SBVC Honors Outstanding Women Leaders

Nine women were honored as outstanding women leaders of the community in San Bernardino Valley College’s (SBVC) first Barbara Jordan Awards ceremony held Oct. 3. The honorees included female leaders in the fields of education and politics: retired Community Action leader Lois Carson, former California State Assemblywoman Wilmer Amina Carter, SBVC’s former Director of EOPS/CARE and counselor Wilma Cochrane, civil rights advocate and historian Frances Grice, former Crafton Hills College president and publisher of the Inland Empire Community Newspapers Gloria Macias Harrison, San Bernardino City Unified School District board member Dr. Margaret Hill, attorney Eloise Gomez Reyes, Inland Empire Scholarship Fund co-founder and retired dentist Dra. Manuela Sosa, and former San Bernardino City Mayor Judith Valles. The awards highlighted the change these women brought to San Bernardino and surrounding communities, explained San Bernardino Valley College Interim President Dr. Gloria Fisher. “We realized how far we have come in the community, and particularly this college,” Fisher said. “So much of that is because of the hard-working, dedicated women from our own community who have impacted not only what goes on here at SBVC, but beyond that and for the community. We want to…thank them for all they have done to further education in this region and beyond.” The awards ceremony opened with a welcome by Dr. Fisher and a program overview was given by SBVC staff members Carmen Rodriguez and Carolyn Lindsey, who shared briefly the accomplishments of each of the honorees. Judith Valles told the crowd in her acceptance speech, “I want to thank this institution, San Bernardino Valley College, because it salvaged a generation of us that never would have made it had we not started here.… The women that are being honored here today…have all succeeded because whatever it is that they do, they do it because they really cared. It was caring, and commitment and the courage of their convictions, because they took many, many courageous steps to create what we have today. I’m honored to be in the company of all of them.” Frances Grice thanked the men and women who made it possible for her to ultimately help end institutionalized segregation in San Bernardino, a 20-year struggle which ended when the California Supreme Court ruled that San Bernardino was guilty of segregation and discrimination and abolished segregation in the city’s public school system. She pushed for others today to continue fighting for their beliefs. “If you do anything, stand for something,” Grice, 79, said. “When we did the Civil Rights movement, we said, ‘I’m black and I’m proud.’ And that’s what we meant, and we did everything to prove that to our children.” Lois J. Carson, retired, spent 33 years in the world of Community Action, first as deputy director of the San Bernardino County Community Action Agency and 30 years as executive director of the Community Action Partnership (CAP) of Riverside County. She was known as an innovator and always said she wanted her agency to be the drum major of the community action parade. Under Caron’s leadership, CAP Riverside was the first to tackle the crisis of minority males at the urging of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Director Dr. Louis Sullivan during the George Bush Sr. administration; first in the state to administer the IDA (Individual Development Account) program and a racial equity model; the first county to commit to end poverty in line with the United Nations goal and the first public CAA in the nation to win the Award for Excellence. Carson was president of the state and national trade association. Wilmer Amina Carter served in the California State Assembly for three terms, representing the state’s 62 district including San Bernardino, Fontana, Rialto, Colton, Bloomington and Muscoy. Some of her legislative measures included major changes to the delivery of education and she worked with others to set aside grant money to assist individuals in creating microenterprises. Before being elected to the Assembly, she served on the Rialto Unified School District board for 16 years. She staffed the late Congressman George Brown as district director for 20 years and also directed the National Council of Negro Women’s School to Work Education Project. She served as Community Affairs Liaison for California State University, San Bernardino. Through her nonprofit foundation, Carter is currently coordinating a history project “Bridges that Carried Us Over,” archiving the African American history and contribution to the Inland Empire. Carter graduated from San Bernardino High School attended SBVC and earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from California State University, San Bernardino. She lives in Rialto with her husband and has three adult children. Wilma Cochrane was orphaned at the age of 3 by the tragic death of her mother. A loving aunt and uncle took on the responsibility of caring for her, transitioning her from a life in the rural south to a life in San Bernardino. Cochrane’s love for entertainment in movies and theater carried her to a lead part in the play “A Raising in the Sun” at SBVC. Her stage work includes Show Boat with Ron Husman and Donald O’Connor, and her television credits include the Bob Hope NBC television special for the Catholic Relief Fund; the role she cherishes most is that of Bessie Smith in a production directed by SBVC Professor Harry Murray. Cochrane and Murray, along with a cast of students, carried this production to U.S. soldiers in the Philippines, South Korea and Okinawa, Japan with the help of the United States Department of Defense. Not only was this the beginning of life in many community theater events, but in addition with her involvement in theater it was the beginning of a pursuit of a college education, a career as a college educator and the mentoring of many young people throughout the community. Cochrane matriculated through SBVC to California State University, San Bernardino for her bachelor’s degree and on to the University of Redlands for a master’s degree in educational counseling. Cochrane’s 24-year career at SBVC began as the director of EOPS/CARE, and later she transitioned to the counseling department. In addition to her duties at SBVC, Cochrane also taught drama for the San Bernardino’s Parks and Recreation department. Frances Grice was a local civil rights advocate with the Community League of Mothers in the mid-1960s. She began a 20 year struggle seeking to end minority segregated schools and discriminiation in their hiring of minority teachers and administrators. This became a dangerous fight of personal sacrifice to the members of the League of Mothers, with threats of hanging, cross burning, KKK activities and shootings as the protests heated up. Through the NAACP, many court battles ensued, ending with the California Supreme Court’s ruling that San Bernardino was guilty of segregation and discrimination and mandated an end to segregation in the San Bernardino public school system. Grice has won several distinctive awards and special recognitions at the local, state, national and international levels. She has become a historian and is in the process of writing a book of the civil rights struggle in San Bernardino to profile various mentors and leaders. Grice has said she believes the history and struggle for equal justice and opportunity in San Bernardino is one of the greatest civil rights struggles and if it is not written, documented or recorded I will become distorted or extinct. Gloria Macias Harrison is one of the founders of an alternative press, El Chicano (1969), which was developed to give a Chicano voice in the Inland Empire. Today, along with nine other community weeklies, El Chicano publishes weekly and makes up the family publishing business in San Bernardino County and northern San Diego County, with her husband Bill acting as the CEO and her daughter Diana the general manager. Harrison served as president of Crafton Hills College from 2000 until 2012. Before this assignment, she served as vice president of instruction at Crafton Hills College for six years; she also served as dean of humanities at SBVC for three years. She has over 20 years of community college teaching experience. Harrison received an associate’s degree from SBVC, and bachelors and masters degrees in Spanish literature from University of California, Riverside. Dr. Margaret Hill earned her bachelor degree in business education with a minor in English from Norfolk State University and her master’s degree and education administration certificate from California State University, San Bernardino. Hill has been a board trustee for the San Bernardino City Unified School District since 2001. Prior to this, Hill was the assistant superintendent for the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools for six years. Hill began her career in education in 1971 as a teacher at San Bernardino High School, later becoming principal at Curtis and Serrano middle schools, as well as at San Bernardino and San Andreas high schools. She has been a member of several organizations, including the San Bernardino Black Culture Foundation, the Kiwanis Club of Greater San Bernardino, and the NFL Athletes for Life, to name a few. She’s received several awards from community organizations for her participation and contributions to students and her community. She has said her most rewarding moments are chairing the San Bernardino Black Culture Foundation’s Black Rose Awards, mentoring students, providing toys at Christmas to San Bernardino youth and spending time with students from Del Vallejo Middle School. Eloise Gomez Reyes was born and raised in Colton, graduating from Colton High School, SBVC and USC. Working up to three jobs while she was in college, Gomez Reyes received her law degree from Loyola Law School. Shortly after, she became the first Latina to open her own law office in the Inland Empire. Most recently, Gomez Reyes helped found the VALOR Youth Foundation in Colton, was a founding board member of the Inland Empire Community Health Center in Bloomington, and sits on the executive board for the Children’s Spin Foundation. She has also served as a volunteer for Legal Aid for more than 25 years and was named Attorney of the Year in 2013. Gomez Reyes has been married to her husband for 32 years and they have one son. Dra. Manuela Sosa was born in Silao Guanajuato, Mexico and immigrated to Colton at age 4. She earned her bachelor’s degree from University of California, Riverside in microbiology and later earned her Doctor of Dental Surgery degree from Loma Linda School of Dentistry. Growing up, her summers were spent working in agriculture. Later she became a tissue technician at San Bernardino Community Hospital, she became the first Latina dentist in the Inland Empire with her own practice. Sosa was the founding member of the Inland Empire Scholarship Fund, which has raised over $3 million for scholarships for students in the community colleges, the Cal State University and University of California programs and private universities and professional schools. Sosa has earned numerous city- and statewide awards and recognitions, and she and her husband were recently given the prestigious Chancellor’s Medallion Award from University of California, Riverside. She has been married to her husband for 50 years, providing resources to students in the community. Judith Valles has over 45 years of professional experience in the field of education and served eight years as the mayor of San Bernardino. She has served on various statewide and federal committees and organization. Valles’s experience as an educator began as a fifth grade teacher, then a high school Spanish teacher and then she joined the faculty at SBVC. Her faculty tenure was followed by increasing college responsibility and leadership roles in academic programming, curriculum development, student services, budgets, collective bargaining negotiations, contract implementation, community relations, marketing programs, telecommunication, technology and staff development. Valles served as a consultant to other colleges in strategic planning and policy governance and was invited to be a visiting professor in the School of Education at Harvard University on leadership. Valles has been placed in the Halls of Fame at San Bernardino High School and SBVC and was presented the Woman of the Year Award from the California Assembly and Senate. She earned her degrees from SBVC, the University of Redlands and UCLA. Barbara Jordan, the woman who inspired these awards and lends them her name, was born Feb. 21, 1936 in Houston. She was a lawyer and educator who served as a congresswoman from 1972 through 1978—the first African American congresswoman to come from the deep South and the first woman ever elected to the Texas State Senate (1966). Jordan captured the attention of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who invited her to the White House for a preview of his 1967 civil rights message. A ground-breaking African American politician, Jordan worked hard to achieve her dreams. Growing up the daughter of a Baptist minister in a poor neighborhood in Houston, Jordan was encouraged by her parents to strive for academic excellence. Her gift for language and building arguments was apparent in high school, where she was an award-winning debater and orator. After graduating from Texas Southern University in 1956, Jordan continued her studies at Boston University Law School, one of the few black students in the program. After earning her degree, Jordan returned to Texas to set up her law practice, working at first out of her parents’ home. Before long, Jordan became active in politics, campaigining for the Democratic presidential ticket of John F. Kennedy and fellow Texan Lyndon B. Johnson. In 1962, Jordan launched her first bid for public office, seeking a spot in the Texas legislature. It took two more tries for her to make history. She said, “My presence here…is one additional bit of evidence that the American Dream need not be forever deferred.” “These women serve as mentors,” said Fisher when asked about the nominees’ impact on young people in the area, especially young women. “I’ve been at the college for 23 years and I am deeply moved by the people… who come forward and say, ‘You made a difference in my life. I appreciate you.’ I hadn’t thought of it that way, but then I look to our leaders, like these women (who are mentors).” At the close of the event, San Bernardino City Councilman Rikke Van Johnson presented a resolution to each of the nine women, as well as to Dr. Fisher and the SBVC Black Faculty & Staff Association and Latino Faculty, Staff & Administrators Association for hosting the event. A representative from Assemblymember Cheryl Brown’s office also presented a certificate of thanks.