Georgia activist for women and children dies

By Ty Tagami

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A longtime advocate for Georgia's battered and forgotten women and children has died.

Vicki McLennan, a former president of the National Organization for Women, spent much of her adult life lobbying lawmakers to help people she'd never met while earning little or no money for herself.

She pushed for causes such as domestic violence legislation, child abuse protections and better insurance coverage against breast cancer and other maladies that afflict women.

McLennan, 58, died on Friday of a cancer that spread through her body after first appearing as breast cancer eight years ago when she lacked medical coverage, her daughter, Jana Hyde, told the AJC.

McLennan's lobbying helped encourage the Georgia General Assembly to mandate mammograms and pap smears in medical coverage, Hyde said. "We always thought that was slightly ironic because she didn't have health insurance."

McLennan was born and raised in Atlanta. Her father worked in a factory in Cabbagetown and her mother was an avid bowler, Hyde said.

In 1995, McLennan told the AJC that she grew up in an unhappy home. She started running away at age 12 and, at 16, married a young man she met at a roller skating rink. She dropped out of school soon after and gave birth to the first of three girls that she would have during a 10-year marriage. She finally left her husband, whom she described as physically abusive.

As a single mother in her late 20s without a college degree, life was a struggle. She was inspired when she came across a flier for an organization called 9 to 5 that fought for office workers' rights. She joined and later became the fledgling group's first president. That led to lobbying for unions and other groups, such as the Public Assistance Coalition, which focused on welfare reform, and Aid For Families With Dependent Children. She was elected as the unpaid president of the Georgia chapter of the National Organization for Women  in 1993.

Hyde said her mother pieced together a living by lobbying for various groups and that she took classes that interested her at Georgia State University, but never found the time to get a degree. She eventually remarried and had a fourth child, a son, but divorced again.

Though McLennan didn't profit in her own life, she had an effect on others. She lobbied for support in the South to pass the federal Violence Against Women Act, Hyde said. The law enhanced prosecution of violent crimes against women and increased pre-trial detention for those accused of such crimes.

She also helped change the way Atlanta police approached sex crimes. In 1993, following an outcry after the AJC reported that Fulton County convicted 38 men for rape in the 1,739 cases reported in 1990 and 1991, then-Chief Eldrin Bell invited McLennan and her group, NOW, to recommend changes in recruit training. The newspapers' interviews had cited poor work by both police and prosecutors, as well as jurors' critical attitudes toward rape victims, as a key factor in the courts' performance.

"We allowed them to participate in the rewriting of our sex crimes SOP," said Lou Arcangeli, who was a deputy police chief at the time and had command over the academy. "She was a direct and a very powerful advocate and just would not accept ‘no.'"

Later, when Arcangeli accused then-Police Chief Beverly Harvard of pressuring police to under report crime, Arcangeli said McLennan used her influence at the Gold Dome to get the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to look into it. She was friends with Tom Murphy, the legendary House Speaker, and she put pressure on the governor's office, Arcangeli said.

The GBI inquiry revealed that 498 robberies and 56 rapes were omitted from the 1996 crime statistics though no one was accused of criminal wrongdoing.

McLennan later dabbled in politics, raising money in 1999  for the presidential primary campaign of Democrat Bill Bradley. She also helped to run the failed 2001 mayoral campaign of Gloria Bromell-Tinubu, a Spelman College economics professor, who promised radical reforms. And McLennan ran for office herself, losing a bid for the state Senate in 1998.

Hyde said neither she nor her sisters were interested in following their mother's path. Hyde, 38, is married and has four children of her own, and her husband works for a pharmaceutical company. She said her fondest memories of her mother are of watching her play with her own children -- McLennan's grandchildren. But Hyde added that her brother, who is 20, is interested in a life of politics.

Like his mother, Will McLennan attended Georgia State University. Unlike her, Hyde said, he is planning to continue to  law school.

McLennan was cremated, and her friends and family are planning a memorial service for some time in April, Hyde said. McLennan is survived by daughters Lisa Biesal, 41, of Cumming; Jana Hyde, 38, of Stone Mountain; Holly Hyde, 35, of Atlanta; son Will McLennan, 20, of Stone Mountain and eight grandchildren, all of Atlanta.