Women's History Month 2004

[sff_corgi_lj]

Proof of 'behind every great man there's a great woman'...

Elizabeth Holloway Marston	Virginia "Ginny" Heinlein

Lawyer, scientific inspiration, mother and senior wife, Elizabeth Holloway Marston's hands molded her husband's imagination and the lives of her four children as well as creating her own career and mentoring the existence of one of the the world's greatest fictional superheroes. Graduating from the Boston University Law School in 1918 -- one of three women to graduate from the School of Law that year -- she was already equipped with a Mount Holyoke psychology degree and a fiancé. She paid for her own tuition by selling cookbooks when her father said she should stay home. After getting her law degree she returned to psychology, working with her husband at Harvard. According to Marston's son, it was his mother Elizabeth, Marston's wife, who suggested to him that "When she got mad or excited, her blood pressure seemed to climb" (Lamb, 2001). Although Elizabeth is not listed as Marston's collaborator in his early work, Lamb, Matte (1996), and others refer directly and indirectly to Elizabeth's work on her husband's deception research. She also appears in a picture taken in his polygraph laboratory in the 1920s (reproduced in Marston, 1938).2 Over the subsequent decades, she wrote, edited, lectured -- oh, yeah, and had two children of her own after the age of thirty-five when that was unheard of. She also co-raised the two children her husband, William Moulton Marston, fathered with someone who could only be described as the junior wife in their family -- Olive Byrne. After William died in 1947, Elizabeth remained as breadwinner for the six of them, putting all the children through college and graduate school. ~\/\/~ Amidst the patriotism-driven comics mania of the early days of American involvement in World War II, Elizabeth's husband struck upon an idea for a new kind of superhero, one who would triumph not with fists or firepower, but with love. "Fine," said Elizabeth. "But make her a woman." From her lips to his drawing board. Wonder Woman was launched in 1941, giving the family a useful additional income for the rest of Elizabeth's life, despite the somewhat erratic treatment the Amazon princess would receive at the hands of her editors. From her first appearance in All-Star Comics, Wonder Woman had been a hit. The following month, she'd landed the cover and lead placement in a new comic book, Sensation Comics. By the summer of 1942, she had her own title, Wonder Woman, a first among superheroines. She even had a daily newspaper strip (a feat few comic book heroes matched) in 1944 and 1945. Like all good superheroes, Wonder Woman earned her stripes during the war; but the postwar years were tough times for comics crusaders. By 1953, only six of the more than hundred wartime superheroes remained. Wonder Woman survived by acculturation. Having spent the war years working incognito as Diana Prince, assistant to the chief of U.S. military intelligence, she found herself suddenly posing as a romance editor, fashion model, and aspiring Hollywood actress. Elizabeth reportedly disapproved of editor Robert Kanigher's attempt to transform Wonder Woman into a romance strip, but she declined to take it up with him. Princess Diana wouldn't lose her unique powers and props until 1968, when a new creative team demoted the invincible Amazon to mere spy girl, albeit with a groovy wardrobe, a taste for intrigue, and a Chinese mentor named I Ching. The declining stature of the world's foremost superheroine captured the attention of rising feminist Gloria Steinem, who led the charge to recoup the original Wonder Woman. By 1973, Wonder Woman's powers were restored. With the exception of two brief hiatuses, Wonder Woman has remained in action since, making hers the third longest-running comic in history, next to Superman's and Batman's. George Perez's term on the title returned the Amazon Princess to the mythological glory she deserves and a sort of conceptual purity of her origins; and surely would have made both Moultons proud. ~\/\/~ Olive died in the late '80s, after seeing her sons graduate from medical and law school (one of each). The Amazing Amazon Elizabeth herself didn't decide her job was finished until the age of 100. Remarkable until the end. "Gram would not have called herself a feminist. She didn't have to yell, 'I want my rights!' She just went out there and got them." -- granddaughter Susan Grupposo Substantially from 'Who Was Wonder Woman 1?' by Maguerite Lamb, Bostonia, Fall 2001 1 http://www.bu.edu/alumni/bostonia/2001/fall/wonderwoman/ 2 http://www.nap.edu/openbook/0309084369/html/291-297.htm http://www.bu.edu/bridge/archive/2002/04-19/law.htm

Virginia Doris Gerstenfeld Heinlein was born April 22, 1916, in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of a dentist. She went to the Packer Collegiate Institute, a college preparatory high school, where she finished in three-and-a-half years, always on the honor roll. She attended New York University, majoring in chemistry. She lettered in swimming, diving, basketball, and field hockey. She also reached national competitive levels in figure skating, the sport that became her lifelong passion. In the late 1950s, she served on the U.S. Olympic Committee for Skating. In time, she came to speak over seven languages, including French, Latin, Italian, and Russian. Graduating in 1937, she worked for Quality Bakers as a chemist until 1943, when the WAVES was formed. She enlisted immediately and was commissioned as a WAVE lieutenant, serving first at the Bureau of Aeronautics, then at the Naval Air Experimental Station in Philadelphia in 1944 and 1945. She met Robert Heinlein there, working as a civilian aviation engineer because the Navy would not overlook his medical discharge due to tuberculosis in 1934. She served as his assistant on several classified development projects as a chemist and aviation test engineer. After World War II, she came to Los Angeles to study for an unfinished doctorate in biochemistry at UCLA. She married Robert Heinlein in Raton, New Mexico, in October 1948. Thereafter, the two were inseparable; those who knew them spoke often of their intense and abiding love for each other. She became his closest companion, aiding him in his writing, and traveling the world with him. Virginia shepherded Robert through two severe near-death illnesses in the seventies through constant care and love. She took over the business aspects of his writing career, freeing him to focus on his writing. Together, they made a special project of organizing local and national blood drives and facilitating cooperation among all the blood collecting organizations in the world. Her husband, who called her Ginny, once described her as "redheaded and quite ... an athlete -- four letters in college -- and [she] could probably lick me in a fair fight.... She outranks me on the Navy rolls, which seems to give her quite a bit of satisfaction." Shortly after his death in 1988, she moved to northeast Florida. She gathered a selection of her husband's letters in Grumbles from the Grave, printed for the first time his travel memoir Tramp Royale and political handbook Take Back Your Government (originally titled How to Be a Politician), and oversaw the restoration of several texts she felt had been badly edited, including Red Planet, Puppet Masters, and Stranger in a Strange Land. In 1976, Congress passed a law that allowed renegotiation of copyright issues after an author's death. The copyright for "Stranger" came up the year after Heinlein died, in 1988. Virginia requested a copy of the original manuscript, which was archived at UC Santa Cruz along with other papers. "I ... read that and the published version side by side," she wrote. "And I came to the conclusion that it had been a mistake to cut the book." Throughout her life, she loved reading, cooking, gardening, music, and politics. In recent years, declining eyesight and physical health curtailed some of her favorite activities, but she began and maintained an active presence on Internet venues devoted to study of her husband's works, pursuing this new hobby with much energy. She endowed the Robert Anson Heinlein Chair in Aerospace Engineering, established on August 28, 2001, at Annapolis, by a gift of over $2.6 million, in honor of her late husband, a graduate of the Naval Academy's Class of 1929. She also helped to found The Heinlein Society, an educational charity dedicated to paying forward to generations to come the many Heinlein legacies. She also endowed the public library in Robert Heinlein's birthplace of Butler, Missouri. Readers have often remarked on the strength, intelligence, and power of his female characters; his fictional women were often based on Virginia Heinlein. As science fiction writer Spider Robinson said, "several of Heinlein's women bear a striking resemblance to his wife Virginia." Many of Heinlein's books were dedicated to her. Virginia, or "Ginny" as she preferred to be called, was his sounding board and source of ideas; she originated the idea that became Stranger in a Strange Land. She was his first reader and trusted critic. Robert Heinlein once said she was "smarter, better, and more sensible than I am." In a 1961 letter, he said, "She is what I feel to be a good person in the word's simplest and plainest meaning. Which includes lashing out with her claws on some occasions when others may consider it improper. I don't give a damn whether Ginny is 'proper' or not; I like her. I like her values." At the end of one of his later books, Job: A Comedy of Justice, the final sentence has been read by many as Robert Heinlein's own tribute to his beloved wife: "Heaven is where Margrethe is." Ginny died in her sleep Saturday morning, January 18, 2003, of respiratory disease at Fleet Landing. She had been hospitalized since Thanksgiving when she fell and broke her hip There was no funeral -- her ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean, as were her husband's. Those who wish may make a blood donation in her memory or a donation to the Heinlein Society, P.O. Box 1254, Venice, CA 90294-1254. From http://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/biographies.html with some additional notes from newspaper obituaries and other sources (http://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/ginny/GinnyNotice.html)

Comments

[h311ybean]

Love these stories of inspirational women :) and I really enjoyed celebrating Womens' History Month with you! I promise I'll start on time next year :D

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

[squeals at nifty icon!]

High four, you. Check my Memories, please? I want to make sure I didn't miss any of yours.

[h311ybean]

You got them all, don't worry! :)

[yendi]

Great essays. I've always thought that the Martsons (Olive included) led a life that just begged for a movie (he also invented the lie detector). Elizabeth was just an amazing woman (so was Ginny, but she tends to be more well-known).

[shellebelle93.livejournal.com]

Wow. Coolness. Very very interesting stories. Thanks, corgi!

[slamaina.livejournal.com]

I know that Olive Byrne had two children with William Marston, Byrne and Donn. Does anyone know if Byrne and Donn had children of their own?

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

There were four children in the family total; the Boston University article interviewed granddaughter Susan Grupposo, but doesn't mention which one of the four was her parent.

I found an Elsa Marston that sounds like she could possibly be a granddaughter, but she doesn't give enough clues. Her Arab and Muslim background hearkens to Olive's 'protection bracelets' story (see here or here, same text). This page seems highly likely to be 'our' Byrne, but details are quite lacking.

It's probably one of those things that'd have to be traced through either public records, or just asking the people involved. :)

Between Byrne, Pete, Olive Ann and Donn... none of them Google up identifiably outside of that seminal B.U. article.

[slamaina.livejournal.com]

From the research I have done on the internet...

Elizabeth gave birth to Moulton "Pete" Marston and Olive Ann Marston. I found reference to a Olive Ann LaMotte as being the daughter of William and Elizabeth Marston, so I assume she got married and took her husband's name.

Olive Byrne gave birth to Byrne and Donn. Both boys were adopted by Elizabeth.

Susan Grupposo refers to Elizabeth as her grandmother in one of the articles that I read but I don't know if the meant natural or through adoption.

[slamaina.livejournal.com]

Olive Richards was Olive Byrne's pen name.

Virginia Heinlein

[cerrberus.livejournal.com]

Here's a requiem from a poet friend of mine. Perhaps you'll enjoy.

A very good friend I never knew. She wrote me once when Robert died, thanking me for the card I had sent him as he lay dying.

V.D.H.
Ginny Heinlein has died.
I wonder if she knows
She has always been my role model,
Even when I didn't know it was her?
Maureen, Podkkayne, Friday,
Joan and Dora,
And Ginny:
Bright, Beautiful, Self-Sufficient
And Sexy,
Committed to her partner,
Equal and different,
Strong like a man,
Smart like a woman,
Able to cry and to change a tire,
Raise children,
Cut wood,
Smell nice and fly a starship.
Thank you, Ginny,
I'll try to honor you,
But if you get a chance,
Would you send me a postcard sometime
From the belly of the beast?
Lisa Jain Thompson
February 2003