March 10, 2005: Headlines: COS - Namibia: Iraq: Channel Five: RPCV Fern Holland Remembered In Norman Ceremony
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March 10, 2005: Headlines: COS - Namibia: Iraq: Channel Five: RPCV Fern Holland Remembered In Norman Ceremony
RPCV Fern Holland Remembered In Norman Ceremony
RPCV Fern Holland Remembered In Norman Ceremony
Holland Remembered In Norman Ceremony
Mankiller Leads Ceremony At Delta Gamma House
POSTED: 3:34 pm CST March 10, 2005
UPDATED: 3:39 pm CST March 10, 2005
NORMAN, Okla. -- One year after gunmen killed Oklahoman Fern Holland in Iraq, former Cherokee Nation Chief Wilma Mankiller gathered with others in Norman to honor Holland at the Delta Gamma sorority house she once called home.
Mankiller compared Holland to other women who gave their lives for truth and justice. She mentioned Dorothy Stang, an American nun and longtime champion for Brazilian peasants who was shot to death last month.
The former Cherokee chief and 1998 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom closed her comments by reciting a Mohawk saying.
"It's hard to see the future with tears in your eyes," Mankiller said. "Let us stay focused on the future and continue her work."
Holland was a University of Oklahoma graduate raised in Bluejacket and Miami who went on to become an attorney, a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa and a human rights activist in Guinea and Iraq.
Gunmen killed the 33-year-old woman and two of her colleagues in a March 9, 2004, ambush near Karbala, Iraq.
"Oklahoma Today" magazine recently named Holland its 2004 Oklahoman of the year. Editor-in-chief Louisa McCune presented a plaque recognizing the Oklahoman of the Year honor to Holland's family members.
McCune said Holland's selection was easy because all nine Oklahoma Today staff members were emotionally moved by the life she led. In Iraq, Holland raised the voice of women's rights and issues for the Coalition Provisional Authority. She also worked tirelessly for women's groups within the country, which led to bitterness from some Iraqi conservatives and quite likely to her murder.
"Fern set the standard for all of us to follow, but she wouldn't want us to follow her," said Holland's older sister Mary Ann Dunn. "She would want us to follow our own dreams and whatever it is we want to do."
Attorney Steve Rodolf, Holland's former employer, spoke of children attending school in the smallest of villages in Africa and of a particular HIV-positive boy there who's now 8 years old.
"Every day he turns on the school computer, and the first thing he sees is a picture of her," Rodolf said. "In the refugee camps in Guinea and with the women and children she helped in Iraq, people remember Fern."
Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
When this story was posted in March 2005, this was on the front page of PCOL:
| The Peace Corps Library Peace Corps Online is proud to announce that the Peace Corps Library is now available online. With over 30,000 index entries in over 500 categories, this is the largest collection of Peace Corps related reference material in the world. From Acting to Zucchini, you can use the Main Index to find hundreds of stories about RPCVs who have your same interests, who served in your Country of Service, or who serve in your state. |
| RPCVs in Congress ask colleagues to support PC RPCVs Sam Farr, Chris Shays, Thomas Petri, James Walsh, and Mike Honda have asked their colleagues in Congress to add their names to a letter they have written to the House Foreign Operations Subcommittee, asking for full funding of $345 M for the Peace Corps in 2006. As a follow-on to Peace Corps week, please read the letter and call your Representative in Congress and ask him or her to add their name to the letter. |
| March 1: National Day of Action Tuesday, March 1, is the NPCA's National Day of Action. Please call your Senators and ask them to support the President's proposed $27 Million budget increase for the Peace Corps for FY2006 and ask them to oppose the elimination of Perkins loans that benefit Peace Corps volunteers from low-income backgrounds. Follow this link for step-by-step information on how to make your calls. Then take our poll and leave feedback on how the calls went. |
| Coates Redmon, Peace Corps Chronicler Coates Redmon, a staffer in Sargent Shriver's Peace Corps, died February 22 in Washington, DC. Her book "Come as You Are" is considered to be one of the finest (and most entertaining) recountings of the birth of the Peace Corps and how it was literally thrown together in a matter of weeks. If you want to know what it felt like to be young and idealistic in the 1960's, get an out-of-print copy. We honor her memory. |
| Make a call for the Peace Corps PCOL is a strong supporter of the NPCA's National Day of Action and encourages every RPCV to spend ten minutes on Tuesday, March 1 making a call to your Representatives and ask them to support President Bush's budget proposal of $345 Million to expand the Peace Corps. Take our Poll: Click here to take our poll. We'll send out a reminder and have more details early next week. |
| Peace Corps Calendar: Tempest in a Teapot? Bulgarian writer Ognyan Georgiev has written a story which has made the front page of the newspaper "Telegraf" criticizing the photo selection for his country in the 2005 "Peace Corps Calendar" published by RPCVs of Madison, Wisconsin. RPCV Betsy Sergeant Snow, who submitted the photograph for the calendar, has published her reply. Read the stories and leave your comments. |
| WWII participants became RPCVs Read about two RPCVs who participated in World War II in very different ways long before there was a Peace Corps. Retired Rear Adm. Francis J. Thomas (RPCV Fiji), a decorated hero of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, died Friday, Jan. 21, 2005 at 100. Mary Smeltzer (RPCV Botswana), 89, followed her Japanese students into WWII internment camps. We honor both RPCVs for their service. |
| Bush's FY06 Budget for the Peace Corps The White House is proposing $345 Million for the Peace Corps for FY06 - a $27.7 Million (8.7%) increase that would allow at least two new posts and maintain the existing number of volunteers at approximately 7,700. Bush's 2002 proposal to double the Peace Corps to 14,000 volunteers appears to have been forgotten. The proposed budget still needs to be approved by Congress. |
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Story Source: Channel Five
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Namibia; Iraq
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