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The University of Maine’s Women in the Curriculum and Women’s Studies Program has named Mary Cathcart, senior policy associate at UMaine’s Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center, as a 2006 Maryann Hartman award winner.
Cathcart is being recognized for almost 30 years of volunteer and political work on behalf of women and children.
“I think I was always a feminist,” Cathcart said. “But I never did anything actively until I moved to Maine.”
After her children started going to school, Cathcart began volunteering as a hotline operator at Spruce Run, an organization that helps victims of domestic abuse.
Cathcart said the hotline made a big difference by supporting women and helping them decide what to do. “That’s all most of them really need,” she said.
She served in the Maine House of Representatives from 1988 until 1994, and later served in the Maine Senate from 1996 to 2004.
She believes that it is important for women to serve in government because they traditionally “put family and people” issues as their top priorities.
Cathcart said that during her time in office, she worked to pass legislation that would protect her two passions, “women and children.”
Education, especially at the university level, was another priority for her. Cathcart voted to keep funding for UMaine scholarships. She also sponsored a bond that provided $10 million to improve labs and research facilities.
“I consider that one of the things I tell my grandchildren that I did for the state of Maine,” Cathcart said.
She can also tell them about receiving the Maryann Hartman Award, which is named after a former UMaine professor who died of cancer in 1980. Hartman was the director of forensics in speech communication and made progress in the field of oral interpretation.
“I did know Maryann Hartman,” Cathcart said. “I respected her and liked her.”
The other two award winners were Lee Sharkey, professor at the University of Maine at Farmington as well as a poet and peace activist, and Sarah Hudson, an emergency medical technician at Maine Maritime Academy and founder of Bagaduce Ambulance Service in Castine.
The Women in the Curriculum and Women’s Studies Program also named recipients of its Young Women’s Social Justice Awards: high school students Hazel Stark of Winterport and Amelia Butman of Greenville.
Bangor Daily News