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- This is One-On-One.

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- A quartet is already a jawn, it’s just The New Jawn.

- January 6th was not some sort of violent, crazy outlier.

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(upbeat music) - Hi everyone.

Welcome to "Remember Them."

I'm Steve Adubato with my co-Anchor, Jacqui Tricarico.

Jacqui, three very special historically significant women who made a difference in American public life and politics.

Talk about them.

- Yeah, this whole show is dedicated to three women leaders in our history that their legacy continue to live on.

First up, we have Ruth Mandel.

And Steve, I know you had a personal connection to Ruth Mandel, who was with the Eagleton Institute at Rutgers University.

- Yeah, the Eagleton Institute of Politics, where I was proud to graduate from.

She came on as the Executive Director after I left.

She made a difference, and also with the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers.

I mean, so important to get women more engaged, more involved, more elected officials who are women.

Ruth Mandel is very important.

And then you have two other interviews that we're gonna tee up.

Who are they all about, Jacqui?

- Yeah, we'll hear more about them coming up next, Geraldine Morgan Thompson and Beatrice Alex Hicks, but first up is your interview with John Farmer about Ruth Mandel.

- John Farmer, the former Attorney General in the great state of New Jersey, and the former Director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at the great Rutgers University.

John Farmer talking about Ruth Mandel.

- We're joined by our good friend and colleague, John Farmer, university professor at Rutgers, former head of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, former Dean of Rutgers Law School, and former Attorney General.

Oh, yeah, that, too.

Hey, John, do this for us.

Ruth Mandel.

- Yeah.

- I was a student at Rutgers, a graduate student, back in the eighties, and Ruth was a giant then.

Why is her legacy even more important now, please?

- Well, she obviously, her legacy begins with her founding of the Center of American Women in Politics at Eagleton.

At the time that she founded that, in the early 1970s, yeah, there was a lot of skepticism in academia about, you know, what exactly are you studying about women in politics; so why is that a worthy subject?

And it's proven out over the decades that it was absolutely the right time and the right subject to take on.

That center is now the go-to place for the entire country in terms of the level of women participation in electoral office and voting and financing races and everything else.

But her legacy actually goes way beyond that.

In the late 1990s, she took over as the head of Eagleton and at state, as you know, that has pretty turbulent politics.

She created at Eagleton a place where people with varying viewpoints could come and in an atmosphere of civility and good feeling, discuss their differences and really share those with others.

And she's just been a real giant in New Jersey politics for almost for staying above the fray as opposed to being in it.

- You know, it's interesting, Ruth succeeded my academic mentor, Dr. Alan Rosenthal, former head of the Eagleton Institute.

And one of the things I always knew about Ruth, and I want you to talk about this a little bit, is Ruth's childhood greatly impacted and influenced who she was professionally and possibly personally 'cause you know her very well personally.

Talk about that piece of her life, she and her parents, World War II, escaping Germany, please.

- Ruth was born in Vienna, in Austria.

Her parents were fairly well to do, and when Kristallnacht happened in 1938, Ruth was an infant.

And her father decided that they should not wait around to see what would happen, that the writing was on the wall in terms of being Jewish and in Germany or Austria at the time.

So, they were able to book passage on a liner called the St. Louis, which became famous or infamous for Sailing to the New World and being turned away at every port in the Western hemisphere.

- Because there were Jewish people on?

- Yes.

Never really explicitly stated, but it had to be that, right?

And the St. Louis returned to Europe, and half of the passengers went to the UK.

And Ruth's family was among those.

The other half were in Amsterdam.

And most of those people in Amsterdam ended up in Auschwitz and other concentration camps and losing their lives.

Ruth's family was in the UK.

That's where she spent her early years.

And then, they immigrated to America after World War II.

And, as Ruth would talk about at length, you know, being so grateful to this country for opening so many doors for her and for other immigrant families, and ended up getting her PhD, and she actually, her PhD was in English literature, and she wrote her thesis on Herman Melville and became a Melville scholar, and only later migrated to the issue of Women's Rights.

It was a very turbulent time at Rutgers.

You know, you had the Newark rebellion going on.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was teaching at the law school in Newark - The law school, right.

- Where she really started bringing the cases that made her name.

And she and Ruth and others at Rutgers used to meet fairly regularly for lunch.

And out of those meetings came those cases for Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the Center of American Women in Politics that Ruth Mandel founded and ran.

- So let me ask you this.

You know, Ruth, it's so interesting, Remember Them, the series, sometimes you remember famous people, Frank Sinatra, other very famous politicians, Woodrow Wilson, former governor of New Jersey, President of the United States, a whole bunch of people.

But then there are people like Ruth Mandel that the average person may not know, but she influenced our lives in so many ways.

Question, final question, Ruth's legacy is?

- Ruth's legacy is in her promotion of women's rights but promotion, above all, civility in the way we conduct ourselves in politics.

Miss her every day.

When I see the state of the dialogue in the country and the extremist rhetoric that's seeming to be coming from all quarters.

Ruth was somebody who, I mean, I once told her, as I once asked Ruth, please don't care more about my life than I do, because she would zero in on you, and she would wanna know everything that you were thinking and doing, and she really, and it wasn't a phony thing.

She really cared about the people in her life.

And, you can't fake that.

And, that sort of emanated out of her into her work in politics and at Eagleton, and I think marks her as one of the great New Jerseyans of the past century.

- Yeah.

John Farmer talking about an extraordinary leader, academic scholar, advocate, Ruth Mandel.

Thank you, John; appreciate it.

- Thanks for having me.

- Stay with us; we'll be right back on Remember Them.

- [Narrator] To watch more One on One with Steve Adubato find us online and follow us on Social media.

Jacqui, we're about to see an interview you did.

It's with Geraldine Morgan Thompson.

Talk about this.

- Yeah, I had the pleasure to learn more about Geraldine Morgan Thompson, known as New Jersey's First Lady by many and a actual 2024, this year's New Jersey Hall of Fame Inductee.

- That's right.

- I got to speak with Jane Scimeca, who gives us a never before seen look into this woman and her life and her legacy, because she's been doing extensive research for years now to write the first book about Geraldine Morgan Thompson.

So she gives us some of those insights, some of those really interesting fun facts that she's learned along the way in her research.

'Cause her book will be coming out in 2025, all about Geraldine's life and legacy.

- As Jacqui teed this up, an important interview.

Let's check it out.

- So pleased to be joined now by Jane Scimeca, who is the professor of history at Brookdale Community College and author of the book, "Ms. Thompson Saves the Day."

Jane, thank you so much for joining us.

- It's my pleasure.

- Well, we have you here to talk about Geraldine Morgan Thompson, and I watched your presentation that you did recently at Brookdale Community College.

About this woman, she's known as the First Lady of New Jersey by many.

But you took a real passion and liking to her story after discovering that there wasn't enough information out there about this woman.

First, tell us how you got interested in her story and what made you want to write this book.

- Well, I was teaching my women's history course at Brookdale, and our librarian was coming to the class that day and she found that Eleanor Roosevelt had written one of her columns about Mrs. Thompson, that she had visited Mrs. Thompson in Lincroft, at Brookdale Farm.

And she brought it into the class.

And I realized that we, you know, we talked to the students, like you had just read about Mrs. Roosevelt.

She came here, right where we are on the campus.

And the students enjoyed the connection between the campus and Mrs. Roosevelt and Mrs. Thompson.

After that class, I went back to my office and I started looking for Mrs. Thompson in my New Jersey history and women's New Jersey history reference books, and she wasn't even listed.

And I got to thinking that she had been overlooked by history.

And so that's what really got me started three years ago on this project, starting to look for her and trying to gather sources about her.

- The research took you on a very interesting journey.

Tell us what you found out in terms of her connection here to New Jersey.

Specifically, I know you talked about the land, the plot of land that Brookdale Community College is on, as well as some state parks and things.

Talk about the land because that became somewhat of a character in the book that you're writing as well, right?

- Yeah, so she lived at Brookdale Farm, which was a very famous horse stud operation.

Her husband's father had purchased the farm in the late 1800s.

And after she and Lou Thompson married, they moved here.

And she lived here for 70 years.

And she used it sort of as her headquarters.

She ran, she invited people for meetings and teas and organizational Republican functions.

And so it was a really important part of her work.

But as she got elderly, she was concerned about what was gonna happen to the farm.

And she decided as she got older, that she was going to donate over 200 acres of the farm to Monmouth County Park System.

And it became Thompson Park, which it still is to this day.

The other part of the farm she gave to her son.

When her son passed away, his widow sold it to the county, and now it is Brookdale Community College.

So, the farm is a really important part of her conservation philosophy.

She believed that we have to live with nature.

And so as she got older, she was very, very concerned about land preservation.

She preserves the land.

And this was in the '50s when the parkway had just opened and people were really moving to Monmouth County into suburban developments.

She didn't want it to be developed.

And she also saved Island Beach from being developed in the '50s, as well.

- Island Beach State Park, right.

And let's talk a little bit more about some of her other work as environmental issues was something that she was passionate about, but also public health issues.

Talk about what she did, especially in Monmouth County, and how a lot of her work is still seen there today in a lot of ways when it comes to public health issues.

- She started her career in public health when she was about 40 years old, so this was something that she did after she had her children.

And she was recruited by another really important woman in New Jersey history who's been overlooked, a woman named Caroline Wittpenn, who was a Hudson County Democrat.

And married to Otto Wittpenn, who was a political leader in Hudson County.

Mrs. Wittpenn recruited Geraldine Thompson to join the State Charity Aid and Prison Reform Association.

And when she joined the state organization, she became the representative in Monmouth County.

And when she started looking at Monmouth County and looking at her neighbors, she became aware of the suffering of the people, especially the people who were the poorer farmers and the people who were the fishermen and some of the African American population who often were domestic servants in Monmouth County.

And she began to pressure the county government to organize services.

So she really wanted to coordinate between the state, the county and private organizations to organize charity to provide the services that people needed.

So she became aware there was a really big problem with tuberculosis in Monmouth County, - And she survived tuberculosis, sorry for interrupting you.

She survived tuberculosis herself, correct?

- She did.

She was one of the rare people in the end of the 19th century.

It was an epidemic of tuberculosis in this country.

And it was the biggest killer of people in the United States.

at the end of the 1800s.

80% the people who got to active tuberculosis died, but she did not.

So I think she had a real, that really gave her a tremendous amount of compassion for helping others.

So she started a Monmouth County branch of the State Charity Aid Association in 1912.

She invited everybody to her house at Brookdale Farm.

She had a beautiful mansion at Brookdale Farm and she opened it up to the whole community.

And she wanted community engagement.

It wasn't just about her, but she wanted to get everyone involved in the organization to help others.

"Love thy neighbor" was a very big part of her philosophy.

And very quickly, the Monmouth County organization became the most important in the whole state and became a model for the nation.

The organization still exists today.

It's changed its name a couple times over the last 112 years, and now it is called the VNA Health Group.

- And for someone who has spent so much time and energy researching extensively Geraldine, what is the most important thing we should know about her?

- You know, she believed in democracy, and I think we really need her story right now so much because she believed in helping each other, that every person has a responsibility to their neighbors.

And that's how we keep our democracy strong.

She believed that you have to fight for your democracy every day or it'll slip away from you.

She literally said those words.

So I believe that she is important for that reason.

And, also, she was a bipartisan.

I mentioned before that Caroline Wittpenn was a Democrat.

She was a loyal Republican her whole life.

And she worked across the aisle with Democrats, like Eleanor Roosevelt, to also on different projects.

And so she believed in bipartisanship and social justice and democracy.

And so that's why her story is still so relevant.

- And something we can all learn from today.

And I'm hoping people can learn more from your book, "Ms. Thompson Saves the Day" as well as the fact that Geraldine is getting inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame this year at 2024 inductee, shedding more light on the important work that she did here in New Jersey and throughout our country.

Thank you so much, Jane, for joining us so we could learn more about Geraldine.

- Thank you so much.

- Thank you so much for joining us.

We'll be right back.

- [Narrator] To watch more One on One with Steve Adubato find us online and follow us on Social media.

"Remember Them" continues looking at historically significant women who made a difference in American politics.

Jacqui, tee this one up for us.

- Next up, Beatrice Alex Hicks.

So, she opened so many doors for women in the STEM fields, breaking barriers as the first woman engineer hired by Western Electric, and also helping to start up the Society of Women Engineers, which has grown significantly over the years.

So, up next is my interview with Karen Horting.

She is the current Executive Director and CEO of the Society of Women Engineers, and we get to really learn more about Beatrice Alex Hicks and her legacy that continues to live on.

- Beatrice is just one of so many women that we are looking at in our "Remember Them" series, also airing on "One-on-One," who made a difference, who make a difference in American life, in this case, in the world of science and technology, right, Jacqui?

- That's correct, yep.

- Let's check it out.

- Joining us now is Karen Horting, who is the Executive Director and CEO of the Society of Women Engineers.

Karen, thanks so much for joining us today.

- Oh, Jacqui, it's my pleasure to be here with you all.

- We're here to talk about Beatrice Alice Hicks, born in 1919 in Orange, New Jersey.

She was an inventor, an engineer, and entrepreneur, so much more than that.

Talk about first her upbringing and her father having a really strong hand in her becoming so passionate about the engineering field.

- Sure.

So, Bea had a bit of a rough upbringing, and child of the Depression.

At one point, her family actually lost their home and they were living in a tent in a field, but her father was able to borrow some money and start his own company, which was Newark Controls.

So this obviously had a big impact on Bea.

She was always proficient in math and science in school, but as she was approaching graduation, she was encouraged to be a stenographer, and she said, "Nope, I have bigger dreams than that."

And so she pursued her engineering degree at Newark College of Engineering, which is now New Jersey Institute of Technology.

But I think the fascinating point is that Bea was one of two women graduating in a class of 900.

So imagine being such a minority.

But she did earn her chemical engineering degree and went on to work for about three years there at the university as researcher.

- And you mentioned Newark Controls, which her dad started.

She also worked there, but she was also the first female engineer to be hired by Western Electric.

Talk about that time there and some of her most important innovations and advancements in technology during her time there.

- Sure, so she was hired in 1942.

World War II had opened up a lot of opportunities for women, particularly in manufacturing.

So she was hired in under the title of technician.

Not engineer, but technician.

And the men were skeptical that she worked with, obviously being the first woman and the only woman, but she quickly won them over with her technical skills.

She worked on a lot of things having to do with long-distance telephone calls, oscillating technology, and worked there until about 1945 when she did then move over to her father's company at Newark Controls.

- And there was some things that she did that were used by NASA, is that correct?

- Correct.

She worked on a lot of sensors, particularly under severe environmental situations.

And so a lot of that ended up being used in aircraft and missile defense.

She actually ended up in the National Inventors Hall of Fame for that work.

- Right, right.

So the Society of Women Engineers, she was the first president of your organization, now today, over 40,000 members.

Talk about how important your organization is to all women across the US, even so today it's still considered a male-dominated industry.

- This is correct.

So Bea was part of those founding members in 1950.

We're proud that we're coming up on our 75th anniversary next year.

But she was one of 61 women that were there at Camp Green in Ring Wall, New Jersey that met for two days and really talked about how they didn't feel they had a voice within engineering, they didn't feel that the engineering discipline societies were really welcoming to them, and they felt that women needed to have a place and voice within the profession.

And so she was elected the first president and really then became the face of women in engineering and of SWE.

And even today, 75 years later, with women being only about 13% of the engineering workforce, the Society of Women Engineers is a place where women can have that home, can have that community, and can build those skills that they need, in addition to their technical expertise, to be engineers and leaders within the profession.

- So there were very specific issues that women faced during that time, and Bea was really able to bring a voice and attention to that during her time with the Society of Women Engineers.

What were some of those more specific issues that women were facing during that time?

- Yeah, so she was a big advocate around working with legislators, trying to change laws around the limitations on the hours that women could work.

Obviously, that made them less valuable to employers if they weren't able to work the same hours as men.

She also believed in women being paid fairly, and so advocating for equal wages, which is something, as you know, we're still advocating for today.

But she really felt it was important that women have that place within the engineering profession, and so she was tireless in advocating.

- Where are we today with some of those issues?

You as the Executive Director and CEO of the Society of Women Engineers, what are some of the things that you're currently fighting for?

- So for us, there are a couple things.

We're very involved in what's called the STEM RESTART Act, which brings women back to the workforce who have left.

So this specific piece of legislation targets small and midsize businesses with tax incentives for them to start reentry programs.

There's a huge pool of talent out there of women who have left, either left the workforce altogether, or in most cases, have left engineering to go to other professions.

And so we're working really hard.

As you know, CHIPS and Science Act was signed into law back in '22, but so much of the ability to do that work requires a workforce that's trained to do it.

So we feel that STEM RESTART Act is a big part of that.

Also, paycheck fairness, making sure that women are paid at the same rate as men for equal work.

- And Beatrice Alice Hicks really paved the way for so many of those women that you've been speaking about today.

What is the most important thing we should learn from her and her legacy?

- I think that she was never afraid to be the first or the only.

And so even today, with women still earning only about 21% of the engineering degrees, she earned her degree at a time when .1% of the engineering degrees went for women working in a male-dominated profession, being the first at many organizations.

And then once SWE was founded, she was never afraid to be featured in the media, to be interviewed, to be that face of engineering.

And so I would say I heard a great quote from one of our keynote speakers at SWE last year about, "Be brave, not fearless."

And so I think the thing we can learn from Bea is that we can all be brave.

- There's been a lot of progress, still a lot more to come, but Karen, thank you so much for joining us today as we remember Beatrice Alice Hicks.

We really appreciate it.

- My pleasure.

Thank you, Jacqui.

- Thank you, Karen.

For Steve Adubato and myself, thanks for watching.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Celebrating 30 years in public broadcasting.

Funding has been provided by PSEG Foundation.

NJM Insurance Group.

RWJBarnabas Health.

Let’s be healthy together.

The New Jersey Education Association.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

The Russell Berrie Foundation.

New Jersey Sharing Network.

And by The New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

Promotional support provided by New Jersey Globe.

And by New Jersey Monthly.

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