Three teachers will act the parts of notable local women of history at 10 a.m. April 11 at Bemidji State University's Center for Research and Innovation (CRI).
Free and open to the public, the 90-minute session is one of a series of spring lectures sponsored by the Academy of Lifelong Learning (ALL) and coordinated by the CRI.
Sara Breeze, a teacher in the Schoolcraft Learning Community, will deliver a monologue as Sister Amata, who sold health insurance of sorts to Bemidji-area loggers at the turn of the 20th century. She is credited with creating an early form of today's worker's compensation.
Retired teachers Judy Dvorak and Kathy Paulsen will present "Jessie and Tinnie Pendergast - Homesteading Tales." The Pendergast sisters homesteaded in Bemidji in 1897, followed by their family in 1907. Their father, Civil War veteran Lloyd Garison Pendergast, was a land surveyor, Bemidji magistrate and a Minnesota legislator.
Dvorak and Paulsen, descended from Bemidji-area homesteaders, seek to tell history through personal stories instead of facts and dates.
"My mother's parents took up a homestead claim in the Skime area about five years after the Pendergast sister that I portray," Dvorak said. "My mother was about five years old and the stories she used to tell about her experiences really helped me to relate to Tinnie."
ALL offers humanities-based programs that are made possible in part with funding from the Minnesota Humanities Commission in cooperation with the National Endowment for the Humanities.
More information about the Academy of Lifelong Learning is available by contacting the Center for Research and Innovation, Bemidji State University, 1500 Birchmont Drive NE, Bemidji, MN 56601-2699 (218-755-4900).