THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT
Patricia Widmayer
“We don’t just carry signs and picket. We offer sound alternatives to the present situation in society if that situation is causing inequality for women.”
Interviewed by Mary Jean Collins, VFA Historian, August 2023
MJC: Will you please tell us your name and your birthday and date?
PW: Patricia Ramsdell Widmayer, and today is August the 9th of 2023. And my birth date is January 21, 1943.
MJC: And where were you born?
PW: I was born in Buffalo, New York, although I did not live there for very long. My family was there during the war with an assignment in Buffalo, New York, at Bell Aircraft, and then they returned to Michigan as soon as the war was over.
MJC: Tell us anything you think is relevant about your family and how it might have led to your interest in feminism and other issues.
PW: We grew up in a suburb of Detroit. And it was a typical 1950s childhood with two parents and a brother and a sister and me. And we went to the public schools and much happened that was very interesting but typical until my family had several incidents that turned me to saying no, they are never going to do it like this to me again.
My father was involved in athletics and would come home late because he was a coach or a referee or whatever and he would come home late. And I remember the time when I was about eleven years old when my father came home and he told my mother she needed to get up to make him a sandwich because he was not capable, apparently of making a sandwich for himself and he needed his, what he called, third lunch. And I thought, no, you’re never going to do that to me. And then, as time went on, my family bought a Dairy Queen. And my siblings, my brother, my sister and I were part of the team that ran the Dairy Queen.
And my father would not pay me as same as my brother by the hour because he said I could not lift what was called the hopper machine, the mix that went into what was called the freezing hopper. And so, I proved to him that I could, but that did not make a difference because at that time this may sound simple now, but he paid my brother ten cents more per hour than he would for me. And so those two incidents sort of paved the way for, okay, I’m going to have my own money, I’m going to be able to work for my work professionally.
I went to college and made it clear to my now husband that I was going to be working for the rest of my life. And so when it came around to having gotten into a professional position with the speaker’s office in Lansing, Michigan, one of our first issues was equal credit. And it mattered a very great deal because even the womenswear stores, as I became a professional in the Detroit area and then ultimately in Lansing, they wouldn’t give us credit without a signature from the husband.
MJC: Can we back up a little so we don’t miss some of your history here? Let’s go back to what suburb of Detroit are we in when you’re growing up?
PW: Berkeley, Michigan, which is right near Royal Oak, Michigan, for those who want to be able to try to figure out what the geography is.
MJC: And so when it came time to decide whether you would go to college, was there any fuss about whether you would go or not?
PW: There was not. In my family, going on to college was expected, but ultimately and you’ll find later, they really thought I was going to do different things than I did with my college, but going to college was not a question.
MJC: Where did you go to college?
PW: I went to Michigan State University, and I majored in political science. And you will find as we thread this all through, that political science just keeps coming back and back.
MJC: So what did you do when you got out of college? What did you kind of work did you pursue?
PW: My husband and I went to Poughkeepsie, New York, where he had a position with IBM. And at the same time, I taught high school – world history and political science at Arlington High School in Poughkeepsie, New York, for two years until we determined to go back to Michigan State to finish to go to graduate school, and we returned to East Lansing and never left Michigan.
MJC: Did you meet your husband at Michigan State?
PW: No, I met him when I was in middle school, and we were friends through middle school and high school and happened, both of us, to have gone on to Michigan State. And somewhere along the way, a romance happened, and we married when we were still in college. We returned to Michigan State in order to go to graduate school. I had an opportunity because the dean of the college said, we need more women who have PhDs. How long do you have? And I told her how long I would be able to stay on campus while he pursued his MBA. And I became a PhD candidate and finished with my PhD in 1971.
MJC: So good for her. And do you want to mention her name?
PW: Judy Henderson, and she was the dean of the college. And as I said, she said, we need more women who have PhDs. And here I am. And I was able to fortunately leverage that PhD for a whole lot of opportunities throughout my entire career.
MJC: What happened next? Got the PhD. Now what?
PW: I got the PhD. And at the same time, and this is the next seminal happening in my life, I had a molar pregnancy, that it was a pregnancy that was not fully formed, and I needed a procedure, an abortion. And they wouldn’t do it because this was still under the old laws of 1931 in Michigan. And they made me wait eight weeks before they finally got a negative pregnancy test, and I could get to the hospital. That is the longest eight weeks of my life for both me and my husband, and it turned me into an active feminist for the rest of my life because I didn’t want anyone else to have that happen to them. So, I started working with Michigan NOW.
MJC: What year was that, Patricia? Do you remember?
PW: 1969. And there was a piece in the paper in the Detroit News or Free Press, I don’t remember which, that said there was this meeting of women for Michigan NOW and come to Christ Episcopal Church on Jefferson Avenue in downtown Detroit. So I said, I’m going. And I did. I thought there would be casts of thousands, but what I found were 8 -10 women around a table at Christ Episcopal in downtown Detroit.
Patricia Burnett, Marge Jackson Levin, Joan Israel, and many others that you probably have recordings of or papers from, because there were just ten of us, and each one has distinguished themselves over a period of time. They made me the corresponding secretary and the reason why – and I’ve told this in another interview also – was because I had a Selectric typewriter, which was the most sophisticated of machines at the time, and so I could do the newsletter. And I therefore became the corresponding secretary around that table. And we moved on to doing really active things in the Detroit area from 1970 until I left for Lansing in 1973, which is another part of the story.
But during that four-year period when I was active with Michigan NOW, we did such things as the demonstration against Michigan Bell in order to put more women into crafts. We did Equality Day occasions at what was then called Cadillac Square and now is known as Heart Plaza in downtown Detroit and just so many other things that helped to move us along.
And somewhere along the way, I met some women from Lansing who said, we hear there’s this job at the speaker’s office in Lansing, and Patricia, you have a PhD and you have other things that you’ve been doing. Will you apply? To which they expected that I would be rejected and that they could make an issue out of it. Instead, I went to work for the speaker of the House in 1973. And the occasion, interestingly enough, that I had gone to Lansing for in order to do that interview, was the hearing for the ERA Michigan, and they just instantly passed it, ratified in Michigan, and I was there and had the opportunity and then got the job with the speaker of the House.
MJC: Let’s give the speaker a name.
PW: His name was Bill Ryan, and he was the kind of person who had other people involved, because what he did had a whole staff under his control. And he made assignments then on behalf of all the members of the House who were Democrats in order to keep control. And my assignment was women’s rights and education.
MJC: What was your personal life like at that time?
PW: By the time I described to you, the Molar pregnancy, I already had one child. Her name is Carole, and Carole was born in 1964, and so she traveled with me during those early years in terms of the activism within the women’s movement. And then my son Chris was born in 1971. By the time we moved to Lansing for my position with the speaker of the House, I had two kids, and my husband traveled back and forth from Lansing to Detroit in order to continue with his work with IBM.
MJC: Wonderful. You turned into a modern family mighty fast there.
PW: We did. Carole was born while we were still in college between our junior and senior years, and then Chris came along as I finished my PhD.
MJC: All right, well, wonderful. So you’re working for I mean, this is quite amazing. So you’re working for the speaker. Did they control all three branches at that point?
PW: No, they controlled two of the branches. They controlled the House and the Senate. But the governor at the time was Bill Milliken, who was a Republican but a very liberal Republican, and his First Lady was Helen Milliken, who was very active in the women’s movement. So the Republicans were very strong for choice. They were strong for the ERA. They believed in civil liberties.
MJC: So do you think the fact that the Millikan’s were in the Governor’s mansion was one of the reasons the ERA passed?
PW: Oh, well, actually, the support for the ERA was not even questioned out of the governor’s office, and the vote with the Senate and with the House just happened in, like, 48 hours or whatever, swiftly in 1972. That was before I joined the Speaker’s office.
MJC: That’s amazing.
PW: By the time I arrived at the Speaker’s office, I was given an assignment by the speaker of the House to do women’s rights. It included the ERA, which was never questioned. There was an attempt at one point by some activists out of Grand Rapids to get a rescission in 1975, but it came and went.
MJC: Excellent. All right, so you’re with the Speaker’s office. Do you want to talk about either any other developments in the legislature that you were working on then or the women’s movement stuff at that time?
PW: Well, I started talking about the Equal Credit Legislation. In fact, I have a copy that I have kept for all these years. That is the Equal Credit Legislation. House Bill number 4639, and it amended to give equal credit regardless of sex and several other areas. That was one of our first victories. And then an interesting one that came along at the same time was that we could not use a name other than our given name on our birth certificate or marriage certificate for our driver’s licenses. Just during that time when I was joining into the Lansing community they started sending letters to the Secretary of State who was a Democrat and he held out for a while.
We sent Valentine’s cards that said ‘give us our name’ because we wanted to be able to use our maiden name or whatever other name you chose that was legal for your driver’s license. So it was give me my name for Valentine’s Day and then give me my name for Easter and then give me my name for Memorial Day weekend and give my name for the 4th of July or whatever. And then here’s the letter that I have from the assistant to the Secretary of State dated February 13 of 1974 that said all right I give up. “We’ll take a look at all the computer systems and figure out how to do this and you’ve got your name.”
But in the meantime that would be the easy part of things. A group out of Ann Arbor led by a woman by the name of Jan BenDor brought to the legislature a proposed revision of the rape laws in Michigan. And they managed to get some very conservative Republicans to lead the way because they wanted to protect women. And the alliance was very encouraging at that point. We passed through the House and the Senate a model piece of rape legislation that allowed for testimony to be provided that was more appropriate for charging criminal sexual assault. That would have been also in 1974.
That was early, it was very early, and I am pleased to have a picture of the governor signing that legislation as well. So we moved on to other issues, but with the victory in terms of credit legislation and the rape legislation in order to be able to form a broader coalition within Michigan. And that’s when I started from the Speaker’s office and then ultimately when I worked for the congressman and for the state superintendent. I just kept on going in terms of helping to strategize and organize all the women’s organizations in Michigan.
MJC: When did you leave the Speaker’s office and where did you go next?
PW: I left the Speaker’s office in 1975 and moved right across the street to the Federal building in order to be Chief of Staff for the new Congressman. His name is Bob Carr and he served ultimately from 1975 to 1994, but I was only with him for a very brief time. I was there with him for two years and then I moved on to a longer term assignment with State Superintendent of public instruction.
But through all of this I became the chief strategist for the collective women’s organizations in Michigan. I was the chief strategist and organizer. Ultimately, it was like 20 or 25 women’s organizations that were called the Women’s Assembly. And the first of the Women’s Assemblies was 1000 women at the Lansing Civic Center. And we started doing workshops about how to run for office and how to raise money.
MJC: Remember what year that was, Patricia?
PW: 1977.
MJC: That’s amazing. 1000 women.
PW: 1000 women gathered at the Lansing Civic Center. And we were a bipartisan group. We did one in 1977. We followed with another one in 1979, and then two more in 1982 and 1985.
MJC: I see corporate sponsorship there. Do I?
PW: You do. The corporate sponsorship is Chrysler Corporation Steel Case Upjohn and General Motors.
MJC: Impressive.
PW: They knew to be on the right [side]. The coalition of organizations that I think are very noteworthy are the Michigan Education Association Women’s Caucus Muharris Unites, which is the Hispanic organization, the Women’s Political Caucus, church Women’s United now the League of Women Voters, the AAUW, the YWCA, and the National Black Women’s Political Leadership Caucus. And then the sponsors, which you can see also right here again, were bipartisan representatives from all of the groups.
The lead sponsor by alpha [order] is Connie Binsfeld, who ultimately became the lieutenant governor, Republican. And you mentioned Patricia Burnett. And there’s Justice Mary Coleman. She was a Republican elected Supreme Court justice. And you will recognize other names. There’s Mildred Jeffrey, who was such a mover and shaker, and Helen Milliken and Elly Peterson, who was then the party chair.
I got, for example, the Feminist of the Year Award from NOW in 1976. And we just kept moving along. I have many pieces like this that are really quite interesting. I just came across a file, by the way – here is the assignment from everyone across the state that was assigned to make phone calls to the House and the Senate on behalf of the rank-and-file members of organizations at the time.
My assignment with the Speaker’s office evolved into being really the organizer and strategist for such things. We also did what we called the Unity Caucus for International Women’s Year to choose the delegation from Michigan. I was the chair of the Unity Caucus. And we again ended up back at the Civic Center, the Lansing Civic Center with thousands of women, of which a few were opposed to the ERA and tried to weasel their way in, and we just strategized and shut them down.
MJC: Good, good. So that’s amazing. I mean, that decade for women in Michigan, which a part of is very memorable.
PW: Yes. And we just kept organizing. We created the Women in State Government, which represented women from 19 departments. And again, we were looking for equal opportunities in the same way for Unity Caucus and for Women’s Assembly. And we just kept rolling until I left Michigan in 1985.
MJC: Talk about your job in the Education Department. The State Education Department?
PW: Yes. My title was the Director of Legislation and School Law, and I represented the state superintendent and the state board, which is an elected board in Michigan. Again, it was at the time majority Democrat. I was their lead to be able to represent the state board and the state superintendent on behalf of finance and legislation across the board on so many different issues and the funding across the state. I kept my portfolio with the women’s movement with the support of the superintendent and the board crisscrossed the state on behalf of the best progressive policies of the students of Michigan.
MJC: Excellent. Wonderful. Great. And then what comes next?
PW: I did two years with the Congress and then did my work with the Department of Education. And then in 1985, my husband and I and the two kids, moved to Chicago in order to have additional opportunities. And I called [the company] Widmayer & Associates, which was a consulting firm for higher education policy.
In 1982 I went to work for the Governor. So from the Department of Education in 1982, I became the policy chief for the Governor of Michigan, who was Jim Blanchard. He gave me an assignment to create and do the policy work for the Governor’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education, which we issued a report for in 1985. And it was with that credential, as well as my PhD and my other work in the legislature and the Department of Education in Michigan that I formed Widmayer & Associates, which became a policy consulting firm regarding higher education policy.
And at the same time I helped to organize – and this is the most exciting part – I became member number 35 of EMILY’s List. Now it’s what, 5 million, 10 million people or whatever. And at the time I was member number 35 because I [supported] Ellen Malcolm’s strategy for creating EMILY’s List, which stands for Early Money is Like Yeast, it rises. You would put in money together in order to support women across the country, beginning with Senate and House seats, and then ultimately more than that.
And I became an organizer out of Chicago working with Emily Allen in order to grow the first 1000 members of EMILY’s List. At the same time, after I left for Chicago, in addition to helping do the organizing work for EMILY’s List out of Chicago, I also became a trainer for the National Women’s Education Fund, which was doing workshops for how to do campaigns and other issues of the women’s movement out of Washington.
MJC: Right. Those organizations made a tremendous impact on the presence of women in politics.
PW: First, in the first campaign for EMILY’s List, they supported with the money we put in, we created a fund of about $100,000 nationally for the very few women who did belong at the time. And our candidates were Barbara McCluskey in Maryland and Harriet Woods in Missouri. And of those, Barbara McCluskey won. And that was the beginning, right?
MJC: It was. Excellent. Wonderful, wonderful. Good story. So the Widmayer & Associates became your vehicle for activity and income?
PW: It did, and it continued for 35 years. Very successful. And my list of people and organizations with whom I work grew to nearly 50 overall in different states and different cities and different organizations and so on, with my last assignment being in 2014.
MJC: Excellent. Great. Wonderful contribution. Excellent. How long did you stay in Chicago? Or were you there?
PW: I’m still in Chicago. There was a period of 22 years beginning in 2001 in which my husband and I also we bought a Bed & Breakfast in northern Michigan, and we divided our time six months in northern Michigan helping to grow that business. And the other six months we still lived in Chicago. My Widmayer & Associates overlapped with the bed and breakfast.
MJC: All right, good. Chicago is a great place to be. What do you count as your most memorable contribution to the women’s movement, if there is such a thing?
PW: My most memorable is the organization of the Women’s Assembly and how that brought together for 50 years all of the organizations in Michigan, to the point where so much happened during the strategizing and organizing in the early days that built and built so that today Debbie Stabenow is the senator, Gretchen Whitmer is the governor, Dana Nessel is the attorney general and Jocelyn Benson is the Secretary of State. And all of it came from organizing during the early days. And it just built and built and built so that as the women in Michigan refer to it, they now have the trifecta.
MJC: And no accident and not unrelated to the work that you did in those early days. All of it built in and established a women’s presence in politics that is almost unparalleled in the states, I would say.
PW: And the interesting thing is that during those interim years while there was one more woman who was governor, Jennifer Granholm, as well as Debbie serving in the Senate, for example, there were interim years that had regressive Republican governors, but the women’s movement persisted. And it was even more regrettable because the Republican Party then shifted to being anti-choice and believing that civil rights did not belong to women and minorities.
It was against some tides that were difficult sometimes, particularly since the funding for much of the regressive movement in Michigan came from the DeVos family with Amway out of Grand Rapids. So you were fighting internal money in big numbers. But the women’s movement kept building, and I’m very encouraged and excited by [the rights we achieved].
MJC: I see the ‘Women are Not Chicks’ poster behind you. Can you explain how that came to be in your house?
PW: I have two of them from back in the women’s underground movement in Chicago, long before I moved to Chicago. The other poster that I have an original ‘Sisterhood is Blue and Sisterhood is Blooming’. And in both cases, they’ve always hung in my house because you just remember again and again, we cannot give up.
MJC: How would you say you’ve said it to some extent already, but how would you characterize the impact of the women’s movement on your personal and professional life?
PW: It’s had a very positive effect all the way around. I remember when there were times my husband would come home and say, “I just had a colleague who wants to know where I found you.” Because we’re a partnership and so many others did not have that kind. He was very supportive all the way through. And even as he left this morning to go play golf, he said, “I’m really proud of you. Go for it.”
MJC: That’s wonderful. What a bonus that is to have.
PW: Right. And in the meantime, my daughter Carole, who is here listening in on this conversation, she came through it all. She was five by the time I went to that NOW meeting on Jefferson at the Christ Episcopal in Detroit. And she’s been with me all the [way], so my family and my son as well, incredibly supportive through the whole thing.
MJC: Wonderful. Is there anything we haven’t covered that we need to cover? Any final thoughts you have?
PW: No, I just want to know where I should leave my papers in perpetuity. Because I have a whole lot that I have saved in ways that ought to be in the record and shared. But I thought it’s interesting that I’m trying right now to reach Debbie Stabanow’s office because I have fundraising tickets from all the way back when she first ran for county commissioner and then for State House in Michigan. And I just have saved a lot of things that I’m not sure everyone has kept.
MJC: Yeah, exactly. I know the kind of thing you’re talking about because I did the same.
PW: I have a file, for example, of what transpired during the conversation about the Rape Legislation in 1974, which probably still has great relevance because some states still have not gotten to the point where a woman’s word about how she was abused is honored. I have the program from the NOW Conference from 1973.
MJC: I was there, too.
PW: I’m not sure whether many copies exist of that program, but so many things. And I have the program book from the Women’s Assembly in 1977 and 1979. Here are all of the topics, and here are all the workshops, and here are all the women who conducted the workshops. And I’ve saved all of those. I think pretty relevant things.
MJC: Excellent. They’re very relevant. Yes.
PW: They need to be somewhere that someone else can access them. Right?
MJC: Definitely. Well, that’s our assignment coming out of this encounter, right.
PW: Mary Jean, I met you 50 years ago the first time when I came to a regional conference for NOW in Chicago from Detroit. And in addition to doing all of the organizing and planning that you did, Mary Jean, you led us to go to Berghoff Restaurant on Adams Street in Chicago because they would not let women be in the bar. And you led us in to say to Berghoff’s, here we are, and we’re staying.
MJC: Oh, good. That’s a wonderful memory. I have that wonderful memory, too. Isn’t that fantastic?
PW: My daughter Carole was with us. She was there as a six year old.
MJC: I love it. That probably wasn’t even her first meeting.
PW: It was not her first meeting.
CW: It wasn’t my first, and it certainly was not my last. Yes, many that followed, and I, too, am an EMILY’s List supporter and Majority Council member for many years. While this was her passion, she shared it and passed it along, and we continue it to this day.
MJC: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Carole. I appreciate that. Well, this is a wonderful reunion, and thank you very much for participating and not to mention all that you’ve done and continue to do in this life of feminism.
PW: My discouragement of the last five years has now been renewed by the president of the United States. I tell you, during the Trump era, my husband said I had gone in a depression for four years. And now we’ve got to still revive this whole thing because Dobbs cannot stand.
MJC: No. Well, I’m very proud of Michigan leading. I’m from Wisconsin, so Wisconsin is still in a pretty bad way. We’ve got a governor that’s a Democrat, but the control of the legislature is still in the hands of the Republicans, but Michigan is really leading the way in the Midwest. Proud of it, hopefully, and with lots of women in the leadership there.
PW: And of course, those of us who are in Illinois are extraordinarily proud of what we’ve been able to do to support reproductive rights, particularly during an era in which so much has happened in surrounding states that we need to be able to provide health care for women.
MJC: Illinois has been a beacon throughout this dark period, really, of the Democrats holding on and even some of the Republicans not being too bad, although we couldn’t get the ERA through with Governor Thompson. We tried, but yeah – so many good memories. Wonderful. Well, I thank you. Thank you so much, and it’s wonderful to see you again.