Topic: League of Women Voters
Interview of Joyce Wolf, November 15, 2019
Interviewed by Rex Buchanan
During her 2019 oral history interview, Joyce Wolf talks about her background working with environmental organizations on a variety of environmental issues. With a degree in bacteriology, she became interested in water quality issues before the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Wolf worked with Jan Garton, a key figure in environmental advocacy in Kansas, and a coalition of environmental groups supporting water rights for the Cheyenne Bottoms wetland area under the banner of “Save Our Bottoms.” Wolf was also involved in debates over the low-level radioactive waste disposal facilities. She elaborates in this interview on the Show Moresuccess of the coalition achieving an arrangement for adequate water supply for Cheyenne Bottoms and funding of the State Water Plan during the administration of Gov. Mike Hayden. Wolf recalls that environmental organizations were also concerned about the silting-in of the federal reservoirs, the decline of the Ogallala aquifer, the conflict over the Arkansas River that led to the Kansas v. Colorado lawsuit, and the loss of surface water in western Kansas. Wolf also discusses the cultural differences between Kansas and Minnesota that appears to reflect a lack of appreciation of the natural environment in Kansas. Show Less
Interview of Phyllis Garibay-Coon, May 13, 2025
Interviewed by Linda Utoff
Phyllis Garibay-Coon, the artist who created Rebel Women, the most recent mural installed in the Kansas Statehouse, describes her journey as an artist including the importance of the support she found in the Manhattan, KS community. Garibay-Coon is the first woman to have her mural installed in the Statehouse. She is interviewed by Linda Uthoff, League of Women Voters of Manhattan/Riley County. During the interview, conducted a few months after the mural was unveiled on the 2025 anniversary of Kansas becoming a state, Garibay-Coon describes the Kansas suffragists who are the most prominent figures in Show Morethe painting. She also describes how the state and local historical societies and families of those suffragists contributed to how she imagined the mural. Garibay-Coon credits the League of Women Voters of Kansas, the AAUW of Kansas, and generous individual donors who made this public art possible.
Highlights -- short excerpts from the interview