ROLL OF HONOR
Recognizing Greatness at Any Level
FLOWERS IN SPRING Queenie Birkett (1923-2023) Wife, Mother and Activist/USA My mother grew up in poverty in rural Virginia during Jim Crow, one of eleven children of a widow. She was largely self-taught, a lifelong avid newspaper reader. A single mother of two children when she met young machinist Earl Birkett in the 1950s, the couple built a life together and a family of four children on suburban Long Island, New York. While Earl revolutionized the field of automation, Queenie was a foot soldier in the local Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and a tireless community activist who later started her own fashion business. Few women of her day possessed her enormous strength, courage, generosity and vivacity. I am largely the person that I am because of her. She passed away on Feb. 21, 2023, at almost 100, leaving a legacy for the ages. - Earl A. Birkett
Bobbi Wilson (b. 2013) Child entomologist/USA In October 2022, Wilson, age 9, was testing a homemade repellent to spray spotted lanternflies in her hometown of Caldwell, New Jersey. State agricultural departments across the country urged Americans to kill the invasive insects, which pose a threat to native trees and plants. A white neighbor called the police reporting “a little black woman walking, spraying stuff on the sidewalks and trees." That unfortunate incident of racial profiling had a happy ending: In February 2023, Yale University's School of Public Health held a rare public ceremony to honor the child entomologist for her heroic efforts. BAVUAL
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SPRING 2023
