Sargent
Sargent Spirit
Issue 3
'You have to take charge yourself' Marguerite “Midge” Martin (Sargent’47) has repeatedly served on the front line in the battle for gender equality. Consider her struggle with the Longmeadow Country Club, in Longmeadow, Mass., where she and her husband, Charlie, were longtime members. In 1985, Midge asked the club’s board of governors if she could tee off earlier on weekends than the scheduled times for women: after 1 pm on Saturday and 11:30 am on Sunday. “As I’d walk up the little hill on the driveway late and look down the first green, I’d see the male members taking their 16-year-old boys out to play,” she says. “So even the boys could play, but ladies could not. And I’d think, 'How do you like that? That kid has more power than I have because he’s a boy.' I just wanted to be equal.” It was a cause reinforced by her experience at Sargent College, she says—a place where a tight-knit group of strong, independent women trained with professors who were keenly aware of women’s capabilities and rights. Photo: The Republican, Springfield, Massachusetts
You have to do what’s good for you, what’s good for everybody. Sargent embraced that idea."
When the club’s board said no, Midge took the case to the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination and later filed a lawsuit against the club. Finally, in 1997, they reached a settlement: Longmeadow paid Midge’s $45,000 in legal fees, and allowed women to play before the afternoon heat struck. But she and Charlie, who she says stood steadfastly by her, did pay a price. Club members—former friends—shunned them both. “When we would play, nobody would talk to us, nobody would have lunch with us, nobody would go out with us. That went on for a couple of years. The men took over, and their wives were afraid.” Even so, she would do it all over again. “The victory meant a great deal to me,” she says. “Without that fight, we’d still be in the dungeon.” Midge has spent her life reaching for the heights. She credits her family, in particular her mother, with instilling the courage to do what was right for her, regardless of what others were doing. And she points to the philosophy of Dudley Allen Sargent, who stressed the value of evidence-based physical education for all people, as critical in her egalitarian approach to her own career. As a science and physical education teacher at Brookline High School, in Brookline, Mass., in the 1950s, she fought for gender parity for the girls’ athletics teams, leading to more gym time and coaching for them. She later became the first woman general
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