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Twenty-one years ago, Beryl Bunker retired from her job as senior vice president of John Hancock Financial Services and promptly embarked on a second career: volunteering and fundraising for Boston-area organizations devoted to the economic empowerment of women. "I love working with women," says Bunker, "so it's been a very happy period of my life."
She's on the advisory committees of On the Rise, a group that helps homeless and abused women find housing and jobs, and the Women's Union (formerly the Women's Educational and Industrial Union), and is an honorary trustee of Simmons College. She raises money for the Pine Street Inn, a nonprofit that offers shelter, housing, and job training to women and men. And she's an honorary trustee of the YWCA, having served as president of the Boston YWCA and trustee of the national organization.
Now BU is benefiting from Bunker's generosity. With a $10,000 gift, Bunker has established the Beryl H. Bunker Library Fund at the School of Public Health to support cataloging and shelving and to add to materials associated with the book Our Bodies, Ourselves, first published in 1970 and now in its eighth edition. John Hancock also has made a gift of $10,000 to the fund. In 2002 the book's parent organization, the nonprofit Our Bodies, Ourselves (OBOS), also known as the Boston Women's Health Book Collective, donated seventy-five boxes of books to the Medical Library at Boston University Medical Center. The collection includes books either produced by OBOS, such as Changing Bodies, Changing Lives and the new Ourselves, Growing Older, or resources it has used; it covers a range of women's health issues, such as anatomy and physiology, diseases, therapies, alternative medicine, family, relationships, lifestyles, government health policies, and health studies.
Bunker learned about the collection in 2002, and supporting it made sense. "I've had a long-term relationship with OBOS," she says. "Years ago I was on the board of the Women's Statewide Legislative Network with Judy Norsigian, the executive director of OBOS. And I had bought one of the early copies of OBOS when it first came out and given it to the women in my family. So I was very much aware of it."
Bunker, who was among John Hancock's first female vice presidents, says she's always been interested in women's issues but never considered herself an activist. "When I say activist, I mean physical activist, like walking down Southern roads and waving my bra and so forth," she says. "I was never that. But I thought since I don't do the real activist stuff, if I'm in sympathy with [an organization] and support it, then what I can do is help pay the salaries and expenses."
The School of Public Health has also had a close working relationship with OBOS over the years. SPH faculty members have worked on OBOS publications. And when the organization needed a home because its lease was up in the late 1990s, SPH provided office space for a year and a half.
The OBOS books are now in the circulating collection of the Medical Library, and all are accessible through the library's online catalog, says David Ginn, library director. "There are 1,244 items cataloged and shelved, 39 of which were purchased with the Beryl Bunker gift," he says. "This resource is available to the faculty, staff, and students of Boston University and other universities, practitioners in the various fields relevant to women's health, and members of the public looking for consumer health information."
Bunker, now eighty-six, and her husband, John, have no previous connections to BU. But her gift suits the goals of her second career. "When I talk about economic empowerment of women, obviously health issues are very big, particularly for older and low-income women," she says. "Health is a very important part of your economic empowerment."
—Cynthia K. Buccini |
