On this International Women’s Day, I want to honor three older women who have over the years become heroines of mine: Wangari Maathai, Doris “Granny D.” Haddock, and, most recently, Saalumarada Thimmakka. None are women I’ve met or know directly. One lived in Africa, another in North America, the third in Asia. Their lives of collaborative service continue to inspire me, even though they are no longer physically with us.
Wangari Maathai was born in Kenya in 1940. She pushed to get a good education, and along the way became an environmental and government reform activist. In 1977, she started the Greenbelt Movement, aimed at empowering rural women through planting and nurturing tree seedlings. Over time the movement grew and incorporated an effort toward more responsive, more transparent government at multiple levels. In 2004, Maathai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work, the first African woman to receive this honor. In her acceptance speech, she highlighted work completed, but also work yet to be done:
“Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life support system.”
Maathai died in 2011, but the movement she started lives on. Its Greenbelt Movement website sets out several current interlocking goals: “[O]ur programs focus on reforestation, climate change adaptation and mitigation, water harvesting, gender-based advocacy, and creating sustainable livelihoods.”
Doris Haddock for much of her life was a low profile New England wife, mother, and shoe factory worker. Born in New Hampshire in 1910, she attended college in Massachusetts during the late 1920’s until her secret marriage to James Haddock, the love of her life, got her expelled (evidence of a double standard that has not yet totally disappeared). The couple settled in New Hampshire, where Jim found work as an electrical engineer. Once their children were launched, Doris became more active in local government. She continued attending weekly public affairs sessions where she’d made good friends. During the 1990’s, first Jim and then her best friend Elizabeth died. Doris became more and more disgusted with the oversized role of large campaign contributions in elections at all levels. She began doing some physical training while considering ways to publicize the need for reform.
On January 1, 1999, shortly before her 89th birthday, Doris set out from Pasadena, California on a cross-country walk to raise awareness of the need for campaign finance reform. Over 3,200 miles and 14 months later, she arrived in Washington, D.C., having met and talked with thousands of people during her trek and collected thousands of signatures calling for meaningful reform. She was later on hand in the gallery of the U.S. Senate in 2002 when a bipartisan campaign finance reform law gained passage there on a 60-40 vote.
In 2004, Haddock accepted a last minute request to run for a U.S. Senate seat against a popular incumbent. She did not win that contest, but she again raised important issues. Per an L.A. Times article shortly before the election:
“Out on the trail, Doris Haddock delivers this message: Nearly all evils born in Washington — lopsided tax policies, economic disparity, an ineffective healthcare system, even the war in Iraq — are caused by ‘career politicians who are funded by the special interests that they are supposed to be regulating.’”
Haddock lived to be 100. She died, physically frail but still spiritually robust, shortly after the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision “Citizens United” opened the floodgates to unlimited campaign contributions. Several local and national organizations continue the work she championed, using her name and likeness in their promotional materials.
Saalumarada Thimmakka was a childless illiterate Indian peasant woman who transformed the stigma of being unable to bear physical children into a verdant set of tree-lined oases in her impoverished part of India. She died in late 2025. In early 2026, her life and work were memorialized in a New York Times obituary. Ms. Thimmakka lived to be about 113 (records of her birth are inexact). Nearly 80 years ago, she and her husband started by planting 10 banyan tree saplings. After her husband’s death in the 1990’s, her efforts began to get expanded media attention. The scope of her tree planting increased. In 2019, she was awarded the Padma Shri medal, one of India’s highest civilian honors. Her adopted son continues her efforts, distributing thousands of saplings each year and organizing tree planting drives.
Ms. Maathai, Ms. Haddock, and Ms. Thimmakka remind me of three sometimes paradoxical truths:
1) Lasting change almost always requires sustained effort.
2) Even in the darkest periods, one person can make a positive difference, and
3) We are stronger together.
Happy International Women’s Day!
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