A dream deferred but still unfolding

Harmony Dusek, of Spokane, announced in an article in The Spokesman-Review that she intended to be the first woman president of the United States. Harmony was 12. It was 1989.

Harmony had been the student body president of Lidgerwood Elementary School and was a straight-A seventh-grader at Garry Middle School when she decided to organize a women-in-government conference in order to get her Girl Scout Silver Award. She was precocious and fearless. If someone had made a movie of her life then, the young Lindsay Lohan would have played a perfect Harmony.

Anyway, Harmony invited Geraldine Ferraro, former vice presidential candidate, to her women’s conference. Ferraro declined because her daughter was getting married that same weekend. Harmony also invited Spokane women of action and power to talk at her conference. A half-dozen said yes.

In that 1989 article, Harmony told reporter John Craig, “I’m going to be a lawyer, and I’m going to go to college and stuff.” Harmony said she realized she would have to work her way to the presidency, so she’d start out as a “mayor or senator.”

I stumbled across the article about Harmony in our newspaper archives while researching another topic. I then tracked Harmony down to see how she felt about Hillary Clinton losing the bid to be the Democrats’ candidate for president, which means no woman president next year. I’ve been uncertain how to feel about that myself.

Harmony is 31 now. She graduated from Rogers High School and attended Spokane Falls Community College and Washington State University. She married a Spokane guy, Jason Frederick. They live in North Hollywood, Calif. She works in development at the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California. In the primary in February, she voted for Barack Obama.

“I had a hard time deciding,” she said. “But I eventually chose Barack, because he’s not a part of the established political machine.”

Still, she’s a Hillary fan.

“I’m really proud of her for lasting through the primaries,” she said. “That was very significant. She battled hard and worked hard. She made a good piece of history, and it will be one step forward for women.”

Harmony no longer wants to be the first woman president, nor mayor, nor senator. She’s hoping to start soon on a master’s degree in public administration and run a nonprofit organization someday.

But she remembered well the women who encouraged her presidency dream, starting with her Scout leader, Deborah Wittwer. The message she received from Wittwer, as well as the women she invited to her conference in 1989, was this: “Being the first woman president is achievable and will happen.”

Two hundred people attended Harmony’s conference. Harmony earned her Silver Award. The women-in-government presenters that day all battled hard and worked hard to break down barriers for women in Spokane. Vicki McNeill was Spokane’s first woman mayor. Judge Kathleen O’Connor was the first woman elected to Spokane County Superior Court. Dorothy Webster had just been appointed assistant city manager for affirmative action. Jan Polek and Sheri Barnard are still strong advocates for women’s rights.

Though she was only 12, Harmony remembers knowing that these women were “laying the groundwork” for the involved life she hoped to lead as a woman.

“They were people I aspired to be,” she says now. “They served as mentors.”

A year ago, in my imagination, I was drafting a memo to editors here to convince them to send me and Jamie Tobias Neely to the inauguration of President Hillary Clinton. I have covered women’s issues since 1979, and my mantra for almost 30 years has been: I will not die until I see a woman elected president.

Hillary’s loss didn’t dishearten me as much as I thought. The older I get, the more I understand how history and culture move at their own pace. Individual effort matters, for sure, but the effort might not pay off for years or even decades. I won’t be going to President Hillary’s inauguration with Jamie in January. I might die before a woman is elected president. But it’s OK, and Harmony helped me see it.

The women in government who participated in the 1989 conference were in the busiest times of their lives, but still they said yes to its 12-year-old organizer. They will never know how their presence, and the words they spoke that day, inspired young women to walk the world in a new way.

Harmony gave up her dream to become the first woman president, but she didn’t abandon the confidence to pursue the dreams she substituted.

Will she see a woman president in her lifetime?

“Absolutely within the next 20 years,” she told me. “I have no doubt.”