Recently Liz Robbins at the Garland County Historical Society discovered an article written in the Sentinel Record. My mom, Ann Stell McDaniel, spoke to the Rotary Club at the Arlington Hotel. According to the paper 25 men were present including Ray Smith Sr., Congressman Norrell and Rotary President J. King.
For those who don’t know anything about my mother she was a beautiful, unconventional firebrand.
The article was entitled “Rotarians Hear Woman’s Side in Battle of Sexes”
“Mrs. McDaniel, frequently heard on radio and television is the wife of Architect I. Granger McDaniel. She covered her subject with quotations from Genesis down through Shakespeare and Dorothy Parker.
“If we sometimes seem to have an inferiority complex,” she said, “just remember that the creation of woman was done in an awful hurry.
“God took an entire day to create the birds and said that was good. He took another day to create the fishes, and called that good, but man was not satisfied. So God created woman one afternoon while Adam was asleep.”
Her them was that woman’s entire life is wrapped up in pleasing man and she quoted a sheaf of magazine articles such as “Are you Keeping up With your Husband?” To prove it,as well as tracing various fashion trends she had undergone to make herself attractive.
“Man, has seen no need for changing himself,” she said. “Go down on Bath House Row and see him wrapped in a sheet and there is very little difference from the garb of a Roman senator.”
Spiced with rich humor and histrionic ability, her talk was a novelty that rated high in Rotary entertainment.”
The date was Wednesday, September 21… 1955.
She was something.