Spotlight On: Margaret E. Martin

Spotlight On: Vidal S. Clay

I’ve always been a sex educator. In school, kids came to me for information. My father was a doctor, and as an adolescent, I remember asking him questions about sex. He didn’t give me rules, but he said sex was a gift from God, one of the great pleasures of life. I married at 19 and was widowed during World War II. Then, I moved to Connecticut with my second husband. In 1948 in Connecticut, there was no legal birth control for married women. At the age of 23, I testified for Planned Parenthood at the legislature in Hartford. I told them that I wouldn’t have married a widower with two children when I had two children of my own unless I had thought I could control conception. After the 6th child in the family was born, I was even denied a tubal ligation.

After the death of my second husband, I went back to school and got an EdD from Teachers College in 1966. I was a part-time teacher at the University of Connecticut, Stamford for 23 years. The courses I taught included Marriage and Personality (we couldn’t use the word sex in course titles), and Human Development (which originally went from birth to adolescence with no prenatal information).

In 1977, I published a small book titled “Women, Menopause, and Middle Age.” I continued to be a sex educator as well as a therapist working with divorced and older women until I retired.

Several years ago, I received a pension from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for wives whose husbands died in service during World War II. I decided to spend it following my main goal: to make life easier for women and girls. I am particularly interested in health, and sex education is a large part of that. I heard about Advocates for Youth from Debra Haffner at the Religious Institute, and I have been supporting your fine organization ever since.  

Spotlight On: Claire D. Brindis, Dr. Ph.H.

Photo courtesy of Susan Merrell, UCSF

I am proud to invest in an organization that champions the needs of young people; fights for their right to access information that will help them make health-protective decisions; and assures their ability to successfully navigate challenging and potentially life-altering and life-threatening situations, including unintended pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, and other sexually transmitted infections. Advocates for Youth has made a proactive and courageous organizational commitment - long before it was the rallying cry for many others - to use medically accurate research and evidence-based practices, whether to help shape policy, programs, and/or other practices. Their ability to respond to both the universal needs of young people, as well as to the unique needs of special populations, such as GLBTQ youth, often places them ahead of the curve.

Over the past several decades, Advocates has actively and successfully pursued the most effective ways to reach a broad array of audiences - whether through their creative use of the Internet and other new media to reach youth, their families, providers, and other decision makers, their technical assistance and training capacity, and/or their collaborations with a broad array of community-based organizations, coalitions, and other groups. Whether standing alone, or working with others, Advocates is committed to advancing the health of young people and assuring that they play a major role in shaping their own futures. Advocates is deeply committed to involving youth in shaping the organization’s current activities and policies and in shaping the next generation of health education and youth-serving professions, both in the U.S. and abroad. Advocates has been at the cutting edge and among the first pioneers to make this commitment “real,” and I can think of no better legacy to support!