Vol. 30, No. 1 | Winter 2022
Safety at Home Improving the safety of your home as you age, room by room SEE SAFETY ON PAGE 12
VOLUNTEERING
A Pioneering Public Servant Just a few months before 100,000 demonstrators gathered on the Washington Mall to support extending the Equal Rights Amendment, two women were sworn in as Delaware’s first female police officers. Kathy Lieske, the first to take her oath that spring day in 1978, would rise to become the city’s first female police chief.
MORE THAN JUST A MEAL Support Meals on Wheels! Page 20
“There were a lot of articles written in the Gazette back then that had the word ‘first’ in the headline: first female officer, first female captain,” said Kathy. “I didn’t care for the attention or the reason behind it.” The history of female police officers began in the late 1800s, when New York City hired “police matrons” to guard female prisoners. The matrons were civilians with no policing powers. No woman was granted the power of arrest until 1910, when Alice Stebbins Wells, a 37-year-old minister, convinced the mayor of Los Angeles that women and children would be more comfortable with female officers. See PIONEER on page 4.
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