5/29/01 Please convey
my thanks to you and other organizers and a few words of my recollection of
our contacts and collaboration with Donna in various projects. Donna was sharp
and she was tough. She supported and spoke at the CEM convention in Asilomar,
CA. and became a member of the CEM Board of Directors. On October 23, 1999,
she wrote to me: "Haven't been in touch because I've been traveling and writing
and agitating in all my spare (?) time..." She also asked (and received permission
to quote from our own studies of the prime-time TV drama cast: "If you put in
more women you have less violence... If someone tries to stump me in an interview
about how I would reduce violence, I will just quote you, and say "cast more
women, certainly more then 1 out of 3 characters, which is the ratio now." She
was a good friend, a tireless, militant advocate, and will be sorely missed.
George.
George Gerbner, Ph.D. Dean Emeritus, The Annenberg School for Communications,
University of Pennsylvania Formerly Bell Atlantic Professor of Telecommunications,
Temple University
I remember when Donna
called me to ask if I would work on a chapter for the book WOMEN TRANSFORMING
COMMUNICATIONS that she co-edited with you and Susan Kaufman. I called Carolyn
Stroman and asked her to work on it with me--and we did the chapter "African
American Women and Mass Communication Research." We focused on the major historical
and empirical research on Black women and mass communication, to date. Every
once in awhile, I'd get a quick, loud voicemail message from Donna who was pushing
us along to meet the newest deadline. From her descriptions, she wasn't sure
that we would all make it on time, but it would not be because she slacked up
on keeping us aware! I enjoyed our lengthy conversations about the philosophy
and psychology of the book -- and the need for it to be done now! As we all
know, Donna was not one to wait, if it could be done today. Jan -
Jannette L. Dates, Dean, School of Communication, Howard University
I met Donna Allen through Women in Communication Inc. In the early 1970s. She was a convention session speaker, but I missed her presentation.
I remember well when she and I were both named National Headliner winners by Women in Communications Inc. in 1979. I was Kentucky news editor of The Cincinnati Enquirer at the time. I had read the announcement of her selection and wondered what personal qualities led the National Capital Chapter to nominate her for the award.
Donna looked like an executive administrative assistant in the early '50s. Trim and distinguished looking with her snow-white hair, she seemed possessed of a "halo" announcing her great grace. I never saw her without the illumination, whether in a meeting, making a presentation or in jeans and a flannel shirt at a JAWS session somewhere out west. At the Headliner event she was wearing a navy blue suit and white blouse with an embroidered eyelet collar and looked like pictures taken in the 1940s that I saw in my mother's picture albums.
We had to make five-minute acceptance remarks at the WICI event , and I was blown away by hers. I cannot remember now what she said, but it made me a fan of hers. I signed up immediately as a supporting subscriber to Media Report to Women.
She was a woman with an almost timeless appearance who always was where the media action was. Donna informed women like me who already were sensitive to the special contributions women could make in media employment. She sensitized others and was a one-woman network always ready and eager to connect women she thought ought to know each other.
I think the last time I saw her was in her home in D.C. While working in Rosslyn at USA Today facilities, I arranged to meet her at home to take her to dinner prior to my heading to employment at Western Kentucky University. She wanted to give me information she thought I could use as a journalism educator.
In her home I saw how all of the "pieces" of Donna Allen fit together. A woman of many causes, she had more information than her head and house storage space could hold. She knew what was in each of the stacks of paper in her staircase filing system and quickly laid her hands on what she wanted me to have.
Until her death we were correspondents. She would write little encouraging notes on subscription notices or clippings she thought I ought to see. I'm sure she would be an avid e-mail user today.
Young media professionals today are unaware of how much they owe to Donna Allen and others like her. She helped open doors for others and tried to ensure that there might be a warn reception on the other side. But Donna also sometimes pushed women through doors they were reluctant to open. Donna Allen was a true friend to me and thousands of others. I miss her.
Jo-Ann Huff Albers, Director
School of Journalism and Broadcasting
Western Kentucky University
Submitted by Ramona Rush and taken from the "Preface", Donna Allen and Ramona R. Rush, eds., Communications at the Crossroads: The Gender Gap Connection (Ablex 1989):
". . . In 1983, Ramona presented a paper, "A Different Call to Arms: Women in the Core of the Communications Revolution," to the aforementioned scholarly/professional organization [AEJMC], which Donna later excerpted in Media Report to Women. She sent Ramona a copy of the excerpt, along with one of Donna's trademarks as editor of MRW [Media Report to Women] -- a handwritten note with many points of interest and information. This particular note was laudatory of Ramona's article, which Ramona remembers quite gratefully. She also remembers how welcome its major points were to Donna, who noted that her nearly-10- years of publishing MRW seemed to be falling on too many deaf or "silenced" ears.
The note arrived and was read as Ramona was laboring on an article at her typewriter and she, on the whole, was feeling rather depressed. But Donna's graciousness cheered her up and, when she read Donna's last exclamatory sentence, she remembers breaking into a full-toothed grin, and saying out loud, "Right on!"
The sentence said, "Is it time to start the revolution again?"