Heroes and Heroines

Blog posts by author Lynette M. Burrows about men and women who inspire through acts of courage, generosity, and/or selflessness.

You Are Strong Enough

Lynette M Burrows

After all we’ve been through as individuals and a nation, we’re all tired. Even if we have hope, we’re stress fatigued. No matter how tired you are of all that’s happened. You are strong enough. Yes, we have months to go before we have a handle on the pandemic. Longer for economic and racial injustices to be corrected. Even longer to restore some sense of national unity. It’s exhausting. But we are strong. All of us—You are strong enough to get through this. Strength is one of those things you’re supposed to have. You don’t feel that you have it at the time you’re going through it. Joan Didion Problems are not the problem; coping is the problem. Virginia Satir Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength. Arnold Schwarzenegger Being vulnerable is not a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of strength. Karamo Brown Strength and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Robert Kiyosaki Stand up to your obstacles and do something about them. You will find that they haven’t half the strength you think they have. Norman Vincent Peale But standing up to […]

One of the First Women on the National Ski Patrol

Lynette M Burrows

Empowered women come in all sizes, shapes, colors, and interests. Patty (Tasker) Morris is such a woman. We know little about Patty. But we know she was, if not the first, one of the first women on the National Ski Patrol. First Skis Patty Tasker got her first pair of skis from her father when she was five. In the early 1900s, people who loved to ski joined Ski Clubs. Resorts were rare and ski lifts were nonexistent. You climbed the mountain you wanted to ski. But Patty didn’t mind. She loved to ski. She said, “I didn’t like to ever take them off.” At 18, Patty moved from Brattleboro to Burlington, Vermont, in the late 1930s to work for the government. In 1937, a friend of Patty’s kept telling her about a man named Winston “Win” Morris.  Meeting “Win” They met in March of that year. In April they had their first date—on the mountain and on skis. Winston “Win” Morris was among the first ski patrollers of the Mount Mansfield Ski Club in Stowe, Vermont. That club established one of the first US ski patrols around 1935. Eventually that grew into the National Ski Patrol. When asked about […]

Four Women First to Enlist

Lynette M Burrows

Before 1914 it was a man’s world. Men ran the country, worked for a living, and fought the wars. A woman fighting beside men was unimaginable. Then on July 28, 1914, Serbian nationalist, Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie. That assassination set off a chain of events that escalated beyond their borders and into what we call World War I. And by the end of the war on November 11, 1918, more than 200,000 women were in uniform and serving their countries. On Veteran’s Day, we salute four women first to enlist in the U.S. Armed Forces.  U.S. Army The Army has not officially stated who was the first woman to enlist. However, historians credit Deborah Sampson (1760-1827) as the first woman who served in the Army. An indentured servant, Sampson disguised herself as a man named Robert Shurtleff. Her story isn’t clear, but she enlisted in 1781 or 1782. She was twenty-one. Wounded several times in battle, her physician eventually discovered her gender and kept it a secret. But her physician’s niece became enamored of the young battle-scarred soldier. Not wanting to lead her on, Sampson wrote the girl a letter which ended up being […]