6 Unsung Heroes Become Women of Achievement : Awards: The recipients displayed ‘strength, conviction and love,’ Rep. Barbara Boxer says at program in Santa Ana.

Six county women were praised as unsung heroes Friday night for their community and career accomplishments at the eighth annual Women of Achievement Awards Program at Rancho Santiago College.

“The qualities that these women share are qualities of courage, strength, conviction and love,” said Rep. Barbara Boxer (D-Greenbrae). “They deserve this recognition not only for what they’ve done but for how they encourage others.”

Gloria Davenport, an honoree who is a counselor for older and resuming students at the college in Santa Ana, said: “Just when I finally decided it was more important to just be a person than to achieve, suddenly I get all these awards for achievement.”

Davenport, 63, received her doctorate in January. Her thesis was about successful aging. She said her goal has always been “to teach people the tools to take care of themselves, rather than becoming dependent on others, . . . to initiate new programs to meet needs.”

Other recipients were also honored for seeing needs in the community and developing innovative ways to meet them.

Lorri Galloway has been a full-time volunteer since she founded Eli Home Inc. eight years ago in Anaheim to provide residential therapy for abused children and their parents.

“You just want to do something to make a difference,” she said. The organization depends on volunteers and donations and receives no government grants, operating on an annual budget of $150,000.

Similarly, in 1955 Gladys Gleason noticed that there was a need for a specialized education and therapy program for children with speech disabilities. She and a partner founded the Speech and Language Development Center in Buena Park, which contracts with public schools in three counties to provide special education.

“Back then, if a child had a problem, he was often placed in an inappropriate setting,” Gleason said. A bill guaranteeing handicapped children equal access to education was not passed until 1975.

Olevia Freeman has had to overcome severe disability herself. A divorced mother of three, she was diagnosed in 1989 with a rare disease called polymyositis, in which the immune system attacks the muscles.

Despite constant pain, she has gone back to school at Rancho Santiago College to learn new skills so she can stay out of the welfare system, said Jeff Townsell, a student staff member at the college’s physical disability program.

Irvine resident Mitsuye Yamada is a poet and college professor who is a member of the national board of Amnesty International.

She has also tried to increase recognition for female minority writers. A group she founded, Multicultural Women Writers of Orange County, recently published an anthology, “Sowing Ti Leaves.”

In her teaching, Yamada has tried to include women “so that more students will be reading the perspectives of women through their writing,” she said. “Most American literary anthologies are mainly white and mainly male, . . . which seems rather appalling.”

The sixth award recipient, Jo Caines, is director of community relations for KOCE Channel 50 and a longtime resident of Orange. Besides overseeing 300 volunteers at the public TV station and coordinating its community outreach, she is on the boards of such groups as the United Way, the Children’s Home Society of California and the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

“Trying to make things better for others keeps me young,” Caines said.