A Celebration of Cincinnati Moms: 2020
Photo by Stacy Wegley.
At the end of every interview, we ask folks to talk about an influential woman in their lives. They so often mention their moms – sometimes with tears, sometimes with laughter, often with both. The moms we got to celebrate this past year are all at once kind, gentle, strong, hardworking, fierce, badass mothers who overcame struggles and set an example by the way they lived.
As we live through an unprecedented pandemic, moms today are working from home with toddlers hanging from their arms, transforming companies to bring help in this crisis, and fighting for the mental and physical health of their families. I often wonder what my own son will remember about these days. Most of the time it feels like nothing more than surviving – and yet for those who look to us to lead, that makes all the difference.
Compiled by Kiersten Wones.
Mary Aguilera
Interview by Laura Leavitt. Photography by Moriah Kenton.
She passed in 2016, and everything she taught us was to treat others with compassion and empathy. I believe she put so much love into us that it has created like a forcefield so that we always know that there is love in someone. She treated everyone with such dignity and grace. She was a devout Catholic, and though I am not religious, there was a spirituality that was so powerful… It allowed me to take all the best pieces of it – having faith that everything is the way it is supposed to be.
She was an incredible woman. She was a nurse who worked at Phillips Exeter Academy, and she always had kids at the house, random people sleeping everywhere, an open door policy. I think that is what allows me to do the work I’m doing now – that mentality of an open heart and never judging. There’s always a reason why someone acts the way they act.
Shannon Anderson-Hammond
Interview by Kristyn Bridges. Photography by Angie Lipscomb.
My grandmother. Oh my god. Tears just, like, well up. She's the strongest person ever, in my life. Even though she was all over the place, she'd speak her mind, and I respect that. For her to speak her truth, that's where I learned that: Speak your truth; don't be afraid of where you come from. Don't be afraid of where you're going. She was not afraid of anything. She used to always tell me, "They gon‘ talk about you until the day you die. What can you do about it?" How you react to it is what characterizes you.
She was everything. She raised all of us, our kids, grandbabies – I mean, everything. She left an imprint on the city. She used to be on this show, “The Lincoln Ware Show”; she was always calling all the time. We had to live-stream her funeral. People were coming in, like, "I never met her, but I listened to her on the radio." She left such a huge impact on the city and I just want to follow in that footstep.
Khisha Asubuhi
Interview by Kiersten Wones. Photography by Chelsie Walter.
Growing up, I seen her alter her schedule and do different things for the family. I’m an only child, but to come to my basketball games, she would have to change her schedule with someone at work – things that you don’t realize matter when you’re younger, you know?
I credit a lot of all this to her. Initially, she was helping fund Originalitees. She was out in the heat with me. It was, like, the hottest day in Cincinnati, and we were at a family reunion and her and my grandma was out there just sweating to death [laughs].
Susan Casey-Leininger
Interview by Courtney Reynolds. Compiled by Emerin Boomer. Photography by Angie Lipscomb.
She worked in Cincinnati nonprofit as this superstar fundraiser for years and years and years: She worked for SUMA; she worked for Cincinnati New Bethel as the person who was getting all the money that moms and babies in this town needed. But she spent most of her life regretting that she had never gone to nursing school. All she ever really wanted to do with her life was be a pediatric nurse. When she was 46 years old, she decided that she was gonna do that. She finished nursing school when she was 50 years old, and she left the Cincinnati nonprofit world and went and was a floor nurse at Children's for several years before they saw how extraordinarily talented she was and she ended her career as a nurse educator at Children's basically preparing nurses of the future to move into quality pediatric care. She's so amazing and she is a true testament to that if you are ever not 100% satisfied with where you are in your life, that you make the change to make your life what you want. She had twins at 37 years old, and she has owned a knitting shop; she's lived around the country; she's had 100 different jobs, always because she makes creating happiness in her life a priority.
Ixi Chen
Interview by Sandra Okot-Kotber. Photography by Stacy Wegley.
My mother died months after I moved here, so she never was able to visit. When I took my audition here for the permanent job after the one-year position, she gave me these manifestation tapes to listen to. There was this Wayne Dyer tape. I was like, “What’s that? Mom, it’s this bald guy standing in front of a sunset. Come on.” But I put it in and that was sort of my introduction to this world of possibility and that you have the power to manifest your wildest dreams. She was the one who sort of introduced that.
She was the one who instilled the Buddhist philosophy in me. She was the one who taught me how to die gracefully and love every moment of being alive. Maybe she was my biggest influence. She continues to inspire all of us.
Spiritually speaking, after she died, I would always feel drawn to wise women.
Rodney Christian
Interview by Michaela Rawsthorn. Photography by Chelsie Walter.
I got my patience from my mother; she's a very patient woman. And I don't think I could do what I do for all these years without learning patience from her.
Tessa Clark
Interview by Brittany Barker. Photography by Chelsie Walter.
She’s just so inspiring in every sense. Her personal style, her boss woman tendencies – I totally get mine from her. She’s a self-taught ceramicist, and she and I have collaborated by making porcelain earrings together in 2015. She sells them here and at a couple of other stores. She’s dedicated her life to making pottery and keeping the mill open to the public. She says she invested in Idlewild for me, so I will hopefully buy her out one day, and I’m so grateful for her.
Monique Gilliam
Interview by Kristyn Bridges. Photography by Stacy Wegley.
I am who I am because of her. My mother had gone through so much. When I was a young girl she was a housekeeper at Garfield Suites, right across the street from the downtown public library. And I watched her with this true entrepreneurial drive. She purchased a popcorn machine and cotton candy maker and as a side hustle, she started to make cotton candy and popcorn in our home, and she would sell it at stores in the Over-the-Rhine community.
And from her having this entrepreneur drive, she created a business for herself, a maid service called Maid to Order. She used to clean homes along Milton and Boal Street, and those clients came from relationships she built for herself working at Garfield. People really took to her personality and wanted to say, “Hey, you did such a good job cleaning my room; perhaps you can come and clean our home and clean our businesses.” So I learned at a young age the importance of tapping into your network to enable you to tap into your net worth.
And through those relationships that she built for herself cleaning their homes, someone saw something in her and wanted to teach her the mortgage business. So she ended up working for a few mortgage companies before she opened her own company as a loan officer and she was able to generate home loans for individuals. That was the job that she had prior to her passing on. I really watched her go from receiving subsidiary assistance and things like that to getting herself off those things.
All the things that she overcame: being a product of rape, dealing with being raped herself, and just so many obstacles that she faced as a young black woman and raising me to love myself first and foremost and always seeing the greatest in me… Even when I was 16 years old, her having my poem copywritten in the Library of Congress, that was very significant for me. That let me know then that she knew I could do big things and wanted me to do big things. She planted those seeds, and it’s for me to continue the journey. I got off track because life happens, but I’d like to think that I’m well on my way. Because I’m the shit, so I’m well on my way. We all fall down but the thing is, I get up, and I keep it going. I’m well on my way.
Dani Isaacsohn
Interview by Tracy Van Wagner. Photography provided.
She is everyone's favorite member of my family. She is both incredibly strong and like a force of nature, but also has this endless reservoir of empathy and kindness; she can relate to anyone immediately. I'm jealous of her ability to make anyone feel comfortable from whatever situation and from whatever walk of life. She doesn’t pull any punches. She sets standards high. She will call me out if I am not living up to both the standards she sets, but also the standard she has had me set for myself.
Jamie Jones
Interview by Suzanne Wilder. Photography by Alex Larrison.
She’s the type of woman or person who would give the shirt off her back to someone who needed it. She lives in the Philippines. They don’t get paid for their work that they do there. By her standards, she doesn’t live a very typical life in poverty. She’s very grateful. But she’s the hardest working person I know, the most selfless; she has the biggest heart. She’s the true definition of empathy put into action, as well. She can’t just stand idly by as she watches people suffer. She definitely takes action on what tugs at her heart. She was kind of a strict, typical Philippino mother; she would always remind us of our cousins in the Philippines who had much less than we did. She would give us that ‘Think of the kids in a third-world country” kind of thing. It instilled a value in me that you should be thinking of other people and be grateful for what you have.
At a young age, she taught us humility and what it’s like to help other people. When she started her nonprofit – it was called Scholars for Jesus – when I was in high school, she would raise money to pay for [Filipino] children’s tuition or school clothes or school supplies or transportation costs. Seeing that and how dedicated she was to the church, to her volunteer work, really impacted me. When I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, what I wanted to do was to help people. That came from my mom. That’s all she ever did, as well – just constantly trying to make the world around her a better place. I love my mom. If I can be half the woman she is, I’m set up for success.
Jeannette Jones
Interview by Tracy Wagner. Photography provided.
She is somebody who was ahead of her time because she had her own ideas and she wasn't a typical person of her age. She's 83 years old this month. She's an organic gardener. She made our cereal from granola. She was into keeping us out of sugar and things like that back in the day when Velveeta cheese and those kinds of things were basic staples of people’s diet. So, her health and body conscious health was influential. She was also very much, “You can do whatever you think you can do or want to do.” In high school, I wanted to take drafting. The instructor who taught that locked me out of class. This was pre-Title IX, before women legally were allowed to go into whatever classes they wanted to and promoting sports for both women and men was a law. I literally was walking through the door. He said, “What are you doing here?”
I said, “I'm here to take this class.”
He said, “Oh no, you are not!” and shoved me back and the door was locked from the inside. I couldn't get the Board of Education to allow me to take that class. This is how old school it was where I grew up. There were 33 kids in the graduating class; it was a small school in Portsmouth, Ohio. My parents supported me and allowed me to change schools. I ended up going to Notre Dame of Portsmouth. My junior and senior years were a lot different than most junior and senior year kids in high school because my mother didn't let them just push me around. She was very supportive in a non-supportive, male-dominated area.
She speaks her mind. I can remember being in situations where I'd be in the room and my mom would give her opinion about something. The men would say, “Well, that's not right,” or, “You really have no say in this.”
She'd say, “Well, why don't I?”
She and my father ran a farm together and she would be patronized during conversations about their business decisions. She would not put up with it. It was nice to see her model positive behavior instead of being passive.
Jess Kerr
Interview by Kiersten Wones. Photography by Chelsie Walter.
Definitely my grandma. I talked about her in the TechOhio article because it talked about my whole childhood. I used to go around with my grandparents to these auctions, and they would sell stuff on eBay all the time. We’d wake up at 6 in the morning and go to this one flea market. She was just incredible. She was the risk-taker.
I remember they went to this wholesale auction and bought $10,000 worth of Disney Christmas ornaments in one day. They were like these local legends at this auction. My grandpa was like, “I just wanted to buy a box or two and test it,” and she was like, “These are gonna sell; I just know it.” Their balance is really inspiring to me. She has since passed away, but just that, if you’re going to risk it, go big.
Rosie Kovacs
Interview by Kiersten Wones. Photography by Chelsie Walter.
I grew up with just her and I. Dad left when I was little, so she was a single working mom. She was a nurse. She worked from the ground up, you know? She was in school my whole life. I remember when I was little just, like, living at my friends’ houses ’cause she was at work or school. So she’s instilled a lot of wonderful skills and values in me, education being one of them. You can always learn more.
Tanya Leach
Interview by Sarah Urmston. Photography by Stacy Wegley.
She was an English teacher, my first editor, and my toughest editor. She is a tough cookie. In a lot of ways, I’m not like her at all. But she taught me that a woman can be strong and can get by in a man’s world. I think she was my first inspirational person, not just as a mom, but as a professional.
Kick Lee
Interview by Abbey Bruce. Photography by Stacy Wegley.
I was a foster child, and we never really got to be together like we wanted to. My mother is schizophrenic and bipolar. For those who aren’t familiar, that is a bad combination. She was never in the state to take care of me on her own. She always found a way to connect with me. She always found a way to let me know that she is still there. Even when I didn’t see her for years, she always found a way. She would send me a card, some money. Even to this day, she does things. I’ve gotten older and learned that this is her way of saying, “Sorry I wasn’t there for you.” I tell her that it’s okay and that I understand. I didn’t understand it then, but now I get it. She is the most influential woman to me because she kept going and she kept trying. She never gave up on being in touch with me. She continued to be who she is: a mom.
Julie Leftwich
Interview by Blaire Bartish. Photography provided.
My mom kind of urged me to go to law school. And for a long time I kind of resented all the pushing. But she always said, “At least you’ll have that degree to fall back on.”
At first I was kind of like, “Whatever!” But now I can see that was her way of ensuring that I would always be independent no matter what happened, and that has served me well. So for that, I am certainly grateful to my mother.
Catherine Manabat
Interview by Gina Regan. Photography by Chelsie Walter.
She raised seven kids. She's incredibly passionate; loves so much. She's such a big-hearted woman and the sacrifices she's made in her life for her children – I can't fathom that kind of selflessness. I am going to cry [tears up and laughs]. It happens every time! I aspire to be the kind of human that she is. She's very non-traditional for a Filipino woman in that she never asked us to be anything other than ourselves. Our happiness, living a life that was fulfilling, was so important to her. Having that choice of being whatever kind of woman I wanted to be and having that support, I feel so lucky. Having that support has really allowed me the luxury of being able to make such seemingly impulsive choices in the moment because I've always had that. Everything I do is to hear my mom say, "I'm proud of you." Her success is directly tied to the happiness of the people she loves, and that's such a selfless way to exist and love. I try to do it, but it's incredibly hard to do that all of the time. She's a badass. There are five girls in my family, two boys. She's raising very strong women. She said, "You will always have your family, but you will have to be able to take care of yourself and never depend on anyone."
Julia Petiprin
Interview by Gina Regan. Photography by Chelsie Walter.
My mom is the strongest woman I know. The strongest woman I know. She's had a crazy life, and I'm really empowered by her strength, and she will give anything to her children. She won't be able to pay her bills, but her kids will be fine, you know?
And my grandma was always there for me and taught me a lot of things. A lot of this love for the homemaker and things like that come from my family, but also women who can overcome and do things that people said were impossible.
Chinmayee Nagaraj
Interview by Blaire Bartish. Compiled by Olive Taylor. Photography provided.
My grandmother, my music guru – she is just about 75. I was her first grandchild. She had her children very young. She was married when she was 14, and she had her first child at 15. By 25, she had five children. Her dad was a musician, a violinist. She also used to sing; it was actually during one of her performances that my granddad saw her and liked her. He asked his mom to ask for him for her hand in marriage. We're talking about 60 years back, and I think it was just right after India's independence, so we're talking about a very different era. She didn't really have a choice in the marriage because she was the first of nine daughters. They just had to do it. Things are different now for many, many reasons.
She was a crazy, daring lady because she wanted to make sure all her kids got an education. She had four daughters and a son. She didn't get any of her kids married until they were 24 or 25 – that's an incredible achievement for that generation. Living in a village, she let her daughters go out. My mom did her bachelor's and master's with a sports scholarship. One of my other aunts did it on a music scholarship. She wanted to make sure that her kids got an education, and that they also received some training in music. She really, really worked hard; she threw fuss and tantrum to make sure that her kids got an education. She was able to send them out to study, and I don't know how. There wasn't Google; there was no phone. She was very resourceful. She now uses YouTube; she's on WhatsApp; she's very savvy. She's a big inspiration to me and all of my family because to be that resourceful, to be that driven and passionate, and to have such a strong belief in something that you're ready to face some pretty big hurdles to make it work… It has paid off. She's a very strong, positive influence on all of us.
Sarah Curry Rathel
Interview by Kelly Carrigan. Photography by Angie Lipscomb.
I’ve written books for a few moms who have passed away: Emily was one, and my friend Kelly was another. They both knew what was happening to them and they had young kids and wanted their kids to know about them. I saw them know that their time was coming to an end and still try to be moms, work, and do what they needed to do while being very sick and going through treatments and major surgeries… I just think about that and all the moms here and I feel like every day, no matter what I am doing, I can definitely do it.
Carla Walker
Interview by Dani Clark. Photography by Alex Larrison.
You know that saying, "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree"? I am the apple. My mother just knows everyone. She started a nonprofit over 10 years ago called Urban Greater Cincinnati Network on Mental Illness. It's a safe place of learning and advocacy for people of color whose loved ones have a mental illness or they themselves are suffering and recovering. She's an advocate for the mental health community here in Ohio, nationally, and internationally.
Do you know an awesome woman of Cincy? Nominate her here! New features launch every Monday. Happy Mothers Day!