And I thought the Utah chapter of the National Organization for Women was dead.
True, its Web site is dated 2007, and no one answered the phone when I dialed the number that was listed. So I got in touch with former chapter president Lucy Malin, whom I knew from covering the Legislature in the early 1990s.
Malin, it turns out, had resigned in 2000. She had a couple of successors, but in The Tribune's archives, mention of the group stopped about three years ago.
But for years, NOW in Utah was a force. "We probably had 400 members at one time. We had quite a bit of influence; we were speaking out, taking a stand," she said. "We were representing men and women without voices."
Despite the loss of the Equal Rights Amendment, which would have prohibited discrimination based on gender, Utah NOW soldiered on. And we all know how Utah voters helped to defeat the ERA.
Along with the local ACLU and National Abortion Rights Action League, it rallied opposition to the 1991 Legislature's passage of what was then the most restrictive abortion law in the nation. More than $1 million in taxpayer money later, a federal court threw it out.
And Utah's NOW was involved in the Main Street Plaza dispute and rejected the Sutherland Institute's natural family resolution -- remember the "quiver full of children" part?
It took up arms against sexual discrimination in schools and the workplace, railed against the amendment to the Utah Constitution that defined marriage as between one man and one woman; and rallied with like-minded liberals against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In short, Utah NOW was a proud member of the national organization, which still wields power in Washington D.C. and throughout the nation.
And no, NOW President Terry O'Neill told me from Washington D.C., the Utah chapter is not dead. "It's dormant," she said, and ready for rejuvenation.
O'Neill, who took office last July, is intent on changing NOW's focus on sponsoring change inside the Beltway. She plans to get back to state-by-state, city-by-city grassroots work that built NOW from the time it was formed in 1966.
It won't be easy. Nationally, NOW claims 500,000 members, but pockets like Utah have gone untended not least because the organization fell prey to the same economic woes that everyone has since the crash of 2008.
O'Neill's plan is to reinforce the more active of its 350 chapters, which then would send emissaries to the smaller chapters like Utah's. Eventually, she said, the organization will regain its strength and keep working on its core issues.
But we've made progress, Malin and O'Neill agree. Teenagers and 20-somethings aren't likely to be hung up on race or sexual orientation, and a lot of young women have yet to encounter the glass ceiling.
"Things that used to be a problem, aren't a problem now," Malin said. "Gay marriage -- at least we can talk about it now."
I can't get too dewy-eyed, because we're still far away from social equity in so many ways.
But I'm heartened. I'd like to hear Utah NOW's voice in the public debate again, to see strong, smart women and men again work for change across the nation's landscape.
As Malin put it wistfully: "We still don't have the ERA."
