Branch year starts with Welcome Back on Saturday, September 20, 2025
Tuesday, May 6, 2025
The Branch held their final meeting/program of the year at the Lake Wildwood Country Club, where out-going officers/chairs were recognized, named gift-honorees announced, Above & Beyond recipients named, and Board members new and continuing were installed. Expect to see more in the September Lodestone on the luncheon, but for now, photos taken by Marrilee Norton show the beauty and the camaraderie that was enjoyed.
The 2025-26 Board Officers & Chairs
A successful year brought to a close with anticipation for the year to come. Congratulations to all who were honored and to those stepping up!
Saturday, April 12, 2025
WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN 2025: Gains, Losses, Where Do We Go from Here?
Megan Seely, Professor, Sierra Community College
The last general meeting of the year, our April meeting, was a fitting way to recognize the value and the energy that the AAUW Nevada County Branch brings to women’s causes and those groups who are facing enormous challenges to their human rights. Click the adjacent image for a recording of the program.
We were reminded in this meeting of AAUW’s overriding mission as Martha Rees described Tech Trek and the girls who have benefited from their invaluable experiences as campers during a summer week at UC Davis. We also heard from Local Scholarship co-chairs Lisa Turlo and Allison Rapp and the impressive array of higher education scholarships that the Branch awards every year to the variety of young and not-as-young women who are selected for financial assistance in meeting costs in educational advancement.
Karen Hull, of Bodacious Blooms and sponsor of the program; Carolyn Feuille, previous Edi Silverman awardee; Rhea Williamson, 2025 Edi Silverman awardee; and Lisa Turlow, Local Scholarship Co-Chair
Before the program began, Lisa Turlo stepped up to award Rhea Williamson with the high honor of being selected as the Edi Silverman Awardee. Rhea has worked tirelessly in numerous community endeavaors after retiring from her professorship. Furthermore, she has been a key driver in raising local scholarship funds. Congratulations, Rhea Williamson!
Then we got to the primary topic for the program: the gains and losses for both women and select minorities, and what we can do to address the current hostile environment. Melanie Heckel, Branch Public Policy Chair, provided overview, and Elaine Sierra, Public Policy Chair of Citizens for Choice, described the services and assistance NCC4C offers our community. Guest speaker Megan Seely, Professor and Chair for the Department of Sociology, and Women and Gender and LBGT Studies Departments at Sierra College in Rocklin, gave us an informing and rousing description of her role at Sierra College and the many young people she has encountered and touched as an instructor. She articulated both past and current challenges and encouraged everyone to find an issue within the huge number of at-risk rights that are in danger of being trampled upon in the current climate. We learned about the setbacks in education, Title IX, reproductive rights, and the ways in which DEI, particularly as it relates to women, is being targeted. Megan implored everyone to get informed, stay positive, and fight back! We could not ask for a more impassioned, informed, and articulate speaker. Megan was a tour de force!
L-R, Megan Seely, Melanie Heckel, & Elaine Sierra
Grateful thanks to our program sponsors: Kim White, Attorney. https://www.kimwhitelaw.com/ and Bodacious Blooms (Karen Hull).
Program will be held at Peace Lutheran Church, 828 W. Main, Grass Valley.
Saturday, February 15, 2025, Wayward Women: Ladies Who Helped Build America
Chris Enss, February’s featured speaker, delivered engaging, colorful, humorous, and dramatic stories of the outstanding women of the Old West. [To view a recording of the program, click the adjacent YouTube image.] These women possessed adventuresome spirits, intelligence, and chutzpah, and were able to take advantage of this land of “few rules (restrictions)” to realize their gifts and passions, and, in the process, put them to good use. Chris highlighted surprising facts and individual stories that were little known before her in-depth research. For example, she talked about Ellen Clark Sergeant who worked with Susan B. Anthony on the wording of the 19th Amendment, giving women the vote. Some of the other women, she noted, were married to railroad tycoons, got involved in ensuring trains were more comfortable and less polluting to the environment. Along those same lines, there was Miriam Leslie, married to Frank Leslie, newspaper/magazine publisher. When train travel was languishing from a lack of customers, Miriam decided to promote it by writing about all the places to see from East to West and back, a journey by train which she undertook for five months. She then wrote a book that became an instant best seller, the first tour book, which successfully encouraged widespread tourism by train. And let’s not forget Kate Warren, first woman detective, who worked for the Pinkerton Detective Agency, and who escorted President Abraham Lincoln, shielding him from potential assassination when he traveled in disguise by train to deliver an important speech. These stories and facts are but a few that Chris covered.
Chris Enss, author, ready to autograph books
Her breadth of knowledge and her quickness in relating these spellbinding stories left the audience wanting to know more as was apparent in the Q/A session that followed. Ms. Enss didn’t always tell us how things turned out as we were encouraged to “read the book”! Having written more than 50 books, Ms. Enss is likely to have a story about any woman of the Old West of which you may have heard and many more of which you have not.
Ms. Enss is a New York Times bestselling author. She’s written over fifty published books to date. Her work has been honored with nine Will Rogers Medallion Awards, two Elmer Kelton Book Awards, an Oklahoma Center for the Book Award, a Willa Cather Award from Women Writing the West for scholarly nonfiction, and more.
Program VPs Carolyn Feuille and Bernadette Sylvester, far left and right, flank Chris Enss and Co-President Diane Kellegrew
Grateful thanks to our program sponsors:
January 18, 2025, Program: Help! I Need a Doctor
The January program provided an opportunity for a packed house of attendees to learn about a new residency program taking shape in both Chapa De and Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital. The Sierra Nevada Family Residency Program is designed to meet the growing need for more local primary care physicians.
Dr. Glenn Gookin opened the presentation by providing some personal background, which included his relocation from S. CA and his enthusiasm for his newfound home in Nevada County. Dr. Gookin co-wrote a Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) grant that allowed for the rural residency program to get up and running in 2018, and, of course, not much after that, there was quite a challenge in all hospital operations when the 2020 pandemic began.
Drs. Glenn Gookin and Nicholas Sparr take questions.
Dr. Nicholas Sparr, one of the two current residents (which also includes Kelty White), in relating his background, also voiced his enthusiasm for this area and the hope that other resident physicians will also establish a sense of connection to a vibrant community that has much to offer.
Both Doctors Gookin and Sparr covered how the program works in classroom learning, hands-on training, which involves shifts in both urban (Sacramento) and rural (Nevada County) areas. Eventually there will be six interns working through the three-year integrated program led by partners Dignity Health Methodist Hospital of Sacramento, Chapa-De Indian Health, and Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital.
A robust round of questions followed where we were told among other things that there has been thoughtful preparation for potential future pandemics (such as bird flu), that the health care provided will include birth control for women or referrals when requested for abortions or sterilizations, and that they are well aware of the challenges of retaining physicians once a residency has been completed. All in all, we were assured that this program is poised to begin a new chapter of healthcare in this rural community that promises to be considerably more adequate than what we currently have.
Click above to review a recording of Dr. Gookin and Dr. Sparr’s presentation.
This program was sponsored by local radio station KNCO and Westamerica Bank. Our thanks for their generous support!