A Year-End Review: Tying Up Some of the Loose Ends From ’84 : They Keep Organizing

For 10 years, Tish Sommers and Laurie Shields have been telling women with financial, housing, health or job problems: “Don’t agonize--organize.” Colleagues and house mates, they not only practice, but also live what they preach.

When they met 10 years ago, Sommers, now 69, was leading a “Jobs for Older Women” project and Shields, 64, was a new widow desperate for work but wary of feminists. Opposites in style and appearance, they agreed something must be done to stop inequities for middle-aged women--particularly those who have been dependent on husbands and find themselves widowed or divorced. Pooling their talents, Sommers, a career activist, and Shields, a former journalist, crisscrossed the country, turning a grass-roots movement into an 11,000-member national organization with political credibility--the Older Women’s League (OWL).

From their West Coast headquarters in Oakland, they lobbied successfully for federal legislation to create a nationwide network of counseling centers for the women they called “displaced homemakers” and sparked 76 OWL chapters across the country.

Along the way, they built a special friendship--a model of mutual support that they hope will be followed by other women who find themselves aging, poor, isolated and lonely.

Their friendship was strengthened five years ago when Sommers, who had been treated for breast cancer, learned that the disease had recurred; the bond between them was further cemented last year when Shields discovered a breast tumor.

Since their story appeared in The Times in August, Sommers has resumed the chemotherapy treatments she had previously abandoned because they drained her energy to work. The first few treatments “hit her hard,” said Shields. Now taking treatments on Fridays and resting over the weekends, Sommers is well enough to work and travel, Shields added.

Shields, who has had a mastectomy, said she has received a “clean bill of health” from her doctor. “I think they got it all, and that’s it,” she said.

Based mostly on Sommers’ experience with cancer, they are planning a mailer to their membership on death and dying. Both have made living wills, giving each other power of attorney for medical decisions to prevent the use of lifesaving devices in a hopeless situation.

The two women have been invited to contribute to a documentary film about their lives for Helios Productions of Los Angeles. Shields said her only concern about the movie is that the producers will be able to find an actress “short, stout and spontaneous” enough (as she was described in The Times article) to portray her.

Meanwhile, she and Sommers continue to keep a full work schedule. With the resignation of OWL’s executive director in Washington, D.C., Sommers, OWL’s president, will take on the job until a replacement is found.

They are also organizing workshops on housing options for women, programs to inform women of new benefits available under the Retirement Equity Act and programs to involve mid-life women in planning for their old age. In addition, they are promoting state legislation that would provide respite programs for those who stay at home to care for the disabled, and they are wrapping up a book, “Women Who Care,” about these “homebound care givers.”

Sommers and Shields, both of whom adopted children, also are advocating a new public attitude toward Mother’s Day. “We’d like people to look at mothers not only in terms of one-day honoring, but realizing that they need returns when the job is done,” said Sommers.

Shields wrote the campaign’s slogan: “If we’re for motherhood and apple pie, how come our slice is so small?”