One woman escaped Nazi rule at the age of eight and made it to America where she built a career teaching music and climbed many mountains. Another woman protested dictatorship in Argentina as a child and became a renowned linguistic theorist and teacher. A third escaped Communist rule in Hungary and emigrated to Israel and then to the United States where she became an artist. Another worked in 40 countries providing life-changing reproductive healthcare. A fifth woman walked from Newton to Washington and traveled to Saigon to protest the Vietnam War.
These stories are told in colorful detail in a new book — Women of Courage and Conviction — profiling five extraordinary Newton women — distinguished not just for their personal courage but for their far-reaching impact.
These five women have all been members of Newton at Home, the volunteer-driven nonprofit organization that helps older residents thrive as they age. The book’s author, Dorothy Anger, is herself a longtime champion of Newton at Home, one of hundreds of local organizations in the nationwide Village to Village Network that assist members to stay in their homes, stay active in their community and avoid isolation.
The birth of a book
Anger helped launch Newton at Home in 2011 and is a longtime member and volunteer. She said she got to know the women’s stories while driving them to medical appointments and shopping outings, one of the principal forms of assistance that volunteers provide to Newton at Home members.
“And during these long drives, I would get to chat, and I got these glimpses, just glimpses of these people, and I said to myself, their stories need to be told,” Anger told the audience. “They had courage, they took risks, they made their lives over and over and over again when change came. And I realized that this is the stuff that life is made of.”
Anger noted that she had never written a book before – “and I wanted to see if I could do it.” The work took three years of interviewing, writing, and rewriting — and finally was published this summer by Newton at Home. The book is for sale at Newtonville Books and from Newton at Home, and all proceeds from book sales go to support Newton at Home’s work for its 160-plus members.
The women speak
At a recent event at the Scandinavian Living Center in Newton to launch the book, Anger shared a stage with four of the women she profiled. The fifth woman, Louise Bruyn, the anti-Vietnam War activist, passed away in December 2024.
At the launch event, Newton at Home program director Amy Kraus led a conversation to learn about the women’s lives and what motivated them.
Longtime Newton at Home volunteer and member Sallie Craig Huber, a minister’s daughter from Baltimore who spent her career working around the world as a public health specialist, answered that question simply: “In a nutshell, looking back, I never said no to an opportunity.”
Maria Brisk, born in a well-to-do Argentine family, was asked how she had the resolve to protest the Peron regime at the age of 10, an early sign of her life-long determination. She replied that she had five older brothers who did what they wanted, “And I thought, why not me?” Echoing Sallie Craig Huber, Maria Brisk added, “Why do I always always not say no? And I think it’s because I’m an optimist and I’m Latin American.” She recalled being asked at Boston College, where she later was a professor, to create an online course before any existed there. She said yes – and made it happen. She hasn’t stopped: the day of the book event, Brisk taught students in Bangladesh over Zoom.
Shlomit Mintz made a harrowing escape from Hungary to Israel in 1949 at the age of 17 and spent a decade there before starting over again in the United States, where she discovered a love for drawing and painting to get through severe illnesses. She still gives her volunteer drivers prints of her botanical drawings. Dorothy Anger quotes Shlomit: “There are people who don’t believe in miracles, and there are others for whom everything is a miracle. I am one of those people.”
Hanni Myers was a child when her family managed to get out of Nazi-occupied Austria and make it to America ahead of the outbreak of World War II. As a young mother, she studied voice pedagogy at the New England Conservatory of Music, and when she turned 60 she began teaching voice at Boston College. And another constant passion was climbing mountains, from New Hampshire to the Himalayas.
Hanni Myers said that a constant for her and her late husband Stan was community: She kept a guestbook to log the constant stream of students and other visitors to her home over the decades. She recently set out to count those who signed the guestbook – and gave up counting at 14,500.
Newton at Home Director Alexandra Johnson said the book’s lessons included recognizing “that there are extraordinary people everywhere and that even at a time in life when things can be challenging or unknown, there are stories of resilience and courage and accomplishment all around. And those are the beautiful things that can help us all if we focus on them.”
James F. Smith lives in Newton and is a member of the Newton at Home board of directors.
