The Arkansas Women’s Hall of Fame welcomed nine women and one group into the fold during a reception and dinner Aug. 24 at the Statehouse Convention Center. Some 550 people attended the third annual event.
Inductees for 2017 were June B. Freeman, founding director of the nonprofit Architecture and Design Network; Ruth Hawkins, an advocate for historic preservation and heritage tourism around the state; Brinda Jackson, the first black woman in Arkansas registered to practice architecture; Pat Lile, who served as president and chief executive officer of the Arkansas Community Foundation Inc. from 1996 until 2007; Dr. Joanna Seibert, who developed the department of pediatric radiology at Arkansas Children’s Hospital; and Dorothy Stuck, the first female delegate to serve as chairman of a major committee — the committee on suffrage and elections — at the Arkansas Constitutional Convention.
The Olivetan Benedictine Sisters were the honored organization. The group is responsible for opening St. Bernards Hospital, now St. Bernards Medical Center, in Jonesboro in 1900. Honored posthumously were writer and activist Maya Angelou, philanthropist Bernice Jones, and Judge Elsijane Trimble Roy, Arkansas’ first female circuit judge and the first woman on the Arkansas Supreme Court.
