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Photograph by Vicki Thompson

Honoring Lindbergh: Bianca Gonzales chose to concentrate on Anne Morrow Lindbergh's personal achievements rather than her heartaches for Notre Dame's The Woman's Place Project. In her toast to Lindbergh, Gonzales wrote: 'You may not think that you did a lot, but you did. You followed your dreams, and I admire you for that.'

Dinner Guests

Notre Dame's 'place' project toasts women

By Mary Gottschalk

Each fall, the entering freshmen at Notre Dame High School in downtown San Jose start an ambitious project designed to educate them about what a woman's place is and can be.

If you're thinking of the old saw that "a woman's place is in the kitchen," forget it.

Within a few weeks, the students know just how much a determined woman can accomplish and the effect she can have on her family, her community, her country and the world.

It starts in the religious studies class when each freshman draws the name of a woman to research. They must write a research paper and a toast to the woman and then create an appropriate dinner table place setting for her.

This year, The Woman's Place Project recognizes the achievements of 165 women, past and present. These include women with familiar names such as Mother Teresa, Hillary Clinton and J.K. Rowling, as well as names not as easily recognized by 14-year-olds, such as Sojourner Truth, Mary Shelley and Maya Lin.

The project is interdisciplinary at Notre Dame, the oldest private college preparatory high school for girls in California, founded in 1851. Students use skills acquired in their English classes for research and writing. Additionally, many of the girls use their arts classes to create the plates that are the center of each setting. Many are ceramic, others are decoupaged and some are hand-painted.

The project culminates each spring when all the place settings are put on display in the school's gym.

It is both inspiring and daunting.

For this year's Women's Place, four Rose Garden teens in the class of 2010 participated.

Bianca Gonzales, 14, drew the name Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

"I didn't know anything about her," Bianca says of the woman who is even today often first identified as the wife of aviator Charles A. Lindbergh Jr.

Bianca's toast ignores Lindbergh's husband and the anguish of having her first child kidnapped and murdered.

Instead, she chose to concentrate on Lindbergh's personal achievements. Part of her toast says:

"I propose a toast to you, Anne Morrow Lindbergh. You took a risk and a challenge when you decided to become the first woman aviator. You may not think that you did a lot, but you did. You followed your dreams, and I admire you for that."

For Lindbergh's place setting, Bianca used Mod Podge to create aviation-theme montages on three plates. She accessorized the setting with a vase of calla lilies and added a small airplane and a tiny globe.

Bianca says researching Lindbergh's life has taught her, "Anything is possible. You can do anything you want, and you can make a difference."

Emily Kitzerow, 14, drew the name Annie Oakley, but quickly traded with a classmate for Wangari Maathai.

"I knew something about Annie Oakley, and I knew nothing about her," Emily says of Maathai. "I thought it would be fun to learn."

Emily soon learned that Maathai started the Green Belt Movement, a non-governmental grassroots environmental group that since 1976 has planted more than 30 million trees in Kenya to prevent soil erosion.

In her toast, Emily wrote:

"You are a wonderful and honorable woman. You have helped so many people. You helped the environment by starting the Green Belt Movement in 1976. I am inspired by your creativity and willingness to help others. Your courage to fight for what you believe in has inspired me greatly. You have showed everyone that it doesn't matter if you're poor, rich, a woman, a man, white, or black; you can make a difference. You have inspired me to make a difference any way I can and stand up for what I believe in. Thank you for leading the way and helping so many people."

For her place setting Emily says she used a nature theme because "a lot of what she did involved nature."

The hand-painted plate Emily created features trees, and she completed the setting with a wooden place mat, wooden-handled utensils, all entwined with a garland of leaves.

Emily says that what most surprised her about Maathai "was that she ran for a role in government and was denied and then harassed and beaten for her beliefs when she tried a second time. She still brings ideas to parliament and isn't giving up. I think that's really great."

Chelsea Cruickshank, 14, says that when she drew the name Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, "I didn't know a thing about her.

"I knew about JFK and Bobby Kennedy, but I knew nothing about her other children, her husband and her own background."

Chelsea found plenty of books on the matriarch of the Kennedy clan, including Kennedy's own memoir, Times to Remember.

Chelsea says what most surprised her "was that Rose never played favorites with her children."

"I think this is a very admirable quality for a mother of nine children to have."

Chelsea used a rose theme to honor Kennedy. In addition to a china plate with a rose border and a photo of Kennedy holding a spray of roses, Chelsea also included a small compass.

"The compass shows that Rose had a strong inner compass and it's also a play on the compass rose," Chelsea says.

Elizabeth Diemer drew the name of Queen Elizabeth I.

In her toast, Elizabeth wrote:

"I want to honor you for being one of the first successful women rulers in your own right. You opened the way for successful women in power throughout the world."

The Woman's Place Project was started in 1994 by Sister Maureen Hillard, says Mary Beth Riley, principal of Notre Dame.

Hillard had seen artist Judy Chicago's "The Dinner Party" installation and decided to have students emulate it.

Chicago, working over a five-year period, created 39 place settings saluting significant women in Western civilization through the mid-20th century.

Chicago has said, "'The Dinner Party' was meant to end the ongoing cycle of omission in which women were written out of the historical record."

The art project was first displayed at the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1979. It was purchased in 2002 by the Brooklyn Museum of Art and opened as a permanent exhibition there in the Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art on March 23.

While Chicago's dinner party is limited to 39 guests and a time period that ends in the mid-20th century, Notre Dame's is limited only by the size of the freshmen class and includes many contemporary women.

Since the project's inception, students at Notre Dame have written 1,700 profiles for the ongoing The Woman's Place Project.

Riley says, "It has become a signature piece for freshman. It's hugely powerful to see all these women from all walks of life honored."