Viola Lennon, one of the seven founding members of La Leche League, passed away last week at the age of 86.
Viola was one of the "revolutionaries who wore pearls," who dared to talk about breastfeeding at a time when newspapers wouldn't even print the word breast (hence the name La Leche League) and the medical establishment scoffed at the idea. Her efforts, like those of the other founders and the thousands of women who followed in her footsteps, was a driving force behind making breastfeeding accepted, valued, and even normal, in the U.S. and around the world.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports in her obituary:
When other women met the co-author of The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding -- soon in an eighth edition -- it wasn't unusual for them to hug her, said her daughter Maureen Lennon Zeeb. At a La Leche conference in Mackinac Island, "This woman literally dropped her bags when she saw my mother and was weeping. She came up to my mother and said, 'You don't know how you changed my life.' People would ask us if we wouldn't mind if they got a picture taken with her. They wanted her autograph."
Though Mrs. Lennon and other founders of the League were rock stars in the world of mothering, they remained humble as they marveled at how their group had grown.
"Every single thing we were advocating then is now standard pediatric practice -- to nurse soon after birth and to nurse frequently, instead of on a rigid schedule," said Mary Lofton, an early member.
In 2007 Edwina Froehlich, another of the founding members, passed away. For those of you interested in the early days of La Leche League, and the founding members' struggles to support breastfeeding, I'd highly recommend The Revolutionaries Wore Pearls.
And the video below on the founders, which includes a great clip of Princess Grace's speech to the 1971 La Leche League conference, is also great.
