Morning Sentinel
Women's Hall to induct activist
By Morning Sentinel Staff Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel 02/06/2008

WATERVILLE -- Karen Heck projects a calmness that tends to put people at ease.

But don't be fooled.

Heck's even-keeled demeanor masks an intensity of purpose that has made the New York transplant and Colby College graduate a champion of women's rights and a powerhouse of community activism.

Next month, Heck will be inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in honor of her many accomplishments for women and girls over nearly 30 years.

The late Florence Brooks Whitehouse, an Augusta native, will also be inducted, in recognition of her achievements as a suffrage leader, peace activist, feminist, artist and writer.

Lauren Sterling, manager of the Governor's Children's Cabinet, is one of the people who supported Heck's nomination. Sterling, who has collaborated with Heck on many initiatives, knows the truth about Heck's relaxed, understated ways.

"Her calm and cool exterior is one of her gifts that I wish I had more of," Sterling said. "It helps her hide her sometimes enormous frustration when she feels justice is not being served. Karen to me is all about what is just."

Waterville City Manager Michael J. Roy first met Heck when they became freshman classmates at Colby College nearly 40 years ago.

Roy said he admired her immediately and that admiration has only strengthened over the years.

"I think she is a very courageous and principled person," he said. "I think she has very strong values and is not afraid to stick up for them, even when it may seem she is in the minority."

Heck combines that courage and strong values with great energy and enthusiasm.

Consider, for example, the many leadership roles she has filled during her time in Maine:

n Past board president of the Maine Women's Lobby, the Maine Choice Coalition, Family Planning Service Providers and Waterville Rotary;

n Past board member of the Maine Women's Fund, the Maine Health Access Foundation Community Advisory Committee, the Maine Women's Development Institute, the Maine Choice Coalition and the Waterville Area Boys & Girls Club;

n Founding board member of Waterville Rape Crisis Assistance, the Women's Development Institute and SAFE, Inc.

Yet Heck is perhaps best known as one of the three co-founders of Hardy Girls/Healthy Women, the Waterville nonprofit group that champions the healthy growth and development of girls, focusing on overcoming societal stereotypes and the other forces of sexism.

Heck said she and co-founders Lyn Mikel Brown and Lynn Cole always believed deeply in the cause. What surprised them, though, she said, was the enthusiasm by which others embraced their efforts.

"I think it has become bigger faster than we envisioned," she said, adding that the Hardy Girls/Healthy Women Web site registers about 100,000 hits a month.

First and foremost, Heck sees Hardy Girls as a resource on women's issues, as well as an advocate for tolerance and understanding.

A prime example of the latter mission is the Ugly Duckling Community Action Kit, a collection of material based on the play "Ugly Duckling," designed to teach young people the injustice of bias-based harassment.

Hardy Girls made the kit available to every school district in the state.

"All along what we've tried to do," Heck said, "is give people who work with girls the tools and awareness to work with these girls."

Roy said one of Heck's strengths is her ability to push agendas by building rather than burning bridges.

"She has a good capacity to listen and to find common ground," Roy said, "and that has served her very well. I think she learned early that that is how progress is achieved."

Heck did not grow up with feminist aspirations.

She spent her childhood in Orchard Park, N.Y., a community south of Buffalo that, as Heck puts it, makes Maine winters seem mild.

Heck's father worked as a manager at Bethlehem Steel, while her mother, like most moms of the era, stayed home to manage the household and raise children.

A good, but uninspired student, Heck had no desire to further her education beyond high school. Her parents, however, had different ideas, and that's how Heck found herself at Colby College, where she earned a degree in government.

The turning point in her life occurred her senior year at Colby, when a visiting professor opened her eyes to the sexism around her.

"She was the one who really introduced me to the concept of feminism," she said. "The whole concept had been foreign to me."

Heck, though, did not immediately enlist in the cause.

Instead, like most young people just out of college, she needed a regular paycheck.

Thus she worked for a couple of years in Washington D.C., including a six-month stint with Jack Kemp, the conservative Republican congressman from New York.

Heck said she left that job because she couldn't tolerate Kemp's opposition to abortion -- and so a champion of women's rights was born.

Not that this pleased her parents.

"At the time," she said, "they thought I was insane to quit Jack's office, because there was a recession going on."

Heck said her parents eventually came to understand her decision and became her most ardent supporters.

She has never regretted her return to Maine after her brief Washington stint.

"The thing that is so fabulous about Maine," she said, "and why I left Washington, is you can really make a difference in Maine. You can take an issue that is of importance to you and really move it."

Colin Hickey -- 861-9205

chickey@centralmaine.com

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