Vera Belle Perry

is honored with a Brick from the National Organization for Women - Wichita Chapter.

The Wichita Chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) honors a former president and state coordinator who showed us daily what it means to have a passion for women's equality. Vera Belle's passion was infectious. It attracted her immediate family as well as scores of others her feminist "family" to political and social activism.

And what a role model she was! Under her leadership, people of different temperaments and personalities worked well together: marching, petitioning, and rallying for women's rights, including reproductive freedom, and for peace and justice issues. Thanks to her talents and enthusiasm, we even had fun working concession stands at sporting events to raise money for the causes we championed. Through the years, especially the 1980s when Vera Belle was constantly recruiting volunteers for jobs, she herself was the Number One Volunteer, whatever the project.

She was born and grew up in Marion, Kansas. After graduating as Valedictorian of her class in 1944, she spent two years in nurse's training in Wichita. Then her high school sweetheart, Bill Perry, came home from the war and they were married in 1946. Although as a married woman she would not be allowed to complete nurse's training, she stayed in the medical field. For years she did private-duty nursing, usually working a night shift so she could stay actively involved with her two children during the day. Vera Belle encouraged her son and daughter to participate fully in life, from school activities to dancing, piano lessons, baseball games, plays, and scouting. She knew all the children's friends and they knew her. When her daughter Gina began teaching and directing school plays, Vera Belle was there again with encouragement for the young theater students.

In 1977, attendance at the Kansas Women's Weekend, sponsored by the Women's Equality Coalition, became a turning point in her life and helped focus all her passion and dedication toward a cause she had always felt: the fight for women's equality.

She served as President of NOW in 1985 and State coordinator in 1987, organizing events and many Cpublic actions. She attended her last national rally in a wheelchair, assisted by her daughter, in Washington, DC. It was the March for Women's Equality/ Women's Lives in April 1989, just one month after her first cancer surgery.

NOW members are proud to honor Vera Belle Perry, a woman of courage.

July 28, 1998