Women’s hall of fame inducts Pingree, Dyer

AUGUSTA – The Maine Women’s Hall of Fame inducted the co-founder of the Maine Women’s Lobby and a former state Senate majority leader in a ceremony Saturday.

The Hall of Fame recognition for Linda Smith Dyer of Winthrop and Chellie Pingree of North Haven is through the Maine Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, which established the Hall of Fame in 1990 and dedicated it to women who have made an outstanding contribution to improving opportunities for all Maine women.

Dyer founded the women’s lobby as a one-of-a-kind nonprofit membership organization, based on $2 dues. The group has funded a full-time lobbyist at the Maine Legislature since 1979.

And Pingree started her own business and served in the state Senate, where she played a key role in passage of Maine’s prescription drug-pricing bill.

The hall of fame celebrated the inductions at the Bennett D. Katz Library at the University of Maine at Augusta. Each year’s ceremony is held at UMA during March in observance of Women’s History Month.

The woman’s achievements must have:

. Had a significant statewide impact.

. Significantly improved the lives of women in Maine.

. Enduring value for women.

An independent panel of judges reviewed the nominations and, this year, the two nominees were found to fully meet the three criteria.

Before the induction ceremony, Melissa MacCrae, a Brewer author and Bangor Daily News copy editor, spoke on women who shape public policy, highlighting pay equity, women’s work and freedom to choose. Her book, “It Takes a Woman: Women Shaping Public Policy,” won first-place honors for nonfiction in the 2000 Maine Media Women’s Communications Contest. The book aims to discover how social, political and economic issues work to limit women’s role in shaping public policy both statewide and nationwide. Leadership models reviewed in the book include Margaret Chase Smith, Elizabeth Mitchell, Susan Collins and Pingree.

MacCrae offered highlights of her findings and provided information on why women’s participation in public policy is critically important for positive changes for themselves and their families.

Dyer, lawyer and activist, founded Maine Women’s Lobby in 1978 with two other women, Janet Mills and Lois Reckit. In the past 22 years the lobby has developed a reputation as a knowledgeable presence in the State House.

Dyer is a graduate of the University of Maine School of Law. She served as president of the Maine State Bar Association in 1998. She grew up in Monmouth and lives in Winthrop with her husband, Charles Jacobs, and daughter, Lauren Jacobs. She has twin sons from a previous marriage, Rick and Skip Dyer.

Pingree has become an important role model for women in Maine because of her leadership in public policy development, both in elective and appointive positions, and her ability to articulate issues of concern to a wide range of Maine residents. She was first elected to the Maine Senate in 1992, and was elected Maine’s Senate majority leader on Dec. 4, 1996, a position she held through 2000.

Pingree was born in Minneapolis and moved to the island community of North Haven when she was 17. She settled there permanently in 1977 after graduating from the College of the Atlantic.