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Revered women—some famous, others unknown—will receive recognition in a new garden park on campus.

How do you define “heroine”? Consider the story of Matsu Ito (pictured with family at right).

Born in Japan in 1893, she was 18 when she agreed to marry a Japanese farmer living in Hood River. She sailed to the New World and lived a simple life, helping her husband in their orchard, and bearing eight children.

During World War II, two of her sons served in the U.S. Army while Ito and the rest of the family were confined in Japanese internment camps. Although Ito attended only two years of school as a child, five of her children attended college. When she died in 1966, Ito was someone whom traditional history books have ignored.

And that, says Johanna Brenner, Women’s Studies Department chair, is exactly the point.

“Matsu’s story touched me,” says Brenner. “She came as a picture bride and married a Hood River farmer. She was a wife, like many pioneer or immigrant women, except that the family was interned during the war. Just in that thumbnail sketch of her life, is a history of most of the women in her community. But when you read her story, you’re brought in a personal way, to those women, and yet you would never have heard of her.”

Never, except for PSU’s planned Walk of the Heroines, an idea Brenner and others have nurtured for six years. Groundbreaking is scheduled for this spring.

The Walk of the Heroines will fill the block in front of Hoffmann Hall with a garden of flower beds, artwork, and low, curved walls bearing the names of heroines—as defined by those who submit their names.

For $200, individuals or groups can have a heroine’s name engraved on one of the walls lining the walk. Larger sums allow contributors to honor a heroine with a bench or tree. Heroines may be living or deceased. They can be mothers, sisters, inspirational mentors, or others—the definition is up to the submitter. Stories and photographs of the honored women will be placed on a Web site, which can be accessed from anywhere, including the walk’s computer kiosk.

“We wanted this to be a signature place in the city,” says Brenner. “Like Keller Fountain or the Japanese Memorial. A beautiful, welcoming place where people would want to come. Where kids could stick their feet in a fountain. An important place, not something tucked away somewhere.”

Other women slated to be honored on the walk follow a more traditional history book storyline than Matsu Ito. Like Maurine Neuberger (left), the first woman from Oregon and the third in the United States elected to the U.S. Senate.

Neuberger’s political career began in Oregon. A high school teacher, she married Richard L. Neuberger in 1945. Her husband’s political ambitions carried him to the Oregon Senate in 1946, and when Maurine complained about the slow pace of political change, Richard encouraged her to run for office herself. She did, serving three terms in the Oregon House.

There, she became famous for pulling out a mixing bowl on the House floor and demonstrating to her male colleagues the amount of work housewives undertook to mix yellow food coloring into the bone-white margarine available at that time to create a more palatable product. Her presentation helped thwart the powerful dairy lobby, which sought to ban premixed margarine.

In 1954, Richard went on to serve in the U.S. Senate. He died before his term was over, and Maurine ran against a former governor for the seat. She won and served from 1960 to 1967, helping write legislation requiring the first cigarette warning label at the federal level, calling for pollution controls on automobiles, and attacking bedding manufacturers for selling blankets that were not flame-resistant.

Despite these accomplishments, Brenner could find no prominent landmark in Portland named for Maurine Neuberger. (Neuberger Hall is named for her husband, although PSU awards an endowed scholarship in both their names.)

In fact, Brenner found only one building on PSU’s campus, the Helen Gordon Child Development Center, named for a woman. Of Portland’s 300 or so parks, Brenner says, only five are named for women.

“What impact does it have on students to study at a place where men are honored, yet nowhere are women?” asks Brenner. “What impact does it have on a city’s residents if the physical environment has almost no women honored?”

These ideas helped shape the development of the Walk of the Heroines, which is part of the University’s $100 million Building Our Future campaign. The space will be an elegant outdoor living room with intricate paving based on traditional patterns from Africa and designed by Portland artist Adriene Cruz. A stream of water pours out of a fountain, and grassy sanctuaries offer benches and tables for gathering. A small outdoor stage encourages public events. And a computer kiosk offers access to a Web site featuring the stories of the women honored.

“The educational kiosk is the very heart and soul of the project,” says Brenner. “It’s what makes the project unique. It’s not just names on the wall. People have the opportunity to find out about each person.”

The computer kiosk serves as a central focal point for the walk, serving perhaps as a gathering place for a family celebrating the birthday of a loved one honored on the walk or an exhibit showcasing contemporary Oregon women who have made contributions in specific fields. And school children can use the Web site to research women they find honored on the walk.

Women like Mother Joseph (left), who was instrumental in building 29 hospitals, schools, and missions in the Northwest, and helped found what became the Providence Health System.

“Mother Joseph—what a character,” says Brenner. “The story just kind of blew us all away. I had never heard of her. What’s so striking was we knew so little about her.”

Mother Joseph of the Sacred Heart, a Sister of Providence, was born in 1823 in Canada. She journeyed to the Washington Territory in 1856 and for 46 years worked to build—sometimes literally—institutions of education, health care, and social service. She was known to don a tool belt and work beside the construction workers—once, according to legend—single handedly dismantling and rebuilding a chimney foundation that didn’t meet her standards.

“It’s important for men and women who live in a city,” says Brenner, “to feel that women and men have made important contributions and have done things worth honoring. I hope people will find out things about our city like I did. It’s an incredibly rich, hidden history that needs to be made visible and allowed to inspire people.”

Melissa Steineger, a Portland freelance writer, wrote the articles "Telling the Story of Oregon Judaism" and "Coming to a Theater Near You? for the fall 2004 PSU Magazine.

How it came about

In 1998, Johanna Brenner, Women's Studies department chair, and Jan Haaken, pschology professor, conceived the idea of a public space to honor mothers, sisters, daughters, and other women—living or not—who have inspired people to live in the area. They dubbed their concept the Walk of Heroines and formed a committee to launch it.

With the help of PSU architect Barbara Linn, the committee held a series of public workshops and the project began gaining momentum. In 2002, organizers received $200,000 from the PSU Student Building Fee to hire the landscape architectural firm of Mayer/Reed, the designers of Portland's Eastbank Esplanade, to complete the master design.

Currently, fund-raising is underway for construction, maintenance, a scholarship, and an educational fund to underwrite lectures, workshops, and other educational events for the community. More than 300 individuals have contributed a total of $1 million in cash and about $670,000 in pledges to honor individuals. Walk of Heroines is part of the University's $100 million Buiding Our Future campaign.

MaryJo Daly, director of development fo rthe College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, says the project has drawn many first-time contributors to PSU. "It's so thoughtfully conceived," says Daly. "For $200 you can honor a mother, sister, cousin, friend—I think it's going to be a gift of generations. All kinds of women are being honored, not just famous women."

Details about the project are available at www.woh.pdx.edu.