For the second year Brainerd Public Schools Archivesis honoring legendary women who have graduated from the Brainerd Public School District during Women's History Month.
In March 2019, the Brainerd Dispatchpublished an essay about the LEGENDARY WOMEN OF BRAINERD PUBLIC SCHOOLS, reading, in part:
"History always teaches us – if only we are willing to see – what can lead us to disaster or what can help us to secure a good life for today and an even better life for tomorrow. Winston Churchill perhaps said it best: “The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.”
"For the past 32 years, March has been designated by Congress as National Women’s History Month, a time set aside specifically to honor women’s contributions to American history, that is, to American life. It is a month when all of us should consciously pause to look back at the enormous contributions made by American women to the shining light America has been and will be, so that all of us can see “farther forward” in order to assure the brightness of America’s “future history.”
"The names of our famous women, and what they stood for and now instruct us in what we can be, readily come to mind, including Rosa Parks, Sally Ride, Zora Huston, Margaret Sanger, Margaret Mead, Susan Anthony, Maya Lin, Helen Keller, Georgia O’Keeffe and Eleanor Roosevelt. These women were not alone and their descendants and sisters are among us today as part of the extended family of the many thousands of women graduates of Brainerd Public
Schools.
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"Each of (the Class of 2019 Legendary Women) graduated from Brainerd Public Schools carrying with her all of the learning, insights, experiences, skills and maturing personality she acquired there and within this community, then out into all parts of the world. These Legendary Women are from this place and from the educations provided to them by this community and its committed educators, a community and public schools in existence for almost 150 years of history.
BPS Archives needs the help of the community in acquiring, or re - acquiring, the historical evidence of BPS, its people and its commitment to the formal and informal education of its students over the last almost 150 years. No item, document, photograph, program - nothing - is too small or seemingly without archival meaning to assist BPS Archives in its obligations to protect and advance BPS history. Please contact BPS Archivist - Curator John Erickson (218 - 330 - 1780 or by email at bps.history@isd181.org).
