Women honored for life accomplishments
The Women’s Center honored three women for their life accomplishments with Women Over 65 Achievement Awards at an awards ceremony Monday night.
Jenny Box, Barbara Croft Fjeldsted and Rachel Whitworth were selected by the Women’s Center Advisory Board for their work in the community.
Box is committed to solving social problems, said presenter Tom Parker.
“Our community is a better place because of you,” Parker said to Box.
Box helped organize Citizens Against Physical and Sexual Abuse (CAPSA) and the first Cache Community Food Pantry. She is a member of the League of Women Voters and is serving on the Logan City Planning and Zoning Board and the USU Women’s Center Scholarship Committee.
“Most of my life heroes are members of the League of Women Voters,” Box said in her acceptance remarks. She said the reason for this life is to help people.
“My contribution was to bring the problem out of the closet and into public discussion,” Box said of CAPSA.
She said there is much need for government funding to help achieve what can’t be done alone.
“Taxes are the biggest bargain in any family budget,” Box said. She said the need for a county library, county recycling, transit and animal shelters are great.
Fjeldsted said she now could be described as “an old lady in tennis shoes,” a phrase coined by her husband while serving as mayor of Logan.
“I am humbled to be included with these other women,” she said.
Among other activities, Fjeldsted served on the Board of Commissioners of the Utah Travel Council, was selected for the Utah Tourism Hall of Fame for outstanding tourist development and was chair of the Utah Festival Opera Company, which is among the top 20 opera companies in the world.
She said in tourism she was able to “recognize the state’s greatest asset: Its people.”
Her mother, Lucille Croft, was a recipient of the award in 1988, and Fjeldsted quoted her as saying, “Age is a wonderful time for growth. Idle hands are a tragic waste.”
She said she hopes her example instilled a desire in her children and grandchildren to serve the community.
Rachel Whitworth graduated on the Dean’s Honor Roll from USU in 1969 with seven children, and became a licensed social worker with the protective services for the Division of Family Services. Presenter Robert Schmidt quoted her as saying she could recognize and separate the significant from the insignificant better as an older student. Memorizing was harder, but knowing what to memorize was easier, she said.
Among other organizations, she served with the Salvation Army, Planned Parenthood and Northern Utah Mental Health Clinic.
She has also been a board member of Habitat for Humanity, and received the Excellent Award for walking 376 miles as a mall walker.
In her remarks, Whitworth said she knew she wanted to be a teacher at age 10.
“I needed to help people, to make their lives a little easier,” she said.
That was when she decided to go back to school, and she said she accomplished that goal because she stayed focused on the desired end.
Overwhelmed with this honor, she gave thanks to all those who influenced her.
“Certainly life accomplishments cannot exist without other people,” Whitworth said.
The award was first given in 1986, in an effort to counter society’s emphasis on youth in America, said Janet Osborne, director of the Women’s Center. The program has honored 74 women in the past.