Cathcart Wins 2006 Maryann Hartman Award
Contact: Mary Cathcart, 581-1539; George Manlove, 581-3756
Photo available upon request.
ORONO — Mary Cathcart, senior policy associate at UMaine’s Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center, was recognized recently as one of three 2006 Maryann Hartman Award winners.
The university’s Women in the Curriculum and Women’s Studies Program organizes the annual awards, which recognize accomplished Maine women for outstanding achievement in the arts, politics, business, education and community service.
Cathcart, of Orono, began her work on behalf of women nearly three decades ago as a volunteer for Spruce Run, one of the oldest battered women’s projects in the country. She followed up on her commitment to fight domestic abuse as a member of the Maine House of Representatives from 1988-1994 and as a member of the Maine Senate from 1996-2004.
According to the Women in the Curriculum and Women’s Studies Program, Cathcart has helped improved women’s lives in many aspects, including education, care-giving, environment, healthcare, reproductive choice, mental illness, family security, veteran’s affairs and aging.
Cathcart says she is both excited and honored to receive one of the Maryann Hartman Awards. “It’s great company to be a part of,” she says.
Previous winners have been individuals “with all sorts of public service, artistic abilities and intellect. I think it’s very appropriate that these awards have been continuing over the last 20 years,” she says.
The other two Maryann Hartman Award winners were Lee Sharkey, a poet, peace activist and professor at the University of Maine at Farmington, and Sarah Hudson of Maine Maritime Academy, an emergency medical technician and founder of Bagaduce Ambulance Service in Castine, who now trains students for U.S. Coast Guard licenses in ship medicine.
UMaine Professor Maryann Hartman was director of forensics in Speech Communication at UMaine and a pioneer in the field of oral interpretation. A teacher, scholar, advocate, friend and mother, Hartman died in 1980 of cancer.
Women in the Curriculum and Women’s Studies Program also bestowed its Young Women’s Social Justice Awards high school students Hazel Stark of Winterport and Amelia Butman of Greenville.