|
Early Rotary woman: Salmon, Idaho, 1940 -
1950 |
|
|
  Edwina
Yearian Nichols was "allowed" to take the place of her deceased
husband in 1940 at the Rotary Club of Salmon, Idaho, USA. An
influential business woman of the day, Mrs. Nichols attended
meetings for many years, though never legally a "member."
Mrs.
Nichols also took control of her husband's local Ford Automobile
dealership and found herself as the first women car dealer in
the US. Salmon was a small town, but when phone numbers were
assigned, her business the Pioneer Garage, was given phone #1.
She was very proud of her association with Rotary. Most of the
town's events were Rotary gatherings and the leaders of the
community were the Rotarians.
  Her
own mother, Emma Russell Yearian, was a leader among women,
known as the Sheep Queen of Idaho and elected as the first woman
of the Idaho legislature. After her own husband gave her
two sheep, she turned that into an empire, producing wool for
World War I. Her daughter, Janet Nichols Moore recalls that her
mother attended the club's meetings regularly and even told her
grandson that she was a Rotarian. Rotary was an important part
of her life in Salmon. The impression stuck with the
grandson,
Jack Selway, who sixty years later, founded Rotary Global History
Fellowship. The stories she told her grandson were right out
of the Old West. At the funeral of the last of the Shoshone
Indian chiefs, where no women of the tribe were allowed, she was
the only "white" invited. She recalled that the chief was
propped up and all those attending shook his hand. His dog and
horse were buried, upside down (to be right side up on the
"other side.") |
|
|
  Recollections
from Jack Selway. As a role model, she was far
more male, than female. She worked for what she wanted. I
remember that she could tell me the price of every car she sold.
"$2,114.05" for a new Ford in the early fifties. She was very
lenient with me, probably because, prior to her husband's death,
she mostly played bridge with her friends. A life of leisure and
not much attention to her own two children, who were attended to
by housekeepers and the like. Then there was the business of my
father, Jack M. Brazelton, being killed in
WWII, weeks before I was born, and then I was being abused by a
series of step-fathers. So, I was allowed to do pretty much what
ever I wanted. I had the run of her Ford dealership until one
day a shop foreman had "enough," and after squirting grease on
his men, they put me in a woman's dress and out on the street.
I'm not sure that got my attention. I was, for decades, a rotten
kid, but the apple of her eye.
She had a great mind. I
remember one clear summer night when the two of us got out of
her car and laid down in a meadow, looking at the stars and
discussion how all of this could be part of one atom. A cosmic
philosophy, but she was right there in that discussion.
 I
rarely saw her angry, even when I cut down all of the flowers
around her great house. The one time I saw her anger was after a
trip to the large family headquarters ranch, near Leadore. She
had me stay in the car while she went to a family meeting to get
a tractor for her son's ranch. They turned her down. Her
language, on the way home, would have made a construction worker
blush.
Her influence on me was profound. She was
an example of a manager, a doer of things. She was the best
Rotarian I'll ever meet. Jack Selway, 2 July 2011. |
| |
|
VOICES
OF RGHF MEMBERS |
| |
|
