions and illnesses through the perspective of Yin and Yang, the Chinese sense of balance and guidance for body, mind, and spiritual wellness. In  2004 she received her diploma in acupuncture and Chinese herbology.

Now Vivianne works completely with Chinese medicine, including acupuncture and herbs, but she also emphasizes the role that nutrition plays in overall health. The herbs in her office have been used for thousands of years in China to flavor foods and in tea with deep understanding of how each herb heals. It’s challenging to blend this deep wisdom with the standard American diet, filled with processed foods; the stress of our Western lifestyle; and our chemical-filled environment. Vivianne and other alternative practitioners believe this combination is at the root of much of the disease in our culture.

Patients in Vivianne’s office keep dietary logs and make moderate changes in their eating habits. She offers herbal support in pills, dried herbs mixed for tea, and even raw herbs—what she describes as the “Herbal Pharmacopeia.”

In addition to nutrition counseling and herbal support, Vivianne uses acupuncture to help restore the body’s balance. When she inserts needles just under the skin following specific patterns along certain meridians and energy points, the body and its own healing instincts awaken.

“The thing with living our type of lifestyle is that most of the time we’re out of our bodies,” Vivianne explained. “Some part of acupuncture reconnects the mind back into the body, and then we can become more aware.”

Science is beginning to support this ancient practice. When our bodies are run down, explained Vivianne, deep in the intra-cellular level, things are not working. When these imbalances are not corrected, the cells around organ systems can affect other organs and ultimately our wellness. She noted recent studies that support the role of acupuncture: “What has been found in PET scans is that when needles are inserted, the gradient of positive and negative ions in the cells becomes more balanced.”

Overall, patients respond very quickly after treatments, Vivianne said, even seniors who have had long-standing medical issues. However, she cautions that acupuncture is not an approach for people with major structural issues.

Vivianne knows first hand the way acupuncture heals. After the birth of her first daughter four years ago, she said she was simply not herself. This manifestation of lack of energy and vitality—symptoms of post-partum depression—was enough to send Vivianne for acupuncture to Jean Hardesty, the woman who preceded her in the office where she now practices. Jean’s work helped restore her, and eventually, when Jean moved on to North Carolina, Vivianne took on Jean’s practice. Two years later, after the birth of a second daughter, similar symptoms surfaced. Vivianne began to work with nutritional response therapy, taking just the right supplements to restore her brain, emotions, and mental acuity.

“It was literally just a few weeks before my memory was much better and my mood was restored,” she said. “It was phenomenal.”

Because of her experiences, Vivianne has deep empathy for women who have Cesarean births or mastectomies—radical, quick medical procedures which may cause them to wonder if they will ever be the same. Vivianne offers hope in her 21st-century application of these ancient skills. “I just want them to know that they can be helped,” she said.

NATURE’S OWN CYCLES

Some women who have endured lifelong health issues find Chinese medicine after every other path comes to a dead end. When Sandy Dumont, professional speaker, image consultant, and writer, lived in Belgium, she suffered intense bouts of bronchitis. As a model, poor health impacted her vitality. From the outside, Sandy presented a polished, professional look; however, her health challenges increased.

After returning to the United States more than ten years ago, she was plagued with mouth issues and ulcers, making it difficult for her to speak, and heart palpitations. Though she tried every kind of specialist in the medical field, nothing helped, not even strict dietary changes. Someone referred her to a woman in Asheville, North Carolina, a Chinese medicine practitioner and acupuncturist named Cynthia Wallace. Once a month, Sandy drove to Asheville for treatments. Her health began to return.

In 2003, Cynthia moved her practice to Virginia Beach, and Sandy continued her treatments. “Now I jump out of bed every morning ready for whatever the day brings, thanks to Cynthia,” Sandy said. “I am well and healthy. She is my family doctor—my husband’s, too—and she is simply an angel.”

Today Cynthia, who practices at the Chinese Acupuncture Clinic, has a full appointment book and a waiting list. She doesn’t advertise. Her patients find her because of positive experiences of friends and acquaintances. She works out of an airy office in a building with beautifully designed rooms, reflecting her keen understanding of Feng Shui principles. Cynthia’s office features the color red, a symbol of fire, keeping her mental energy clear and potent. Cynthia’s manner is firm, quiet, and yet, playful. Metaphors spring into her conversation at any moment.

“There are archetypes within Chinese medicine, sort of like vehicle types,” she explained. “You’ve got your Volvos and your SUVs. Wood types are drawn to the water’s edge, so there are lots of wood types around here.”

She speaks about the patients who find her. “It seems like I get people who are either desperate or well-educated people who have run the gamut of everything allopathic medicine has to offer and they haven’t found a solution to their problem—or people who have been exposed to Chinese medicine and naturally think outside the box, who may be distrustful of pharmaceuticals and are going to try this first.”

Cynthia says it can be very helpful to work with Chinese medicine initially because if these subtle, natural methods don’t address a problem, a patient can follow up with allopathic care.

According to Cynthia, Chinese medicine truly addresses women’s unique body systems. “The strength of Oriental medicine—the herbs, the acupuncture—is gynecology,” she said. “The Chinese really understand the blood. Are your periods harmonious? Is everything rhythmic? Any pain syndromes or emotional static electricity building up just as your estrogen levels peak before the onset? If blood is perhaps the most material form of consciousness, then any emotional problems in the psyche can be addressed via the blood.”

In Chinese medicine, everything is connected—physical, emotional, and mental. Cynthia says sometimes depression or other emotional difficulties bring a patient to her office. She looks at each situation from a number of perspectives.

“I would say that there are different levels of phenomenon,” she said. “You want to gaze at the phenomenon and see how many of these levels are playing into it. Is there an organic basis, is it just situational, or is it a mood that just changes with the weather?”

The eventual goal of this kind of practice, says Cynthia, is a wellness that includes being in tune with circadian rhythms—like night and day—and in sync with nature’s own cycles.

Cynthia is also committed to seeing families progress in health and wellness. “The most rewarding thing for me is getting access to the next generation. I only charge for the first visit, and parents only pay for the children’s herbs. Then every visit for the children after that, until puberty, is free,” she said.

“My goal is to get everybody to maintenance,” Cynthia said, “to where they’re healthy, they know how to live, they know how to eat, and they don’t fall back on the social system. And it’s cheaper to be healthy!”

A WHOLE PERSON

For some women, acupuncture can be one of the most supportive steps in preparing for parenthood. Suzanne Garcia, owner of Natural Elements Spa & Salon in Chesapeake, is now the mom of two sons, ages 5 and 6. She had tried to become pregnant, but learned that she had endometriosis. She also knew how difficult it would be to have eggs retrieved, even with the help of a well-known fertility specialist, Dr. Robin Poe-Ziegler.

Suzanne wondered if acupuncture could assist her body in becoming receptive to the implantation of eggs. She had already experienced acupuncture in Northern Virginia when she had migraines, and it worked beautifully for her.

Suzanne found Jennifer Sadler, owner of Tidewater Acupuncture and Wellness, a few blocks from Dr. Robin’s office. She made an appointment.

“Jennifer listened so carefully, took down my whole history, and I felt a good connection,” Suzanne said. “I had acupuncture treatments, specially timed prior to my visits with Dr. Robin. And soon, I was pregnant with my first son.”

Not long after the birth of her first baby, Suzanne was able to conceive again with the help of Jennifer and Dr. Robin. Today her relationship with Jennifer continues—through rounds of sniffles and regular wellness tune-ups for both her and her sons, one of whom was diagnosed with asthma when he was only three.

“I thought, ‘Oh, no, I don’t want to go through all the breathing machines and medicine, after all we went through to have him,’” Suzanne said.

After just two acupuncture treatments, he was breathing freely and has never had any asthma symptoms again. Suzanne credits Jennifer with helping her son and her family maintain excellent health.

Jennifer came to acupuncture after a serious car accident threatened her health when she was a recent Radford grad with a business degree. She was on the way home from her first job when her car was totaled. After working with many medical specialists and physical therapy, she was told that it was likely she’d be taking medicine for pain management for the rest of her life. With pain in her back and shoulders and migraines, Jennifer says even daily chores were excruciating. She kept open to other forms of healing, took yoga, got regular massages, and finally found a chiropractor who offered something more: acupuncture.

“After the very first visit to Dan Redwood, I was free of pain for the first time in two years,” she recalled. “It came back, and I had a few more treatments. Then one day, it was gone.”

At the time, Jennifer worked as an accountant. But the idea of helping other people live pain-free, healthy, whole lives appealed to her. Dr. Redwood suggested that Jennifer visit the school where he had taken classes in Columbia, Maryland. She graduated from the Traditional Acupuncture Institute in Maryland in 2003 and has been in practice for nine years.

“So the man who hit me that day was a blessing. I like to spin in that way,” she said, grinning.

“I thought if I can spend the rest of my life giving this gift, to resurrect healing that is still present in the body, what an amazing gift that can be,” she added.

Jennifer’s practice is located near Sentara Virginia Beach General Hospital. She treats families with colds and aches and pains, like a general care practitioner, as well as dozens of women like Suzanne Garcia, who are seeking assistance for fertility issues. Jennifer says that there are special treatments for men’s reproductive health as well.

Jennifer has nothing but gratitude for some aspects of the Western medical system—the invention of insulin and blood thinners, for example, and the vital medicines and surgeries that keep people alive. She offers her patients an analogy to explain the difference between the standard system we know and the way she practices.

“Western medicine is like a mechanic. You have something broken, you go to that person who fixes that specific part and then you shoot off on your way,” she said. “In Eastern medicine, it’s more tending like a gardener. You notice how the body is acting, if something is a little off, how you are in different seasons. It treats you as a whole person.” 

Kathleen Fogarty writes regularly for Tidewater Women. She lives on a farm in Va.  Beach with her husband, John.

What do the commanding officer of Naval Station Norfolk, a Bayside High School senior, and the interim provost and vice president of academic affairs at Norfolk State University have in common? They are all Girl Scouts, bringing talents and skills to our community. This year, they and millions of women and girls celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of Girl Scouts of America, an organization which encourages girls from all backgrounds to become cooperative, confident, and capable women.

The Girl Scouts have declared 2012 the “Year of the Girl” and are focusing on increasing opportunities for more young women, hoping they will follow in the footsteps of the 60 percent of American female leaders who are former Girl Scouts. Let’s meet a few of these leaders—former and present Girl Scouts—who are empowering others with their talents and example, changing the world, one girl at a time.

ACADEMIC LEADER

“When I was a girl, I had not envisioned myself in an academic career, but I knew I wanted to become successful in an important way,” said Dr. Sandra DeLoatch, acting provost at Norfolk State University. Born and raised in Suffolk, she began her journey to leadership as a Brownie Girl Scout at meetings held in her church. Back then, Sandra says, scouting gave girls an opportunity to socialize, make crafts, and learn skills. Day camps offered summertime fun, she recalls. That wholesome atmosphere gave her the confidence to become her true self, embracing all her talents.

Around the time many girls decide they are not made for math, Sandra made a decision. “In the seventh grade I knew that I wanted to go to college and major in math,” she said. “And I was fortunate; I grew up with a good support system, with no nay-sayers about my future plans.”

As dean of the College of Science, Engineering, and Technology—fields where women have been in the minority—Dr. DeLoatch has made a personal commitment to Tidewater area Girl Scouts, creating opportunities for girls interested in science and technology careers through her work with the Girl Scout Council of the Colonial Coast. Last November, she received the “Thanks” badge, the highest award an adult Girl Scout can learn. The council honored her by creating the “Dr. Sandra DeLoatch STEM patch” (Science Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), which can be earned by girls in kindergarten through high school through a series of hands-on activities, guided by student mentors and Norfolk State faculty.

Sandra cites recent research on the effectiveness of all girl-environments, which provide a place where girls with different personalities and gifts can feel safe to explore and grow courage, confidence, and character.

“And, as a parent, you think to yourself, ‘What better comfort can I have when my daughter is involved with like-minded girls, having good, positive, wholesome experiences,’” Sandra said. She believes that many girls today grow up very fast, and scouting gives them a chance to grow as they have fun, camping, canoeing, swimming, and learning together.

Even cookie selling has taken a whole new spin, Sandra says.

“Back in my day, cookies sold for forty cents a box, but now it’s a big business, and girls are learning so much more!” she said.

Beyond cookie sales and making lanyards, girls who stay involved in scouting earn awards that take discipline and commitment—the Bronze, Silver, and Gold Awards. Sandra DeLoatch says she is so impressed at every Gold Award ceremony with the depth and breadth of each girl’s project.

GOLD AWARD ACHIEVER

Rachel Eddowes, 18, is doing all the things that high school seniors do: thinking about her future, applying to colleges, getting ready to graduate and create a new life. But this friendly, competent Bayside High School student has also recently completed a Girl Scout Gold Award, the culminating achievement of a lifelong journey as a Girl Scout. With the legacy of scouting in her family, Rachel became a Daisy in a troop founded by her mother, Ellen, when their Navy family was stationed in California. When they moved to Navy installations in Spain and Italy, her mom led new troops as Rachel became a Brownie and then a Junior scout.

Rachel recalled one of her favorite parts of scouting: Thinking Day. “All the girls in a troop select a country to study, and then on Thinking Day, you present information about that country and share a ‘swap’—a little craft that you make—with other girls. I have a whole box full of swaps,” she said, smiling.

These days, Rachel is an Ambassador Scout and a member of a coed scouting program for teens called “Venturing.” She has earned her CPR certification, learned wilderness first aid, and enjoyed lots of outdoor adventures. In January, Rachel was honored for completing her Venturing Silver Award, which—like her Gold Award—is the equivalent to the Boy Scouts’ Eagle Award, a highly respected accomplishment.

While many Girl Scout Gold Awards focus on a community issue, the motivation for Rachel’s project grew out of her father’s diagnosis of ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. When Rachel was in the third grade living in Italy with her family, her father, Andrew, began having a series of symptoms that required a trip to the Portsmouth Naval Hospital here in Virginia. Initially, the family thought he would be having back surgery; however, once he was diagnosed with ALS, everything changed. The Eddowes family moved back to the states.

“He went from walking to using a cane, to using a wheelchair, to using a power chair, and now being bedridden,” Rachel said. “My Dad has had ALS going on nine years now, and so he’s hospitalized, he can’t move, and needs full time nursing care.” She says her dad’s illness is something she has learned to accept. Rachel decided that she could turn her family’s challenge into a learning opportunity.

She knew that many families in Tidewater had no understanding about ALS. And Rachel was aware that families who have a member with the disease often have difficulty keeping up with simple housing maintenance and basic lawn care. So she created a Gold Award project with the title: “ALS: Awareness, Advocacy, and Service.”

To create awareness, Rachel produced a Power Point Presentation to educate members of the community about symptoms and possible causes of the disease, current ALS research, and how the disease affects patients and their families. As an advocate for families, she traveled to Washington D.C. to meet with Representative Scott Rigell to lobby for sustained government funding. There is no known cause—although there are some theories—and at present, no known cure, a fact that discourages families who watch their loved ones lose voluntary control of their bodies, speech, and mobility.

The impassioned scout gave her Power Point Presentation to five different groups, beginning with the students at Bayside High School’s Health and Science Academy. For the service component of her award, Rachel gathered Bayside student volunteers to assist families who needed household or outdoor help.

Rachel Eddowes’ Gold Award is a living example of the Girl Scout code, which includes honesty, respect, sensitivity, and service. These ethics and principles flow naturally into roles of leadership, reflected in business, academia, government, and military service. What better way to build a confident, caring American citizen?

COMMANDING OFFICER

She is the first woman in charge of operations at Naval Station Norfolk, providing support to 46,000 sailors and 105,000 dependents with the assistance of more than 2,000 military and civilian personnel on the Naval station staff. At a recent luncheon at Town Center City Club, Captain Mary M. Jackson gave a presentation called “The State of the Station,” including photos, facts, and figures about the mission of Naval Station Norfolk. Her intense presence, intelligence, and competence filled the room. Captain Jackson is another Girl Scout who grew up to become a leader.

Her journey began in Saudi Arabia, where she lived with her geologist father and cartographer mother. As a Brownie in her mom’s troop, far from American towns and cities, Mary started learning important skills that shaped the woman she has become.

“I think being a Girl Scout demonstrated a couple of things to me. For one thing, watching my mother in the role of leader was important. Because we were overseas, we had the opportunity to work with other troops on foreign soil, with people from other countries,” she said. “And it taught me how to establish goals and then accomplish them, working together to get there.”

“What Girl Scouts gave me was exposure and courage,” she said. “It gave basic principles like respect. These are all things you need when you’re working with others.”

Captain Jackson’s life journey includes earning a BS in Physics from the U.S. Naval Academy and taking tours of duty from Hawaii to the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas to the Arabian Gulf and beyond. She earned a Master’s in engineering management from George Washington University. Her Girl Scout beginnings served her well.

As she reflected on those innocent days of girlhood, Captain Jackson recalled a favorite memory. Beyond leadership training skills and earning badges, she remembers the songs. “Traditionally when you sang songs, you were in a circle,” she recalled. “I have memories that I can picture, whether we were out in the desert or in a compound, or in a gymnasium, doing things that were positive and fun, uplifting and uniting.”

Captain Jackson has a daughter, now 12, who is also growing up as a Girl Scout. She witnesses the way the girls have learned to respect each other and get along as they’ve developed in Norfolk-based Troop 5555.

“I think the emphasis on collaboration and working with other people is a big piece of it,” Captain Jackson said. She explained how important it is to understand who you are, how you communicate, and how you use those skills effectively in many diverse environments.

“And something that Girl Scouting really encourages is to not be inward focused, to open your eyes, see what’s out there and what you can focus on, to jump on the things you’re interested in and make a difference,” Captain Jackson said. “The world is yours!”

THE COUNCIL

Girl Scouts in 2012 have more opportunities available than at any time in the past. With more adult mentors, as well as a focus on developing team building and leadership skills through specialized summer camp programs and new badges, the Girl Scout Council of Colonial Coast continues to thrive. The council has reason to celebrate with over 22,000 members from Matthews County to Ocracoke, North Carolina. Tidewater area Girl Scouts can be found working on research projects in local libraries, planting trees on a new farm, volunteering with a variety of community non-profits, and learning outdoor survival skills.

As Melinda Carroll wrote in a song for the Girl Scouts of Hawaii in 1989: “Change the world, come with me, time to let our dreams fly free. In the Girl Scouts, together, we change the world.” The song still rings true, as Girl Scouts learn and grow, leading the way for girls—here in Tidewater and around the world. 

Don’t miss the Girls Scouts’ 4th annual Black Tie fundraiser, Samoa Soirée, featuring chef-inspired recipes using Girl Scout cookies on Feb. 17 at the Westin Virginia Beach Town Center.

For more information about special events planned for the 100-year anniversary, visit gsccc.org. There’s never been a better time to get involved in Girl Scouts!

Behind closed doors on the second floor of the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News is a surprise: a spacious, white laboratory with long tables covered by specimens in fluid-filled containers, computers, and journals with carefully recorded notes. Giant snakelike exhaust tubes and various tools provide clues to the research that takes place here in what the staff calls “The Clean Lab.”

Beyond, a metal garage door opens to a steel balcony, revealing “The Wet Lab,” where the remains of an ancient artifact lie. In both places, museum conservators are uncovering the secrets found in the turret of the Civil War Ironclad, the Monitor, dragged from the depths of the ocean a few years ago by a team of Navy divers collaborating with NOAA. History, archeology, chemistry, and biology collide in this amazing undertaking. With 210 tons of material to explore, seven staff members dedicate countless hours to the project. Two of them are women.

Today women are leaping ahead in the sciences, claiming their places in disciplines beyond those traditionally associated with females. In a region like Hampton Roads with several universities, NASA, museums, the military, and other scientific operations, women with degrees in the sciences and the passion to follow unique career paths are inspiring the next generation to observe, learn, and discover our world—in the air, under the water, and on the earth’s crust.

THE GEOLOGIST

“Rocks talk to me. I love geology and I love teaching,” said Professor Azan Tabrizi, an enthusiastic instructor in the geology department at Tidewater Community College’s Chesapeake Campus. The lively, intense, dark-eyed woman is on a mission: to share her excitement about the earth’s composition. Azan brings passion and real-life earth encounters to a varying demographic—thanks to TCC’s multiple campuses, online classes, and reasonable tuition. She opens her students’ eyes to the extraordinary in everyday materials.

“When my students say, ‘It’s only dirt,’ I tell them, ‘No, it is soil, and soil is created from eroded rock,” Azan explained. “We could not survive on this planet without the rocks that make the soil where we grow our food.”

Born in Iran and educated in the Middle East and London, Azan says that it was her father—a man she considered an unschooled genius—who insisted that his daughters and sons pursue an education in whatever field they desired. The six siblings embraced math and science. A geology teacher in Azan’s high school inspired her to study the earth itself: the rocks and the stories within them. The fascination she felt then launched her life’s passion.

After working in the oil industry for some years, Azan and her husband, also a geologist, immigrated to the United States. In 2000, Azan began teaching physical geology at TCC in Virginia Beach, starting part time with one class and one lab a week. Today there are many sections of both physical and historical geology offered at TCC’s campuses in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake as well as online courses. All of Azan’s classes fill up quickly, and she makes sure to meet her online students face to face at least once a semester, keeping in contact with up to 90 students at a time.

One of her online students, Martha Lupton of Virginia Beach, returning to higher education in mid-life, took both of Azan’s classes this fall. Raised in the country, Martha said, “Mrs. Tabrizi changed a lot of what I thought. I always had a sense of what fault lines were and a little about plate tectonics. Because of what she shared and offered us, it made me understand things more deeply, like the passive coastline we have here. It made me feel, oh, boy, this is amazing!”

Every semester, Azan takes her students to Sandbridge to explore the precious elements of our own shores. They take samples of sand from various locations near the water, analyze it, and share their findings.

Azan feels that women make excellent science students because they are patient, observant, and care deeply about the world around them. She models this behavior in her nurturing attitudes towards her students. She insists that every student make a presentation in front of their classmates, learning public speaking skills and gaining confidence.

“I tell them, ‘I will be there with you, standing behind you. You can do this!’” she said.

Several intriguing rocks sit on the desk in Azan’s humble TCC office.

“This is a piece of sedimentary rock, which preserves all the events happening for millions and billions of years,” she said, holding a stone given to her by another geologist. She points out evidence of an earthquake in a broken dark line that permeates the rock. She calls it “my jewel,” cradling it in her hands and holding it close to her heart like a mother holding an infant.

“This is more important than a five-carat diamond for me,” she said with a tender smile on her face. Whether or not Azan’s students embrace geology as a career, she knows that she has changed the way many of them feel about science. But as they leave her classroom, she sees them picking up gravel and identifying types of rock.

Though she has traveled all over the world, Azan has one place still to see, a geologist’s dream destination: the Grand Canyon with its layers of rock and amazing contrast and colors. Perhaps this is the year she’ll encounter the earth in a new way.

MUSEUM CONSERVATORS

Most people who visit a museum usually have no idea about what happens behind the scenes. In the case of the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, conservators Tina Gutshall and Elsa Sangouard combine the intensity of scientists, the curiosity of detectives, and the painstaking skills of archaeologists in their work on the Monitor. Everything they observe and handle with gloves or tools has been underwater for more than a hundred and forty years. And everything tells a story.

Elsa came to the museum several years ago from France with a background in physics, archaeology, and museum conservation.

“Any object can be a challenge scientifically,” she explained. “You can go very deep or not, depending on the interest you have in it.”

Tina, who has worked at the museum for 11 years, began in the collections management department. She left the museum for a brief period and returned in 2002 as a conservation assistant. She is fascinated every day with what the team is discovering. It may be as small as a button or as fragile as a kneecap.

“This is a national historic icon, any one of these artifacts,” Tina said. “It’s not something we can literally drill into to take a sample. We have to take the utmost care with everything that we work on.”

Sometimes the objects must be x-rayed to observe the construction. In a recent case, the team had to separate parts of a “sponge,” a sort of cannon plunger, which Elsa described as “a giant bottle brush” used for cleaning the cannon between uses. It had a metal handle and a wooden end. She donned a pair of gloves, squatted beside a plastic storage bucket filled with liquid, and lifted a large, rounded object, tapered and cone shaped. This object had a function in the Civil War.

Then she picked up a sealed glass bottle from another tray on her work table, filled with a murky white substance. Like good scientists, Elsa and Tina hypothesize who the bottle may have belonged to, what could be inside, and now how they will determine the contents.

As in any laboratory, safety protocols are necessary since the women use many chemicals in their practice.

“We have face masks that we wear and higher-end partial face masks so that you can change the filters out depending on if you are using an acid or a solvent,” Tina said. “You have to wear a lot of protective gear if you are working with sodium hydroxide powder because it can turn your skin to soap if you are not careful.”

Most people may envision conservators repairing tapestries, paintings, or sculpture.

“In the art world,” said Tina, “you can analyze the composition of the paints, using scientific principles, and that same kind of analysis can be applied to any object conservators are working on for anything around the world.”

New technology helps.

“With the advent of a lot of analytical equipment, we can learn so much. We even use 3D laser scanning—also referred to a metrology—down to a micron level in our work,” she added.

Both Tina and Elsa experience daily awe, looking at objects hidden underwater for so long—like a navy blue wool coat, torn in pieces, now partially assembled like puzzle pieces, resting in a flat container. They even found a few unmatched shoes.

“Every time I’m working on the coat, I’m wondering whose it was,” Elsa said reverently. “Then I’m looking and handling a shoe; it’s very personal.”

The Monitor project is slated to continue until at least 2030. With thousands more objects to explore, examine, and identify, these museum conservators hope their work reveals more of the story. No matter what they do later in their careers, this will stand out as one of the most exciting experiences of their working lives.

THE ORNITHOLOGIST

While some scientists seek hidden clues from long-lost objects, others are captivated by animals living in the here and now.

At the Virginia Aquarium in Virginia Beach, 48-year-old Crystal Matthews is curator of birds and supervisor of quarantine. She oversees the museum’s aviary, filled with over 100 birds of 30 species. She also quarantines new birds, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals destined to join various exhibits in the museum. The Eastern Shore native says she gained experience watching birds and their behavior as a girl on outdoor trips, walking and fishing with her dad in Chincoteague and Assateague.

“I learned the waterfowl, first of all, then songbirds,” Crystal said. “And at a young age, I joined a bird club and realized I had a knack for identifying birds. I started paying attention to their behaviors, which is critical to what I do now.”

“Observation is key for any scientist, especially working with animals,” she continued. “You have a fine-tuned knowledge of what’s normal versus not normal.”

She pointed out various birds in the open, well-designed aviary—the cormorants and ibis, the owls in their tiny wooden box, a large pileated woodpecker, wild turkeys, gannets, and ducks. As some of the birds plunged their bills into their back feathers, she explained that they’re “zipping up” their feathers so that when they encounter water, they can stay dry. The ducks sit in clumps, like middle school girls in a cafeteria, each group with a boundary and safely distant from the others.

Crystal followed her natural passion to school, eventually earning her B.S. in zoology at the University of Maryland and a Master’s degree at William and Mary. Her thesis focused on black skimmers, birds that nest along the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. Her love of shore birds native to this part of Virginia provided her with an excellent background for this position, where she not only cares for animals, but also supervises six full-time and three part-time museum employees.

She believes that working in this setting presents opportunities to stretch commonly held assumptions about bird behavior, allowing her to find out what is working and what needs to be amended. Crystal has to maintain the integrity of life for birds outside and inside, such as the songbirds and quail in the Upper River Room and the finches in the komodo dragon exhibit.

“One of the things that you really learn as a scientist—and I learned this in school and it happens on a daily basis here—is to problem solve,” she said.

But beyond this museum, Crystal believes her work is fundamental to the health of the planet. Looking at the bird population, says Crystal, gives clues to the health of the marsh. While the Virginia Aquarium is a sanctuary for many animals, brought to the museum because they couldn’t survive in the world, there’s another reality beyond the airy, woven netting which tents over the aviary.

“If the environment is not doing what it’s supposed to do, if the crab and minnow population is down, the birds won’t have enough to eat,” Crystal said. “It’s all part of the circle of life. They have to feed to reproduce, and if their population is falling off, then there’s something wrong with the marsh.”

In Crystal Matthews’ case, her work as an ornithologist was born of her own natural skills, interests, and experiences, as well as her life among watermen in her family. For other women, the inspiration of teachers and mentors combined with a healthy dose of curiosity can open doors to fulfilling science careers and many discoveries along the way. 

Kathleen Fogarty writes regularly for Tidewater Women.

On a beautiful October day, a group gathers in Hampton for an artistic experience at the Arc of the Virginia Peninsula, an organization serving adults with developmental delays. Angela Stroup, an expressive, encouraging artist, offers a buffet of tools: paint brushes, tubes of acrylic paints, Styrofoam trays for palettes, paper, and a quartet of musical selections from different cultures.

This program is sponsored by another regional non-profit, Tidewater Arts Outreach (TAO), which pairs artists and musicians with groups in need of enlightenment and entertainment.

The adults spend the next hour playing with color and form, accessing their innate creativity. They appear tentative and, at the same time, curious.

“Who’s an artist here?” Angela asks, her bright eyes alert.

She surveys the group, waiting for a smile, hoping for a raised hand. After a pause, she says, “You’re all artists!”

Angela Stroup, registered nurse and professional artist, selects a piece of music with a slow tempo and soothing melody, inviting her new friends to let their brushes dance with colors, smears, dabs, lines on their paper. Recreation therapy assistants support the adults with materials and guidance while Angela moves gracefully around the room, dancing. When African music fills the room, the residents call out: “I hear monkeys! I hear elephants!”

Brushes swirl, and participants sway, move, and smile. One by one, canvases fill with color. Soon Angela asks, “Where in your body do you feel the music?”

One man, expressionless, unable to speak, pats his own chest gently, near his heart. This inspiring moment fills Angela’s own heart with joy.

TALENT & DISCIPLINE

Art therapy is a professional therapeutic practice which helps many kinds of people: children who have suffered trauma, loss, or illness; people recovering from cancer, alcohol, drug, or sexual abuse; as well as anyone who is grieving or has chronic mental illness. Though many of us unconsciously use artistic practices to soothe our own souls, art therapists are trained to guide their clients through an arts experience they might otherwise not be able to enjoy.

A handful of graduate students at Eastern Virginia Medical School—only twenty per year—work full time in the classroom and in community internships, learning the skills of art therapy. They must earn 25 extra credit hours to be eligible for certification as licensed professional counselors and registered art therapists. Dr. Abby Calisch, a sculptor and psychologist, is the director of the graduate art therapy and counseling program. She’s encouraged by a swell of enthusiasm in the profession.

“Nationally, interest in the field has increased, after Careerbuilder.com called art therapy one of the ‘Hot Top 10 Jobs,’” she said. Dr. Calisch believes creativity is a central part of being a well-rounded human being.

Facilitating wellness through art therapy takes a potent blend of talent and academic discipline, as well as a desire to care for people. Most students who apply to the program have a bachelor’s degree in art or psychology and a minor in either of those disciplines.

First-year student Evans Baker, 36, came to EVMS with a master’s degree in consumer psychology and art. She worked in the field of commercial art and graphic design for a few years but became burned out by the lack of meaning in her work. She felt like “a walking, warm blooded computer.” Evans’ true passion is working with people, so EVMS’s program suited her beautifully, even though it meant spending two years living in Virginia, away from her husband in North Carolina.

As an immigrant to the U.S. from China who moved to this country when she was 17, Evans brings a unique perspective. She recalls her own family’s emotional and mental health issues and always wondered what could be done for them besides doctors and drugs. Evans was recently nominated by the dean of students to serve on the school’s diversity community. Since the majority of art therapy students are women of European American descent, Evans is happy to share her insights as an Asian-born woman. She already knows that her thesis will involve the role of culture and heritage in art therapy.

“A lot of my friends don’t know where they come from, and it can be very exciting to find out your heritage. It can help your self image, knowing how special you are, and it can be very emotional,” she explained. “And for people like me, with an American husband, defining my own self image is very important.”

Part of the training at EVMS involves keeping a daily art journal. Each student is encouraged to revisit the events that happen every day in an artistic way, not as a typewritten report.

“We really have a therapeutic relationship with those journals!” Evans said.

She believes there are a number of important traits a person needs to become an art therapist.

“You have to be excited about art, be passionate about people, willing to explore your own experiences, and be aware of self-care, exercise, diet, social time, everything,” she said.

Evans is embracing her graduate program with a future vision; she wants to earn a doctorate in psychology as well.

CREATIVITY & WELLNESS

Virginia Beach resident Meghan Bernier, 40, a graduate of EVMS’ art therapy and counseling program, works primarily with chalk pastels, creating bright, glorious flowers and tropical fish. Meghan uses art to push past challenges in her life and empower others. She grew up in Alaska, in a family with strict religious codes and a parent with mental health issues. Her constant friend was a collection of crayons, which she used to cope with her young emotions. She married very young, had four children, each a year apart—one of whom had learning challenges—and then divorced while her children were very young. Strong, intelligent, and focused, Meghan worked a number of jobs. Throughout this challenging time, she kept a sketchpad and black micron pens handy and relied on art as a way to cope.

When Megan remarried ten years ago, her husband supported her desire to go to school, beginning with interior design at TCC. She wanted more. Meghan turned to psychology, hoping to understand herself, her son, and her family background better. She said she “absorbed everything intensely and didn’t like the person I became, examining so much.” She returned to art. While completing her bachelor of science degree at ODU, she chose art as her minor and embraced the balance of the two disciplines: the world of creativity and the work of wellness.

The EVMS program nearly fell into her lap, and for the next two years, Meghan’s art work blossomed. The nurturing she knew as a parent stretched beyond her home life; she served internships at Renaissance Academy and CHKD, where she said she was perfectly at ease with all the kids. Then, Dr. Calisch told Meghan she’d be working at the VA Hospital in Hampton. It was not her preference; however, Meghan admitted, “What I resist is often the best thing for me.” This group of patients filled her heart.

“I never minded the drive to Hampton,” she said. “I worked 8 to 4:30 three days a week with men and women of all ages, from their young 20s to early 80s. I created groups with these amazing people who had served our country, most with substance abuse issues. I just loved it.”

Currently, Meghan is working on her art and embracing a new project at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center. She’s still earning hours towards certification under Dr. Abby Calisch’s supervision. The extra hours are required for licensure. She credits the program for her centered attitude and strength.

“What we learned about ourselves during our time at EVMS will be with us the rest of our lives,” she said.

A BETTER LIFE

While many art therapists have degrees and professional credentials, some women find instinctive paths to art and wellness. Debi Maloney, director of the Lighthouse Center, which has been providing daytime support for the homeless in Virginia Beach for more than two decades, had a strong feeling that the women in her program would benefit from exploring art.

Debi is not a professional artist, but she embraces art in her life and wanted to share it. Three years ago, she attended a workshop by mixed media artist, Beth Bender. Debi and Beth developed a project in which women create journals which included collage, painting, and drawing. Their second art exploration, called the “HeArt Project,” encouraged women to share the story of their hearts: the longings they had for love, the hurts, the mending, losses, and memories of those they were loved by and those they loved. The finished hearts were exhibited at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art in Virginia Beach last winter, inspiring many in the outer community and earning kudos for the women of the Lighthouse.

“Many women had never worked with any other art form and wondered ‘Can I really do this?’ They cheered each other on and supported each other through the process,” Debi explained. “Our formerly drab conference room became a safe place with a closed door, where women could build community and create art.”

“I realized that art can heal the soul and inspire people to creatively tell their stories, even when there was pain or grief. Beth and I realized that the more they told their stories, the stronger they became,” Debi added.

This winter, the shelter is beginning a journal project that will explore each woman’s spiritual identity and journeys, using multiple media. As the women work together, they build trust, something Debi says is hard for women who have had to live precarious lives.

“It’s especially rewarding when some of the graduates—women who have gone on to productive lives with work and homes—come back and work with us again,” said Debi. Art often gives these women the hope and the vision for something more, a better life. 

There’s an old joke about the comedy business. One comedian says to another: “I hear you’re the world’s greatest comedian? What’s the secret of your success?” Without waiting for the end of the question, the other comedian jumps in and answers: “Timing.”

Watch any comic actor—from Lucille Ball to Ellen DeGeneres to Wanda Sykes—on television, in films, or onstage at a comedy club, and you’ll find that joke to be true. And yet, becoming a comedian takes a multiplicity of skills, something more than pulling a prank on a sibling or doing an impression.

Ask any of the women doing comedy in our region—performing standup, taking a class, or as a member of a popular improv group. They’ll tell you comedy takes courage, work, commitment, and a kind of reckless honesty most of us are unwilling to practice. But when their routines remind us of our own human foibles and we giggle, laugh, or guffaw, that’s when comedians are making it possible for all of us to relax, loosen up, and let go.

HAPPY HEALING

Any life challenge can be a wake up call, says Joy Julian, 38, librarian at the Chesapeake Center for Science and Technology. Joy was always funny, the one who could make or take a joke in any group. But three years ago, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, a friend challenged Joy with the question: What do you want to do before you turn 40? Her friend wanted to jump out of a plane, and she did. Joy was only 35, but she decided to act on her own wish: She really wanted to do stand up comedy. Now, she does.

Joy’s friend treated her to a standup comedy class with Ken Phillips at the Muse Writers Center in Norfolk almost two years ago. Joy learned quickly, developing a string of jokes in a character based on “ a caricature of myself with an exaggerated Southern drawl.” For the last year or so, Joy has been stepping out on stage in clubs like Cozzy’s in Newport News and the Cinema Café in Virginia Beach. She has turned her life around using comedy, along with her faith, to help her heal. She’s cancer free now, happily married with a 4-year-old daughter, Perry, and using her comedic skills to lighten the lives of other women with breast cancer. Just recently, Joy performed for a luncheon for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

“I can get a roomful of cancer survivors laughing because we’ve all been through it, and we can laugh at ourselves,” Joy said. “We get it!”

She develops her routines from life experiences, conversations, and creative twists on the things other people may think, but she’s willing to say out loud.

“The other day, I was in Harris-Teeter and I was thinking about how the young guys at the check out ask, ‘Do you have your Vic card?’ and then if you say ‘No,’ they say: ‘I can look it up with your phone number.’ Then I wondered about cougars and what they might be thinking in a situation like that. A cougar might say ‘Sure, I’ll be happy to give you my number!’ And then I develop a routine about that,” she explained, chuckling.

“They call me the ‘Chesapeake Charmer,’ and because I live here, I describe it as a place full of rednecks with money,” Joy said.

Though some kinds of jokes seem to criticize particular groups, comedians intend for us not to take ourselves, our causes, or our identities so seriously. Joy admits that comedy plays up stereotypes, and that helps audiences relate. “At its best, comedy should be universal,” Joy explained, “but it’s also an outlet to allow us to make fun of target groups, whether they’re based on politics, religion, race or gender.”

After Joy took classes in standup, she expanded her comedy repertoire by taking improv with Sean Devereaux and Brad McMurran, the founders of The Pushers, a popular comedy group who perform locally and out of state. The group does a blend of sketch comedy a la Saturday Night Live, combined with the improv intensity of “Whose Line is it Anyway?” With improv sketches, Joy is learning how to relate to her on-stage partner and how to be more spontaneous.

“There are rules in improv. For instance, you have to be in agreement with your partner,” Joy said. “Although sometimes, in the middle of a scene, you freeze!”

But a wrinkle in a performance won’t stop her. Joy says that she’s always learning, and she’s delighted that her friend nudged her toward a new expression of life and vitality, post-cancer. Her comedy colleagues also get a boost out of Joy’s seemingly innocent, preppie image, and her zany reactions on stage. Comedy brings out many layers of who we are—and Joy Julian is enjoying every punch line.

CHUTZPAH RULES

She’s the single mom of a junior at JMU, a former teacher, a New Jersey-born Jewish woman in her forties, raised on musicals, She has curly red hair and flashing blue eyes. She’s disarmingly polite and friendly. If you met Rona Hyman at her part-time job at Cigar Masters in Chesapeake, you might not suspect that she can wow a crowd in a comedy club with outrageous adult material.

A few years back, when her son went off to college, Rona took a look at her life. From her teen years on, she loved performing in plays and felt right at home on the stage. She said “I’m going to do standup.” So Rona enrolled in classes at the Muse and launched a new career.

“I don’t know how anyone does comedy without classes,” she said. “My teacher, Ken Phillips, helped me so much. I didn’t even know how to hold a microphone properly!”

She’s been doing standup comedy for a few years, performing in every regional comedy club—including The Upper Deck and Funny Bones and she spent six months as an MC at Red Bones. These days, working on improv, she’s uncovering the joy of stretching her talents, creating characters using parts of her own personality.

“Believe it or not, I was a bully when I was a little kid, so that comes out, although now I feel funny being mean,” she said thoughtfully. “I like doing a little kid, and a drunken character. But it all depends on what happens up there on stage. And sometimes, I’m thinking: ‘Where did that come from?’”

One of Rona’s recent routines is about an ice cream truck that appeared near the new home she shares with her partner, Christine. It had been years since she’d lived in a house in a proper neighborhood, and the van with a tinkling tune sent Rona into high gear.

“I lost it! I screamed!” she said, laughing. “I jumped in my car and followed him around the block. I was his first customer. My next door neighbors were ready to kill me because they have two little kids and now the ice cream man is showing up everyday.”

Rona says she used to be envious of the twenty-something women who are breaking into comedy, but not anymore. At 45, she says she has so much experience to draw from, including struggles with her weight and being a single parent. For instance, she shares a story about the day her son was born. At the time, she was unmarried. Rona’s mom informed her Jewish grandmother about the blessed event. Grandma’s reply?

“Mazeltov! Did I miss the wedding?”

Rona incorporates aspects of her personal life in her standup routines with gusto, creating humorous contexts for real-life situations she’s encountered. And she admits she probably wouldn’t have had the confidence to get out there twenty years ago. Rona suggests anyone who wants to do comedy has to promote herself, do everything she can to improve,  and get up on stage as much as she can. It takes “chutzpah,” a Yiddish expression for “audacity.”

“Now, I just say, ‘I’m doing this,” Rona said. “I don’t have to be famous or rich, but I’m doing comedy two or three times a week.”

Comedy is not paying the rent, but occasionally there is a small stipend. And Rona says in this economy, many of the comedy clubs don’t charge admission.

But who knows? Someone could see Rona at 37th and Zen or at Cozzy’s and hire her for a television sitcom or a part in a movie. Especially after they see her new comedy sketch about a drug called “Happy Stallion” with its humorous side effects.

“I’m open to that possibility,” she said.

TOTALLY PRESENT

Though every comedienne is not an actress, it helps if you’ve had some experience on stage. In the case of Alba Woolard, a graduate of Old Dominion University’s theater department, it also helps if you have a full-time job using your acting skills. Currently, Alba is a trainer at Eastern Virginia Medical School for a group of actors known as “standardized patients,” professionals who give feedback to medical school students as they play the roles of patients with certain diseases and disorders.

But that’s not where Alba gets laughs. Audiences in Tidewater know her as one of the members of The Pushers. The group’s founders and Muse improv instructors Sean Devereaux and Brad McMurran invited Alba to do a guest spot with their group about four years ago, and in 2009, she became a regular member. Being funny comes naturally to the 24-year-old, who was raised in a military family and grew up in North Carolina and Italy.

“I always used to make my family laugh when I did impressions of my Dad, even though I got in trouble for it,” she said. “He would say to me, ‘You should be in your own TV show!’”

Alba thrives in sketches with other comics, which she says takes concentration.

“You have to be to be totally present and master the ability to react quickly to any situation,” she said, including the off-beat characters and edgy behaviors that rise up in her male and female colleagues’ performances. Alba says that she hasn’t created any regular characters that re-appear in The Pushers’ sketches, but she does have one recurring bit: she sings parody songs, accompanied on guitar, co-written by other cast members. The most recent one, appearing on The Pushers’ website, is about a difficult admission a woman makes to her boyfriend. She delivers it deadpan, sitting at the edge of a bed, while the actor playing the boyfriend is noticeably upset in the background.

Brad, The Pushers’ co-founder and also a standardized patient, says that while improv and sketch comedy is admittedly male dominant, Alba holds her own.

“Women have the hardest time in the world of comedy because they are so often the brunt of jokes, including constant stereotyping,” he said. But when women transcend that, are okay with the joke, and don’t seem offended, they become strong performers, he explains.

“The Pushers hold up a mirror and help us laugh at all the faults we share, men and women,” Brad says. “Alba does as many ‘dude’ jokes as we do.”

Alba says women really have to work at comedy because it may not be as biologically natural in her opinion. “I think men, in general, have more logical, problem-solving ways, like doing math formulas, while women react more emotionally,” she said. “When you put the two together, you can create some really funny situations.” This explains why comedians thrive when they work in groups, she thinks.

Alba adds that it really is harder for women to get into comedy in a national spotlight, so she takes strength seeing Amy Poehler and Tina Fey gaining credibility, though her comedy heroes include Robin Williams, Bill Murray, and the late Chris Farley.

The Pushers are on the road every so often, and they’re open to unusual venues. In October, they took a gig on the Norfolk Tide on a Saturday night. Imagine a comedy group on your commute to MacArthur Mall. Yet for Alba Woolard, the challenges are worth it.

“The more relaxed I get and the more I can let go, the easier it is,” she said. “And the more committed you are, the funnier you will be.”

So how many women does it take to change a light bulb? Only one. But at the same time, she’s answering the phone, cooking dinner, checking her email, and learning a new joke! 

Joy Julian is a guest performer at the Cinema Café Comedy Night, November 5, 2011, at 9 p.m.

Alba Woolard and Rona Hyman perform with members of The Pushers and local improv students at 37th and Zen, Norfolk during “Improvageddon V”  on November 29, 2011, at 8 p.m.

Kathleen Fogarty writes regularly for Tidewater Women. She lives on New Earth Farm in Va. Beach.

In an atmosphere that feels more like a fiesta than an exercise class, smiling women jump, bounce, whirl, and shake their hips.

Wearing sneakers, t-shirts, and tight-fitting spandex, the women dance while up front, their teacher, Liz Vasquez, in a t-shirt that says, “Inspire me, Move me,” dances and sings to the Spanish lyrics of salsa, meringue, and other tunes. This is not just any dance class. It’s Zumba!

How do you spell fitness and health? You might try D-A-N-C-E. For women of all ages, sizes, and experience levels, dance may be the key to a healthy life. While health experts exhort us to get out there and exercise, it can feel like a command and not an invitation. Dance provides more health benefits than you may realize and is a physical activity many of us can enjoy well into our senior years. Dance forms like Zumba, ballroom, swing, belly dance, and more keep us vital and cheerful. Let’s see how a few Tidewater women enliven their lives by dancing.

DANCE PARTY

For about a decade, Liz Vazquez, 43, taught fitness classes here in Tidewater, helping her students to get or stay in shape. Too often, she had to remind them to come back to class after tough workouts. A few years ago, she heard about something new: a wonderful program of exercise created by Beto Perez from Columbia that married the world of fitness to the joy of dance.

“I looked into it and realized I had stumbled onto something very different,” Liz said. “It was so energetic and everyone was having so much fun, and I said ‘Wow!’”

Liz became a licensed Zumba instructor in 2007, joining more than 3,000 certified teachers all over the world. Yet Zumba was unknown locally. She had to nudge area studios to let her teach this amazing program and finally got some classes going in 2008. She discovered that the spirit of fun, the delight of the music, and the dance moves made it easy for students to commit to coming back to class month after month.

Liz’s way with her students encourages them to keep moving, and the Zumba sound tracks feature different tempos, some slower than others. She encourages them to take frequent water breaks, asking “Are you feeling all right?” She assists them by modeling moves herself, giving them constant positive feedback. Liz is built strong with capable muscles and an expansive grin.

One of her students, medical assistant Jessica Coryea, 29, dances beside Liz at the front of the class tonight, motivated by Zumba’s power to transform regular folks into energetic dancers. She had initially looked for a form of exercise to help her gain muscle tone, but she thought going to a gym would be boring. Although she wasn’t obese, she says she felt “a little squishy around the middle.”

“I feel really self-confident and capable now, really good about me, even though I never took any kind of dance classes early in my life,” Jessica said.

She added that she lost about 15 pounds in the first seven months that she took Zumba, and that her time in class is a complete stress reliever, an escape. At first, she took Zumba only one night a week, but now she’s dancing two times a week.

Liz knows that people are really working their bodies with Zumba, even though it seems like they’re just dancing, just as they might in a night club, but following a leader.

“When it comes to dancing, even a simple step, you are moving, moving, and you have to come from your core area, and with Zumba, pretty soon you are sweating,” Liz said, pulling her damp shirt away from her middle.

Don’t look for a slow step-by-step instruction. In Zumba class, you literally jump right in.

“With Zumba, we show along, while the music is playing, how we are doing the steps as I motion with my hands,” Liz explained, “and the students can follow where I’m going.”

Liz has done more than just get a few Zumba classes started locally. She also helps lead a huge group of Zumba enthusiasts for a three-hour Zumba Marathon at Hardees’s Latin Festival that’s taken place at the Virginia Beach oceanfront the last two years. She says Zumba is good for all generations. Children and adults can also take Zumba tonic classes, focusing on workouts of certain muscle groups using small weights, at some area YMCA locations.

A SENSE OF WELL BEING

Fitness gurus from many disciplines like to incorporate dance because of four important benefits: dancing improves flexibility, strength, endurance, and a sense of well being. While people dance, their heart rate is elevated, and they get a boost in stamina.

At the Great Neck Recreation Center this fall, a new class will energize adult students using dance routines and unique props like chairs, plastic gliders, and body bars. “Fitness through Dance” is a six-week program developed by Jaq Clark, 26, a Penn State grad currently pursuing a master’s degree in exercise science at ODU. She’s been an active fitness teacher for several years in Virginia Beach and has taken classes in all styles of dance—from Zumba to ballroom. During an internship developing wellness programs at Virginia Wesleyan College, she discovered the fun of “chair dancing,” in which students do exercise moves on and around a chair.

“We had students from the ages of 18 and up along with mature, middle-aged professors and staff,” Jaq explained. “They had so much fun, so I thought we’d try it at Great Neck, adding routines from other forms of dance, like ballet, modern, and hip-hop.”

It’s not the only dance class in the fall catalog for Virginia Beach’s recreation centers; there are classes in square dance for seniors, beach shag, Bollywood dance—which blends classic Indian folk styles with Western music, contemporary dance, belly dance, hip hop, and adult ballet. What makes dance such a hit? Jaq thinks that using dance as exercise is very motivating because it takes the emphasis off the idea of a workout and places it on enjoying yourself, bringing more self awareness, as opposed to the sense of competition in other fitness styles or sports.

“Dance can be thought of as an overall lighter style of exercise,” Jaq said. “It’s fun and adaptable to all ages.” She and her boyfriend have just signed up for ballroom dance classes next, a deal they found on Groupon. Perhaps she’ll join the growing number of folks who have been inspired by “So You Think You Can Dance” and “Dancing with the Stars.” Or maybe she’ll dance into her later years like many who love ballroom dance’s many forms.

BALLROOM FEVER

By day she’s a competent mortgage banker at BB&T in Northern Suffolk. But that’s not all there is to Donna Campbell, a petite blond in her early 60s, who is just as comfortable in sequins and dancing shoes as in her business attire. Donna loves to dance.

Since 1994, when Donna traded Jazzercise for shag lessons, she’s been dancing for her joy, health, and happiness.  And after she went to a ballroom dance at the Langley AFB officer’s club, she was truly inspired. She found a dance instructor and told him she wanted three lessons, one each to learn cha-cha, swing, and the rumba.

“Imagine that, I thought I’d get it right in three lessons!” she exclaimed.

Part of Donna’s rationale for switching to dance was that Jazzercise began to play havoc with her joints, but while dancing on a “floating floor,” she noticed not even a tinge of pain in her hips or knees.

This Sunday morning, Donna joins her dear friends, members of the Tidewater chapter of USA Dance, for a Ballroom Brunch at Chester’s Upper Deck Restaurant at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront. Most of the crowd was here last night for the restaurant’s ballroom night.

The room looks festive enough to host a prom with white linens covering tables and chairs, a dance floor ringed with twinkling lights and sporting a disco ball, and on the stage, the keyboards and sound gear of Roberto Henriquez, a popular East Coast musician who sings and performs on keyboards. Roberto’s amazing repertoire supplies just the right rhythms and moods for so many waltzes, foxtrots, and rumbas.

USA Dance is a national nonprofit dedicated to ballroom dance in its many forms. Club members pay $25 per year in dues and attend monthly dance events every fourth Saturday at the Ocean View Knights of Columbus Hall and at other venues, too. Donna Campbell has been on USA Dance’s board and loves the opportunity it brings her.

“Dancing, more than any other thing, has been a confidence builder for me,” she said. “It refreshes me and gives me a chance to shine in a different way.”

Ballroom dancing has two forms: social dance and competition, like the shows we see on television. And while USA Dance is a social dance organization, Donna keeps perfecting her tango and other styles by taking dance lessons—currently with Wesley Acker—to be a better dancer; she’s competed at bronze and silver levels. She’s also danced in ballroom exhibitions, which are put on by dance studios to help their students and teachers show off their skills.

Her friend, Wanda Smith, the founder of this chapter of USA dance, gives Donna a hug and compliments her on her sparkling skirt. Donna says when you are a ballroom dancer, you dress up with “a little bit of elegance,” including glittering jewelry. Twirling her ankle, she shows off flexible high-heeled dance shoes with soft suede soles.

“My feet never hurt!” she said.

Wanda points out honored elder members of the group, like the widower in his 90s who comes to all their dances. He and his late wife were members of USA Dance, and he still attends their gatherings.

In fact, ballroom dance is associated with many positive health effects. According to a 2003 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, ballroom dancing twice a week reduces the likelihood of dementia. Not only is it great as aerobic exercise, it helps the brain, too.

“People recovering from heart attacks and strokes do really well with ballroom dance,” Wanda said, “since the music and movement of each dance helps bring back memories and keeps them going.”

Wanda’s husband, Jerry, asks Donna to dance, and they float across the dance floor as they move through the steps of a fox trot. It’s good manners for members of the club to take turns with different partners. And in ballroom dance, the traditional roles of men and women seem stable. Donna explains that the role of the male dancer is to “hold a frame for the woman to dance within,” recalling gentlemanly ways of the past. Donna reminded me about the movie “Saturday Night Fever” and how the characters worked all week and lived for the chance to express themselves on the dance floor.

“You’re in a different world when you dance,” says Donna.

From Zumba to line dancing, hip hop to tango, women and men who dance seem to live happier and healthier lives. Perhaps, dance is just what the doctor ordered: a prescription for keeping young, vital, and healthy—no matter our age. 

For more information:

• Zumba: Visit zumbavb.blogspot.com

• Va. Beach Recreation Centers: Visit vbgov.com.

• USA dance: Visit www.usadance.org for a list of chapters and activities.

Kathleen Fogarty lives in Va. Beach.

My hands are new to knitting, yet it feels like they’re waltzing with large wooden needles and a ball of yarn that changes color from apple green to sky blue. In a circle of women, their friendly banter like a soundtrack, yarn, cloth, needles, crochet hooks, and embroidery floss weave together to create practical art.

I’m in the midst of a group called “Stitch-a Bit,” assorted ODU students, alumni, staff, and crafters who have been meeting every Wednesday from 5 to 7 p.m. for five years. The gathering is open to anyone who loves—or wants to learn—handcrafts. This evening, we’re making belts, scarves, shopping bags, embroidered pillow covers, socks, and more.  There’s a sense of relaxation and equality here, no matter how much experience each person has.

In a high-tech world, where life often runs at warp speed, people are slowing down with a return to fiber arts and crafts. Twenty and thirty-something folks are picking up knitting needles and bringing them to local coffee shops like Fairgrounds in Ghent, making crafts “cool” instead of old fashioned. At the same time, mid-life women are pursuing a variety of fabric arts while discovering new definitions of self.

Across the country, yarn shops and quilting stores are sprouting, and many fiber artists are taking traditional crafts to new heights. Locally, more and more women are cleaning up their sewing machines and organizing their fabric closets. For some, these pursuits are hobbies. For others, it’s a life force that blends personal healing and growth with new careers.

MAGICAL OASIS

You’d never suspect that a magical oasis filled with color and fabric sits right behind the door of a humble set of offices near Laskin Road in Virginia Beach. Welcome to Oceanfront Interiors, an interior decorating and window treatment studio started by one of Virginia Beach’s long time professional decorator-designers, Gini Bonds. Above the giant worktable, a fabric mermaid spreads her tail on a shelf. Nearby, pieces of velveteen, silk, and fur are pinned together, the beginnings of Gini’s unique, hand-sewn cloth purses, available for sale at a new shop—Pungo Past and Present—in Downtown Pungo.

Cloth bags were among the first objects Gini created. “My mother taught me to sew when I was a kid,” Gini said. She loved to play with fabric, needles, and thread and made “hippie” bags for herself and her friends at Kellam High School in the 70s.

“I remember embroidering a monarch butterfly sitting on some Queen Ann’s Lace onto a piece of brown velvet, and then it ended up as a patch on my blue jeans,” she said with a smile.

Over the years, Gini worked for small businesses, sewing custom draperies, cushions, and pieces for home décor. She was the original owner and founder of Coverworks, Inc. and earned a fine reputation before selling the business in 2007 to pursue other interests. Now, Gini has reinvented her life in this new space with exciting ideas for the future.

We walk through the clean, well-lit studio, its walls dotted with cheerful scraps of fabric and paint samples. Gini talks enthusiastically about her plans to utilize her studio as a haven to teach classes for folks who want to use fabric, needles, beads, and thread to create works of art that promote healing, something she herself has experienced.

The story of her Mermaid doll rises from what Gini called “a really dark time” in her life, when she endured frequent challenges. Gini would retreat into her little sewing room in the evenings, working on her doll, adding sea shells, beads, embroidery, and various fabrics. She didn’t want to stop the project and worked on it for over a year. Making the doll became a balm for her battered heart.

“When I sew, I’m absolutely lost in just being. It’s very joyful,” Gini explained. “There are only two other things in my life—gardening and surfing—that make me feel like I can take the top of my head off and leave it for the moment. And with this,” she gestures toward her bags and fabrics, “something exists at the end of the day that didn’t exist in the morning.”

It’s important to Gini that she pass on these creative gifts to others, that the sewing arts don’t get lost.  One of her new assistants, 19-year-old Emmah Berry, who impressed her boss when she created a pillow out of a metallic, Harley Davidson-themed t-shirt, sent Gini a text during my visit: “This opportunity to work with you has not only taught me how to sew, but how to have patience in everything else also. I can use these skills for the rest of my life.”

Gini plans to begin offering workshops this fall. “I hope people will want to play with all these things—fibers and buttons and textures—and put them together in ways that mean something,” she said.

The skills that Gini learned as a child in her mother’s home have led to her life’s work, where she is discovering a deep well of creativity that refreshes her spirit. Now, Gini is ready to embrace her role as a fiber artist who inspires others.

MENDING BODY & SOUL

Art quilter Karen Lee Carter, a native Chicagoan now in Virginia Beach, made her very first quilt during a dramatic health crisis and a career change. She had just turned 40 years old, and her work in advertising was not suiting her anymore. All her joyful, creative experiences of cutting and pasting ads had transitioned as computer software developed to do the same task, and the only skill she felt she was using was typing. Karen said, “Enough.”

Around that time, she went for a regular physical checkup and discovered she had a very aggressive form of breast cancer. Yet the diagnosis did not stop Karen, who was married and the mother of three children still in school.

“Very quickly, it validated the progress and decisions I had already made about doing something different with my life,” she explained. “I was passionately pursuing calligraphy, and I started quilting while I was going through chemotherapy.”

In her first quilting class, which began the day before her first day of chemo, Karen kept her health problems to herself. “I was just Karen, not Karen with cancer,” she said. She produced a small sampler quilt with four blocks in pastel fabrics. She worked on her project, stitching while her physical body mended, and discovered a new passion.

“I just lost myself in the process; it was so therapeutic,” she recalled. “And on the days when I didn’t feel well and I had to stay home, I was happy that I had that to do.”

“I was so focused,” she continued. “The whole afternoon would go by, and I wouldn’t have thought about anything.”

Within six months, Karen had made quilts for each of her children. She reflects now that she probably was motivated to leave something behind. She had no way of knowing the outcome of her cancer. After a bilateral mastectomy, six months of chemo, and five years of drug therapy, Karen is convinced that quilting pulled her through.

She began to pursue a freelance design business, working with calligraphy, and eventually, she was commissioned to create quilts for a unique, high-end arts and crafts shop in Chicago. Every commission was intended to celebrate a particular event in somebody’s life or to honor a person who had passed.

“All of a sudden I was not only doing work that I loved, but it was really meaningful,” Karen said. She made quilts for that shop for ten years, but on the side, she was designing and creating her art quilts.

Now settled in a part of the country that feels like “being on vacation,” Karen Lee Carter’s work is displayed in quilt shows, art galleries, magazines, and also in a traveling exhibit called “Out on a Limb,” featured in the August/September issue of Quilter’s Newsletter. Her quilt called “Arbol de la Vida,” featuring a design rising from Karen’s love of Mexican folk art, debuted at last year’s International Quilt Festival in Houston.

Karen shares the beauty of her art quilts as they grace the walls of her open, airy home in Broad Bay Point Greens. In the living room, a quilt celebrates the rich textures of her 25-year marriage to her husband, Tad, complete with a silhouette of the couple stitched over a giant heart, resplendent with color and textures. Upstairs, Karen has family quilts and personal quilts in hallways and on every bed and is delighted with two sewing rooms: one that includes her closet full of material, organized efficiently in clear plastic boxes by color and pattern; and another room with her computer, a giant table, and more space to create.

This fall, Karen is busy teaching classes—for confident beginners—at A Different Touch in Chesapeake and Sew-EZ in Portsmouth, using top-of-the-line quilting machines. She rewards her students when they finish projects with a special bead or embellishment for their next quilt.

“We take great satisfaction in making things, sewing things,” Karen said, “and I do see a resurgence in these crafts, and I’m excited about it.”

JOURNEY WITH YARN

While Gini and Karen have become professionals in their fabric design and work, many people are just beginning to consider making a small wall quilt, embroidering a pillow cover, or in my case, making a scarf to begin my mid-life journey with yarn. Gretchen Edwards-Bodmer, who describes herself as a “Jane of all trades” at ODU’s Women’s Center and founder of ODU’s “ Stitch-a Bit,” says the beginners and the seasoned crafters help each other.

Gretchen said the numbers and gender of the group changes over time, depending on what’s going on with university life. Sometimes the group has a handful, and other evenings thirty or so men and women gather in ODU’s Webb Center, creating a large circle where everyone fits. This winter, Gretchen says, there’s a community project for all those who want to help out.

“We’re making comfort blankets for the children who are involved in the YWCA’s Women-in Crisis Shelter, something the kids can snuggle with during a nap,” said Gretchen, mother of a two-year-old son named Jackson. She’s has already started one.

Now as I pull the multi-colored yarn over my needles, count the stitches, and watch my creation grow, I consider how many women, all over the world, have done this work for generations, creating cozy clothes, quilts, and blankets with yarn and fabric. This fall and winter, perhaps some of us will return to these pleasant activities for healing, for creativity, and maybe because it’s just plain fun. 

For more info:

• Gini Bonds: Call 773-3779 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

• Karen Lee Carter: web.mac.com/klcquilts

• Stitch-a-Bit: Search for Stitch a Bit ODU on Facebook

Kathleen Fogarty writes regularly for Tidewater Women.

The Birthing Center at Sentara Virginia Beach General is a little slow on this Monday morning in mid-July, but everything could change in a heartbeat. For now, the patients’ doors are closed, and the nursing station is calm. One nurse scrutinizes a computer printout, sipping a cup of coffee, chatting with an EMT on an OB rotation. A giant computer screen on the wall displays five layers

of information: lines, dots, patterns, and numbers that correspond to the vital signs of the ten lives it monitors, five mothers and their babies.

Suddenly a flurry of activity erupts. A nurse hurries from a patient’s room and sits down at a computer.

“We have a baby!” she says, entering data.

“Boy or girl?” someone asks.

“It’s a boy,” she responds.

In an instant, the loudspeakers in the halls announce the news with a music box version of “Lullaby and Goodnight.” Everyone in the hospital, on every floor, hears the tinkling tune. It’s reminiscent of the moment in “Peter Pan” when Peter tells the children: “When a baby laughs for the first time, a fairy is born.”

These are some of the strongest, emotionally charged moments on the pages of our life stories: the births of our babies. Every day, up to a dozen babies have come into the world in this 1970’s era building on Laskin Road. But as of August 4th, mothers-to-be in Virginia Beach will go to the southern end of the city, to the shiny, new, high tech, state-of-the-art Sentara Princess Anne Hospital, in a unique partnership between Sentara Health Care and Bon Secours. Both Sentara’s and Bon Secours’ names appear on the signage, the result of a winning solution for the two corporations who both wanted to develop a hospital in this dynamic section of the city, where many young families are buying homes and building lives.

Here in Tidewater and across the country, moms and their families are cared for by a unique team of highly skilled OB nurses, who share in the monumental event of childbirth. Let’s meet a few.

A HAPPY JOB

“I’ve always wanted to be an OB nurse, ever since my first clinical rotation at DePaul Hospital,” said Lenore Giovanelli, RN-Clinical Nurse 2 at Sentara Virginia Beach General Hospital. Early in her nursing career, she took a position as an extern with the medical surgical unit, assisting with gynecological surgeries and the overflow from the obstetrics department. Then she waited patiently for a position to open up in obstetrics, a department known for its high retention rate.

“It’s happy job,” Lenore said. “It’s very fulfilling to help someone bring in a new baby into the world. Every couple is different. Every situation is different.”

Lenore has been an OB nurse for almost thirty years. She says that being a nurse worked perfectly with raising a family.

“I worked 3-11 for many years and would meet my husband in the parking lot, [where] we’d hand off children. He’d go home with the kids. I’d work my shift, come home, and get them off to pre-school,” she said matter-of-factly without a touch of stress or regret. Now, as she prepares for the transition to the new hospital, you’d think she might be nervous, but she’s smiling and relaxed.

Lenore has a youthful, expectant look in her face. Perhaps her role as faithful companion for families on the journey of labor explains the light in her eyes, the joy in her presence.

She walks through a hospital world enriched with technology, like the computer screens in the nursing station and patient rooms and the “twin rooms” in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit (NICU) where parents and family members can stay overnight with premature babies.

Sometimes a labor and delivery can be simple and swift. Sometimes there are complex issues, but Lenore is prepared for everything. As a fully trained RN, she assists during cesarean sections and is qualified to monitor medications prescribed by physicians. She says that she has a special respect for the mothers-to-be who have taken the time to prepare for birth and choose to deliver without medical intervention.

“It’s been shown through research that if women get an epidural in the second stage of labor, it can take longer,” she explained. “The mom won’t feel the urge to push. And we know that if the mother has narcotics delivered, [the drugs] can cross the placenta. So we won’t give her that kind of med within an hour of delivery.”

We walk down the hall and enter a room, where Kelly Harris of Suffolk is resting, having recently delivered her fourth child, a boy named Gabriel. She is at ease with visitors, and her napping son is swaddled in soft blankets and wearing a hand-knitted blue cap. We coo over the baby and offer congratulations.

“How did you experience the nursing care?” Lenore asked.

“Everyone was just so nice and helpful,” Kelly replied, only a few hours after giving birth without any medications.

It’s nearing lunchtime, and Kelly says she’s delighted with every meal served at the hospital. Baby Gabriel has already been nursing for more than a half hour. Lenore smiles and nods her head, “Yes,” sending a silent message across the room that this is how wonderful and natural having a baby can be.

As new generations arrive in the birthing center, Lenore sees changes in the behaviors of her moms and families in labor. She has some concern about the overt presence of social technology: mothers-to-be texting or sending Facebook updates throughout early labor and bringing their iPods and docks into the birthing rooms, family members taking photos before and after the baby is born. She doesn’t mind a nice selection of music and is glad to take some “happy-snaps,” though Sentara doesn’t allow videotaping of deliveries for safety reasons. Lenore says technology can sometimes get in the way, becoming a distraction for the reality of the moment.

“When you have a baby, you have to be alert to the instructions and assistance of the nurse and the doctor, so sometimes I’ll say ‘Oh, honey, you may want to turn off your cell phone for awhile,’” she said.

Though Lenore served in an administrative capacity while preparing for the move to Princess Anne, she says her greatest happiness is at the bedside with patients, and she’ll return to that role in the new building. She’s seen thousands of births and considers every one a miracle.

STRENGTH AND SKILLS

Becoming a certified OB nurse takes more training, time, and testing than just becoming an RN. Beyond earning a Bachelor of Science in nursing at a four-year university or an Associate of Applied Science in nursing at a community college, an OB nurse has to have two thousand hours of experience and 24 continuous months on the job before she can sit for the certifying exam. Prospective OB nurses shadow an experienced RN to gain strength and skills while accumulating hours.

Twenty-five year old Jennifer Martinez, a recent ODU grad, earned a position on the staff of Sentara Virginia Beach General after an externship there during her senior year. Two years ago, she gave birth to a daughter in the middle of her nursing school studies. Now that she has experienced labor and delivery, she has more insight into the kind of nursing she will practice. Currently, she’s following Alison Nestor, her nursing preceptor, as she learns the skills that will make her a valuable member of the team at Princess Anne. But she won’t always follow another professional. OB nurses are known for being strong and independent decision makers, responding to the needs of their patients in labor, being the firm voice during anxious moments.

“There’s a lot of autonomy in this field, Jennifer said. “You don’t always see the physician until he or she is needed.” She says it takes dedication and a big investment of time and energy to become a nurse. While the income is good, it’s “not about the paycheck,” Jennifer says.

SPECIAL MOMENT

Some nurses enter the world of childbirth and delivery through a different door.

LTJG Amber Wilson, USN, earned her Bachelor of Science degree in nursing at ODU and has been in the Navy since 1999. Her university education was part of a commissioning program through the military. She received military pay during her studies and upon graduation became an officer. Amber worked for two years in the pediatric unit at Portsmouth Naval Hospital, which she says was an emotional challenge, partly because she is a mother. She and her husband Donny have four children: a four-month old son and three daughters (16 months, 4 and 10 years old).

Her desire to work with moms and babies evolved while she was caring for newborns. She’s much happier now, being involved in that “huge, monumental special moment when a baby is born,” she says. Now she’s planning to become certified as an OB nurse during her next Navy deployment in Southern California, where she and her family are being transferred this summer.

Amber says she sees all kinds of patients. The majority of those who deliver at Portsmouth Naval request epidurals, more than 90 percent. She also mentioned the weaving of technology and childbirth. Just recently, Amber cared for a couple who were informed about childbirth and delivery procedures because they watched childbirth videos on YouTube.

“Whatever it takes,” Amber said.

“Some women come in very prepared,” she said. Amber’s experience in nursing is leading her to a future different from OB nurses like Lenore and Jennifer. She salutes the women who have been involved in “labor intensive inpatient work,” but she sees herself teaching maternal-child health, preparing women for the whole experience of pregnancy, delivery, and follow up care.

RE-SET YOUR HEART

Family care is also at the center of Chesapeake Regional Medical Center’s BirthPlace.

Jan Huss is the assistant chief nursing officer at Chesapeake, where the Mother and Baby Unit is celebrating its 25th year. More than 75,000 babies have come into the world since the hospital opened in 1976. Jan’s been an OB nurse for more than 15 years.

“For the most part, it is a very happy job, exciting for families,” Jan said. “One of the most wonderful things is that we only have 1-2 patients on a shift, instead of 6-7 in other kinds of nursing.”

“We also encourage our patients to have good pre-natal care, and we see that a larger number of people are starting earlier with check ups and ultrasounds,” Jan said. ‘For those who are in need, the city helps provide support.”

Chesapeake Regional, as well as Sentara and Bon Secours hospitals, provides childbirth preparation classes, offering support for breastfeeding, labor and delivery practices, exercise, and parenting. In particular, Jan mentioned classes in “comfort measures,” learning which medicine may support their deliveries; sibling welcome classes; and sessions for families on how to introduce your baby to pets. Like most hospitals across the region, Chesapeake Regional encourages breastfeeding and has certified lactation specialists available to mothers. As an OB nurse, Jan believes part of her role is to provide the tools for families before and after the baby is born.

“This is a wonderful time to help families,” Jan said, “even to the extent of providing post-discharge care for first-time mothers.”

From a career perspective, becoming an OB nurse can be difficult at first since openings are harder to come by. But once you help bring a baby into the world, the experience can re-set your heart and your job plans for a lifetime. Lenore and the other nurses say, despite all the improvements in the high-tech end of hospital life, the secret to being a good OB nurse is simply comforting your patient, sitting on her bed, holding her hand, giving her strength, and assuring her that everything will be all right.

“To this day, if I’m working delivery with a couple, I still get a little tearful. And I think when that day passes, I’ll move on to something else,” Lenore said. “But I can’t see that day, not yet.” 

Kathleen Fogarty writes regularly for Tidewater Women.

The girl with the dark hair and tan skin was posing for her first grade school picture. On an impulse, she put a little red feather in her hair. The photographer was aghast.

“You look like a little Indian girl,” she said. “Take that feather out of your hair.”

“I am an Indian,” Sylvia replied, refusing to remove the feather.

Virginia Beach resident Sylvia Nery Strickland has never forgotten that moment. Although her father was from the Philippines, her mother’s people were Cherokee and Cheroenhaka Nottaway, as well as Irish and English. She had always been told to hide her heritage.

From the late 1600s until 1967, Native Americans suffered racially hostile laws and divisions and were not allowed to intermarry since they were considered “colored” in Virginia. Thankfully, times are changing. The 21st century holds a promise that Native women and men will be honored—no longer hidden.

In February, Senators Mark Warner and Jim Webb re-introduced a bill for federal inclusion of the six recognized Virginia tribes: the Chickahominy, the Chickahominy Eastern Tribe, the Upper Mattaponi Tribe, the Rappahannock Tribe, Inc., the Monacan Indian Nation, and the Nansemond Indian Tribe. There are still many Virginia Indians hoping that their stories will turn from memories of pain to attitudes of respect.

In Hampton Roads, we are a mixing bowl for Indians of many backgrounds and geographical homelands, due in part to the military’s presence. Women of many tribal and ethnic backgrounds are involved in every sort of career and life path—without always wearing their identities visibly like moccasins. Around the drum, at powwows and gatherings, they join their voices and dances, celebrating the bonds they share.

SHARING A CONNECTION

Sylvia, artist and project manager for the federal government, is also a proud member of a group called Eastern Sky. Comprised of men and women of various tribal ancestries, members of the group, also called a “drum,” keep the prayers and songs of their native cultures alive.

Recently at Norfolk Botanical Gardens, Sylvia joined other Native men and women to sing and drum at the memorial service honoring the mother eagle that died in April. Hundreds of Tidewater residents came to the gathering, sitting quietly on the ground on a Sunday morning, listening and watching the sky for the male eagle, the mate of the female. Some people took pictures; some closed their eyes and felt the drumbeats and embraced the higher, keening voices of the women.

Michael Cloud Butler, 59, a self-described “urban Indian” who was born on the Ojibwa reservation in Northwestern Wisconsin, also performs with Eastern Sky Indian Drum and is Sylvia’s partner. Michael, an artist and contractor, explained that the way the women sing is a balance for the men, who keep the beat on the great circular drum, a shape that represents the world.

“The men are given the drum so that they could, in their own way, speak to the world, to voice their celebrations, their pain and sorrows,” Michael said.

“In the Ojibwa language there is a term to describe the women’s singing: ‘zhaboway,’ an approximate transliteration,” he continued. “The interpretation of that word is ‘to pierce.’ Women’s voices come in with a higher pitch, and it pierces right through. In my tradition, the songs were given to a woman.”

Along with Sylvia, several other women have found a place to heal, to feel at home with their Indian spirits, and to share their connection. When they come together, the group surrounds a single, large drum, upon which the men play and around which the women sing.

DEEP SPIRITUALITY

Another member of the drum is Jane Price, 49, who was adopted from the Crow Reservation in Billings, Montana. She is of Cheyenne heritage and grew up in Western New York State. She lives in Chesapeake and works at a restaurant.

“My entire life I knew I was Indian,” Jane said, her brown eyes shining. “My mother got anything she could find—and there wasn’t much—for my brother and I to learn about who we are. I would go to pow-wows when I could find them, when I was older.”

When Jane met Sylvia and Michael at the Virginia Beach restaurant where she worked as a manager, she felt an immediate sense of family and connection.

Michael, who founded the drum with a friend, asked Jane if she had any sons because they were recruiting young male drummers. Jane brought herself to the drum meeting instead.

“When we meet together, we celebrate the fact that we’re Indian, or Native American or however you want to put it,” Jane said. “I grew up calling myself American Indian.”

However, Sylvia struggled with her sense of self, and wasn’t sure for a long time how to find a balance between her heritage, ethnicity, and practice.

“I didn’t do ‘Indian’ things until the 90s because I was of mixed race—Filipino and Indian,” she said. “I didn’t have a sense of what group to belong to.” Now Sylvia has found a deep spirituality with Indian culture and feels at peace in her life.

“Coming together now really feels great,” she said. “We accept who we are and know we all have Indian hearts. That’s all that matters.”

PART OF THE CIRCLE

Women bring many talents and skills to life and often find a resonance with Native American themes. Native wisdom offers lessons from the animal kingdom, and some of us are eager learners.

That’s true for Pearl Beamer, 47, who lives in Norfolk. Pearl is especially connected to the women of Eastern Sky because she is passionate about caring for the creatures that fly. She’s been caring for young owls and a red tail hawk this month, as a Category 2 Wildlife Rehabilitator. Pearl grew up on a farm in Minnesota with a father who always took in injured animals, nursed them, and released them when they were strong enough to live in the wild again.

Pearl does the same thing in her work.

“It’s just the way it is,” Pearl said. “When you spend your life raised around nature, it’s just what you do.”

Though she was comfortable in her rural life, Pearl says she grew up with a feeling of being out of place, a feeling that something was missing. She always liked to be with animals and work with beads. Two weeks before her father passed away, while Pearl was visiting with her three month old daughter, Noel, her dad shared something very important: the  family’s Lakota heritage. At the time, it wasn’t necessarily good news. Pearl saw segregation in Minnesota, and if you were Indian, you were still guarded about where you went and whom you told. These days, Pearl acknowledges that being Indian is considered “cool” by many people, while some folks who are “no more Indian than a mouse” wish they had Indian ancestry and connections, she said.

Now married to a man with Cherokee ancestry, Pearl says she feels glad being part of the circle, helping at events and performances, learning more traditions and stories. Her deep relationships with the hawks, owls, and other birds create a link to her own Indian background, and the women of Eastern Sky value her knowledge and support.

KEEPERS OF THE CULTURE

The drum unfies women of many paths and backgrounds. Anita Harrell, manager of the Phoebus Branch Library in Hampton, remembers the first time she heard a pow-wow drum.

“I had a very powerful reaction to it, physical and emotional. It seemed to be something I needed,” she said.

“Though the men play the drum, and though they keep the background of our songs and traditions, women are usually the keepers of the culture,” Anita said. “Mothers, grandmothers, and aunts in most cultures keep the stories alive for the children.”

Since 1990, Anita and several other people, including her husband, Hugh, have been keeping the legacy of Africans who came to North American with an a capella performing group called “Legacy Of Weyanoke.” Much of their work celebrates the history of “Red-Black” people, Indians who intermarried with Africans.

Anita’s family background is Shoshone, Cherokee, and African American. Anita stresses the importance of not holding stereotypical images of Native Americans and delights that the drum she plays with is truly intertribal. No one could say who is a “real” Indian from the outside.

“In North America, there were over 500 Indian nations, from Maine to Central America,” she said. “You can’t expect people from all over the continent to look the same.”

As she stands with the women around the drum, Anita brings a beautiful vocal presence and experience as a performer, along with her passion for knowledge and cultural understanding.

BALANCE OF LEADERSHIP

In the twenty-first century, with rights for women expanded and many other people still stretching for equality under the law, it is interesting how men and women in Native American culture relate. One of the most noticeable aspects involves the balance between men and women and leadership. Learning about how a drum operates, sometimes with an elder woman sitting in honor at the side of the men, and how the men play the drum while the women sing brings up discussions and laughter about who does what.

In the Virginia Indian tribes, a man still occupies the position of chief, though there are many strong women among them. In the Cherokee and Iroquois nations, which are matrilineal, women occupy positions of great power. Michael explained that in Ojibwa culture, women are the keepers of all ceremonies related to water.

The women of Eastern Sky joked that they let the men think they are in charge, but if there is something important that has to be said, the women speak. There are frequent exchanges, friendly banter, and light-hearted teasing among the members of their drum. However, Michael Cloud Butler says that in Ojibwa society, if a man is deemed unfit to sit in the leader’s place at the drum, the women in the community have the power to “tip the drum” and remove him from power.

“I gotta tell you, just like in any other culture, if we need to put our foot down, we do it,” said Jane with a smile.

Ideally, around the drum, there is an opportunity for men and women to share their talents, their rhythms and sacred songs, their bond as members of the American Indian community. Blending their tones, language, heartbeats, and breath carries forward an ancient healing tradition uniquely different from Western or European culture. For those of us whose families are more recent immigrants to this land, hearing the drum and the sacred syllables of healing songs touches something deeper than our own last names. These are the ancient rhythms of our North American soil, held and shared.

As Sylvia, Jane, Anita, Pearl, and their friends gather, they weave together pieces of their history, the parts that haven’t already been lost to time. As they sing and drum, they strengthen their spirits and offer a common gift to those who listen—and to the generations to come. 

To learn more, visit Eastern Sky American Indian Drum on Facebook.