Just say no? When it comes to volunteering and helping others, Madeline Bozzelli just can’t help but say yes.
Bozzelli’s is one of the most-mentioned names in Akron volunteer and fundraising circles as she has helped hundreds of nonprofit organizations raise countless dollars for the Akron community through the years. Her volunteering began in the 1960s when the Friends of Children’s Hospital asked her to join their group. Now, she serves on the boards of 28 organizations, her biggest being the Ohio Ballet, Akron Symphony Orchestra, Friends of Children’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital Tree Festival, St. Thomas Hospital Women’s Board and the American Diabetes Association.
Sixteen years ago, Frieda Corbin and Bozzelli created the Iris Ball as a Cuyahoga Falls General Hospital Auxiliary fund raiser. It has evolved into an event, sponsored by the Community Board of Cuyahoga Falls General Hospital, that recognizes approximately 15 young women each year for their leadership and commitment to their school and community.
Madeline is retired from the county Board of Elections. Her husband of more than 40 years, Libert, is a retired sheet metal business agent and former Cuyahoga Falls and Summit County councilman. He’s also heavily involved with the community as a former ballet trustee and a current board member for the Akron Symphony, Akron Civic Theatre, Soap Box Derby and Friends of the Kent State University Museum.
Eleanor L. Smith Bozeman was the first African-American female physician to practice in Akron.
In 1950 she and her husband, Wilfred B. Bozeman, started their practice in the city. She was the internist; he, the obstetrician-gynecologist. She also became known as a leading philanthropist, donating thousands of dollars to establish scholarships for minority women who wanted to study medicine.
Born in Wilmington, Del., in 1922, Smith grew up in Atlantic City at a time when few women or minorities practiced medicine. She graduated from Fisk University and then went on to Meharry Medical College, both historically black institutions near Nashville, Tenn. She completed her medical residency in St. Louis, Missouri.
Bozeman and Smith met while at medical school. They selected Akron as their home because “the city wasn’t too big and it wasn’t too small,” their daughter Karen Gross told the Beacon Journal.
Eleanor Bozeman practiced medicine in Akron from 1950 to 1974. The Bozemans did well in their medical practice. By 1963, they along with former classmate, Eldridge T. Sharpp, built Akron’s first Black-owned medical building, Wooster-Mallison Medical Center.
In 1974, Bozeman gave up private practice and became a staff physician at Kent State University, retiring in 1986. She worked part-time with the Plasma Alliance in Akron until 1991.
Bozeman remained active in the community. She was a life member of the Akron chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and served on its executive board. She was also a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority and the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.
Bozeman died on April 10, 1996.
Over her life Bozeman donated more than $50,000 to three colleges so minority women could study science and medicine. In 1992, when she donated $20,000 to establish a scholarship at the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine for women and minorities, she explained, “There is a need for additional help for female minority students in medicine. Too many times these students have to drop out because they run out of money. I hope this will help meet that need.”
Judge Jane Bond has been an impact player in the city of Akron for more than 25 years and is well known and well respected throughout the community.
Bond graduated with honors from Ohio University’s prestigious E.W. Scripps School of Journalism in 1968, where she specialized in radio and television broadcasting. She was a single parent by the time she entered The University of Akron School of Law in 1973 and began to juggle the responsibilities of a student, mother, and part-time assistant at a local law firm. She received her law degree in 1976, at a time when few women were practicing law, and worked as an assistant Summit County prosecutor.
From 1981 to 1986 she held a new position, general counsel for the County Executive, playing a major role in developing the legal framework for the first county-chartered form of government in Ohio.
Bond lost tight elections for a seat on the Akron Municipal Court in 1983 and 1985. She filled a vacancy on the bench in 1989 and won a subsequent election for an unexpired term. In 1991, she filled a vacancy in the Common Pleas Court and kept her seat in elections in 1992, 1994, and 2000.
Jody Bacon, a creative and innovative thinker, is committed to helping social agencies in Summit County, Ohio.
Born in Mount Pleasant, Mich., Bacon received her early education there and completed high school in Jackson, Mich. A graduate of Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, Bacon also earned a degree in Journalism from the University of Michigan.
While in Jackson, Bacon served as executive director for the Jackson Community Foundation and the Hurst Foundation. In addition to her work administering donations to the community, Bacon was president of the Junior League, a trustee of the Jackson Symphony Orchestra and the Ella Sharp Museum. She served as vice president of the Literary and Arts Foundation and was the Community Event coordinator for the Jackson Hot Air Jubilee.
In 1990, Bacon accepted the position of executive vice president of the Akron Community Foundation, a foundation that gives grants to area arts and cultural organizations, and moved to Akron. She was later named executive director and president and continues to serve in that capacity.
Citing her father as a guiding influence in her desire to help take care of people, Bacon encourages everyone to find something for which they have a passion and a commitment.
An avid reader, Bacon enjoys walking in the parks and along the towpath in the Akron area. She is also very proud of her son, a geologist in Ann Arbor, Mich., and her daughter Jill Bacon Madden, a community relations specialist for Summit County (Ohio) executive James B. McCarthy. She has four grandchildren.
The recipient of numerous awards, Bacon recently was named the 2003 Buckingham, Doolittle and Burroughs “Stellar Performer.” In 2002, she was featured in Northern Ohio Live as one of the “Five Most Influential Women in Northeast Ohio.”
Serving as past president of the Akron Roundtable and Association of Fundraising Professionals, Bacon has not hesitated to get involved within the community. A graduate of Leadership Akron, she is a past board member of the Grantmakers Forum, Ohio Donor’s Forum, National Board of Directors, Girl Scouts of America, Summit Social Services Board, the Akron Rotary and the Summit Education Foundation.
In addition to working with the Akron Community Foundation, Bacon currently serves on the boards of the Akron Regional Development Board and the advisory board of WKSU. She continues working with the Akron Roundtable, the Association of Fundraising Professionals and Leadership Akron.
Awards and distinctions given to Bacon include the 1995 Woman of Distinction Award from the Western Reserve Girl Scouts, the 1998 Harold K. Stubbs Humanitarian Award and the 1999 Rainmaker Award. In 2000, she was named a “Great Community Leader for the 21st Century,” by the Boy Scouts of America.
Daisy L. Alford-Smith, champion for the underprivileged, uses her background in health care and public policy-making to help the citizens of Summit County.
Although little is known about her early life, Alford-Smith holds the following degrees: a Nursing Diploma from Montefiore Hospital School of Nursing in Pittsburgh; a B.S. in Nursing from the University of New York; an M.S. in Technical Education from The University of Akron, and a Ph. D. in Urban Education from Cleveland State University.
In addition to teaching at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, Alford-Smith has lectured extensively around the world, including Zimbabwe, Africa, and Bangkok, Thailand.
Alford-Smith has spoken before many groups about issues regarding health care and minorities. Some of these groups include the International Nursing Conference in Korea and the Democratic National Convention’s Black Caucus Delegation here in the United States.
The mother of three children of her own and a blended family of two more, Alford-Smith has dealt with health care issues personally in her own family. Her daughter, Kym Sellers, a well-known radio personality, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Alford-Smith and her daughter work to raise awareness and financial support for African-Americans who suffer from the disease.
Akron, Ohio, is where Alford-Smith currently serves as the director of the Summit County Department of Job & Family Services, although she is involved in many programs that deal with health care. She has worked with the Olivet Institutional Baptist Church Health and Education Institute, the Center for Urban & Minority Health at Case Western Reserve University. Besides being the director of the Cleveland Department of Public Health and the deputy director of the Ohio Department of Human Services, Alford-Smith has also been the branch manager and administrator for Staff Builders Health Care Services in Akron, a company that delivers health care products and services in a tri-county area.
Because faith is an important part of her life, Alford-Smith works in support of faith-based health care and Charitable Choice programs in Ohio. Her testimony in Washington, D.C., has given credibility to one of the first pilot programs for faith-based health care in the country.
Alford-Smith is a member of the following professional organizations: the Cleveland Council of Black Nurses, the Akron Black Nurses Association, the National Forum of Black Public Administrators, the Coalition of 100 Black Women, the Black Women’s Political Action Committee, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, LINKS, Inc., County Commissioners Association of Ohio and the United States Conference of Local Health Officers. She is currently the first vice president of the National Black Nurses Association and is a past graduate of Leadership Cleveland.
Past board memberships and committee seats include the American Red Cross-North Central Ohio, the Ohio United Way, United Negro College Fund, Womenspace, Buckeye Health Center and the Minority Organ Tissue Transplant Education Program.
Because of her tireless efforts to improve health care, Alford-Smith has received numerous awards such as Joan L. Andrews Professional Service Award, Crain’s Cleveland Business Leaders of Today Award and Woman of Influence Award, the 24th Annual YWCA Greater Cleveland Woman of Achievement Award, the Plain Dealer’s Outstanding Accomplishments in Welfare Reform Award, and the Distinguished Achievement Award from Arlington Church of God, Akron, to name just a few.
In photo, Alford-Smith poses with daughter Kym Sellers. Photo courtesy of the Kym Sellers Foundation.
Evelyn Poole Stewart McNeil, a professional photographer, captured the history of the African-American community of Akron on film.
She was born Evelyn Poole in Memphis, Tenn., in 1918. She moved to Akron with her family, which included a brother George and two sisters Clara and Wilma. Little is known about her early education. For a time she worked for the Cleveland Call and Post, the African-American weekly newspaper, as a reporter and photographer covering Akron.
Sometime during the 1940s, she met Horace Stewart, an immigrant from British Guyana. Stewart was a photographer who ran a studio on North Howard Street. Poole and Stewart married in 1950 and together ran the Stewart Photographic Studio. The Stewarts specialized in photographing the African-American community. The two photographed the African-American leaders in the city, the special events and everyday life in the community. After her husband died in 1968, Stewart continued to run the studio, finally retiring in 1978.
Evelyn Stewart remarried Dr. Noah McNeil. Evelyn Poole Stewart McNeil died in Akron on Jan.7, 1992. She was a member of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church.Her collection of photographs which documented the Akron’s African-American community was donated to The University of Akron. Evelyn Poole Stewart McNeil is buried in Northlawn Cemetery.
Photo courtesy of the Beacon Journal.Card courtesy of The University of Akron Archives.
Akron school teacher Jean Hixson could have been America’s first person in space if NASA had just listened to reason. Instead, fellow Ohioan John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth in 1962.
Hixson — or some other woman of the so-called “Mercury 13” — should have gotten the nod. Common sense dictated the choice of a woman instead of a man. Studies showed that women could handle heat better, could better stand the mental and physical strain, were less prone to heart attacks — and were less expensive to send into space (they weighed less, and required less oxygen and food). Instead, NASA bowed to popular sentiment and banished Hixson and the 12 other women from the space program.
Hixson saw that as enormous waste. In 1973, she told an Akron Beacon Journal reporter, “I think they (NASA) should send up the person who can bring back the best and most information. It’s a great waste of our country’s mentality the way women are weighted away from this area because of what people think.”
Hixson never really fit into what people thought women should be doing in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s or 1960s.
Born in Hoopeston, Ill., Hixson always wanted to fly. She started flight lessons when she was 16 and earned her pilot’s license when she was 18. During World War II, Hixson trained with the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) in Sweetwater, Texas, and flew the B-25 twin-engine bomber as an engineering air force pilot. She also ferried planes between manufacturers and Air Force bases.
After the war — and the WASP was disbanded, Hixson was offered a chance to join the Air Force Reserves as a non-flying second lieutenant assigned to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton; but Hixson continued to fly. In 1957, she became the second woman to break the sound barrier — over Lake Erie.
Even as she continued as an officer in the Air Force Reserve, Hixson started another career. She returned to school, The University of Akron, to get her teaching degree. She specialized in mathematics and science and learned a second language — Russian. Hixson became a third grade teacher in Akron’s public schools, teaching at Crouse, Seiberling and Erie Island elementaries. She also gave astronomy lessons at Firestone High School. Hixson’s name was always associated with aviation. Although she was teaching in Akron’s public schools, Hixson was also participating in transcontinental races and piloting helicopters, hot-air balloons and even the Goodyear blimp. It was little wonder that Hixson became known as the “supersonic schoolmarm.”
It was also little wonder that she would be invited to be a part of an experiment. In 1960, she was invited to participate in a battery of tests to assess women’s fitness as potential astronauts. In summer 1961, Hixson went to Albuquerque, N.M., for a series of astronaut tests, the same tests that John Glenn and the male astronauts had endured.
From all accounts, Hixson passed all the tests and, indeed, was judged by her peers as the “best of the crew.” Had she been allowed to continue, no doubt she would have received enormous publicity from the Beacon Journal’s aviation expert, nationally known writer Helen Waterhouse. But even Waterhouse could not save the appointment when NASA denied all plans to send women into space, a stance supported by astronaut-in-training John Glenn. “I think this gets back to the way our social order is organized….It is just a fact. The men go off and fight the wars and fly the airplanes and come back and help design and build and test them. The fact that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order,” Glenn told a congressional hearing.
Hixson was out. She returned to Akron where she returned to her work as a school teacher, flight instructor and Air Force Reserves officer.
Jean Hixson died in Akron in 1984, shortly after the first woman, Sally Ride, went up into space.
Harriet Wilson Ayers was known for her work in both the business and social/civic worlds of Akron, Ohio.
Harriet Beckwith was born in Akron in 1890 and attended Henry School. After graduating from Central High School, she spent two years at the Akron Normal School. She then taught kindergarten for a year at Fraunfelter School. In 1911, she married Ralph Wilson, who was the president of the Wilson Lumber Company, which later became the Portage Lumber Company.
They had one daughter, Nancy, and two sons, Ralph and Robert. They were members of the First Baptist Church.
Upon her husband’s death in 1932, she assumed the responsibility of running the lumber company. She continued to do so until 1954. That year, she turned the company over to her son so she could start a new career as an insurance underwriter. She also remarried, to Allan F. Ayers, who had one son, Allan Jr.
Not only was Wilson running the lumber company, but she also spent some time working for the Charles Slusser Insurance Company and the Eagle Printing Company. In 1956, she was named Woman of Achievement, an award given to a business or professional woman who is outstanding in both the community and in public service fields.
According to the Beacon Journal, “despite the 15 years she has spent in business, doing a job that would require the best efforts of a man, Harriet is just as fond as feminine activities as she ever was.” This included maintaining ties to the many organizations she helped to found.
She was a charter member of the Women’s City Club, the Akron Art Institute and the Manuscript Club. She was the founder of the Zonta International Women’s Service Group, the Inter-Club Council of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs and the Business Woman’s Current Events Club. Wilson also adopted leadership roles in many of those organizations. She was the first chairman, sponsor, organizer and honorary president of the City Club’s Little Theater Section, a president and member of the board of directors of the City Club, honorary and three-year president of the Business Women’s Current Events Club, secretary and organizer of the Akron Symphony Orchestra and first secretary of the Women’s Section of the National Aeronautics Association. She was a secretary of the Volunteer Committee for the Preservation of Stan Hywet, a vice president of the Home and School League, a member of the board of the Children’s Concert Society, and a member of the board of directors of the International Center. She was also involved in the Men’s City Club, through her business relations, and a member of the Women’s Committee of the Greater Akron Music Association.
As a member of the First Baptist Church, she was president of the Young Ladies Circle. She later changed churches and became an active member of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.
The Beacon Journal article concluded, “Mrs. Harriet Beckwith Wilson offers further proof – not that any is needed – that a woman can successfully take a man’s place in the business world.” She was a “gracious woman,” with an “infectious laugh…who hates snobbery and has none of it in her makeup.”
She continued her involvement in Akron organizations up until her July 4, 1978 death.
Helen Stocking Waterhouse was the “most controversial newspaperwoman in Akron history,” Beacon JournalManaging Editor Murray Powers wrote. Waterhouse could be abrasive and inaccurate but she also had great sources, enormous energy and enthusiasm and an eye for a story, he observed. Over her almost 40 years with the Beacon Journal, she wrote many front page stories.
She was born Helen Stocking on May 31, 1892 in Watertown, Mass. She was educated in the Watertown schools and then went on to Boston Normal School and Fenway School of Illustration. She started her newspaper career in Massachusetts for the Springfield Union.
She moved to Akron with her husband, Ralph, and two children in the mid 1920s. Ralph Waterhouse would go on to be superintendent of Akron schools from 1934 to 1942. He would also divorce his journalist wife in 1940 on the grounds of neglect.
In Akron, Waterhouse started her journalism career as a freelance writer for the Beacon Journal in the mid 1920s. Freelance writers are paid by the story. By 1928, Waterhouse was selling so many stories to the Beacon,she was making more than many staff reporters. John S. Knight, publisher of the newspaper, hired Waterhouse full-time as a way to save money.
It turned out to be great timing because Waterhouse was going to cover some of the most important stories of the 1930s. An aviation enthusiast (Waterhouse was the first woman aviation writer in the nation), she was friends with most of the early pilots in the nation – Amelia Earhart, Wiley Post and Col. Charles Lindbergh. It was her connection with Lindbergh that probably explained why the Beacon sent Waterhouse to cover the trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, accused of kidnapping and killing the aviator’s son. In 1935, she was competing with the likes of reporting legends Walter Winchell, Lowell Thomas and Dorothy Kilgallen. But she scooped them all when she got the only interview with the accused kidnapper. Winchell didn’t care for Waterhouse, dismissing her as the “Akron disaster.” Waterhouse also covered the Hindenburg disaster in Lakehurst, N.Y., in 1937.
But her stories in those early days didn’t just involve aviation. She interviewed some of the most important personalities of the day, including first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. During World War II, she was best known for her profiles of the Akron boys killed in action.
After the war, she concentrated on international reporting from France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece and Yugoslavia. It was her time in Yugoslavia that won her two invited audiences with Pope Pius XII at the Vatican. She also covered stories in Israel, Korea, Japan and Russia. She covered the Indo-China war in 1954 and went to Castro’s Cuba in 1960.
But it was the stories that she wrote about Akron and its residents that made her a favorite with Beacon readers. She was the “queen bee” of the Soap Box Derby. She wrote stories about tragedies and human triumphs.
Waterhouse was a member of the National Aviation Writers Association and the Overseas Press Club. She founded the Ohio Press Women’s Association.
She won many awards during her long career. In 1940, 1941 and 1943, she won TWA’s award for best newspaper work in aviation. She won 15 awards from the National Press Women’s organization. That group named her Press Woman of Achievement in 1957 and 1958 and Woman of the Year in 1963.
In 1965, Waterhouse herself became front page news. On her way to a story, she suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while driving on West Exchange Street in Akron. Her car slammed into a light pole and Waterhouse died.
Her funeral was packed with readers, editors, reporters and sources (including Dr. Sam Sheppard, who had been convicted of killing his wife in Bay Village). The Beacon’s publisher, editor, managing editor, copy editor, editorial page editor and sports editor served as pall bearers.
Hazel Steiner Polsky, wife of the owner of one of the largest retail stores in Akron, Ohio, left her own mark on the city through her civic and benevolent activities.
Hazel Steiner was born in Sterling, Ohio, in 1882, the daughter of Elizabeth and Noah R. Steiner. She was educated in a convent school near Cincinnati. In 1899, she and her family moved to Akron. Her father, a real estate developer, was responsible for the development of much of the Kenmore (Ohio) area.
She met Bert A. Polsky, son of an Akron retailer, at a fraternity party and they soon married.
Hazel Polsky never worked outside the home. Both she and her husband, who ran the department store that carried his name, were active in civic organizations. She, especially, got involved with the hospitals in the city. Polsky served as president of the Women’s Auxiliary and a board member of Akron City Hospital (now Summa Health System). She also was active in the Mary Day Nursery and Children’s Hospital, serving as vice president. She was also associated with Women’s City Club, the Art and History Club as well as the Akron section of the National Council of Jewish Women. She attended Temple Israel.
At her death in October 1964, the Beacon Journalremembered her as a “woman whose grace of manner, whose devotion to husband and children and whose service to the community made her beloved by all who had the good fortune to know her.”
