Celebrity reporter Chung urges women ‘to toot our own horn’

For years, women have played the inferior species on the home front and in the workplace, but celebrity reporter Connie Chung said, “No more. Let us make strides to toot our own horn.”

Chung served as the keynote speaker at the Nicholls State University Louisiana Center for Women and Government’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony Friday. During the 1990s, she became one of the first women to co-anchor a nightly news show on a major national network.

“Her success as a journalist exemplifies the type of leadership we try to promote,” said Carroll Falcon, Nicholls’ vice president of academic affairs.

The legendary news anchor told the audience that in order for women to succeed in the workplace, they need support from men at home.

“I found that if men took on a more helping role in the home,” Chung said, “women would progress in the workplace. We can’t do everything, even though society expects us to.”

Jokingly she said, “Our struggle to get ahead is endless, and we just have to continue to fight our way to the top in hopes of having pure dominance.”

Chung spoke just before organizers announced the center’s inductees, four women who have served in leadership roles around the state.

This year’s oldest inductee was Kitty DeGree, a resident of Monroe. DeGree built her success with a real estate company in Monroe. She founded the Louisiana Delta Community College’s Kitty DeGree Scholarship in Nursing and Allied Health Professions and the Monroe city schools’ Kitty DeGree Student Enrichment Program.

She serves as a benefactor of the University of Louisiana at Monroe. To date, school officials said she has donated more than $6 million to the university.

Sandy Rosenthal, who founded Levees.org in New Orleans, was inducted for her efforts to promote flood protection and inform residents about levee failures.

Rosenthal began the Web site with the help of her 15-year-old son after hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

“My life in the past two years is nothing like I would have imagined it. I did it because there was no one else doing it,” Rosenthal told the audience. “We have to change the dialogue of why metro New Orleans flooded.”

Phyllis Taylor, chairman and CEO of Taylor Energy Company, was inducted for her work with the state’s Tuition Opportunity Program for Students.

As president of her late husband’s foundation, the Patrick F. Taylor Foundation, she donates money to education and law enforcement institutions. Taylor founded the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation and serves on an array of boards, including the Women’s Leadership Initiative of the Greater New Orleans United Way.

“Who would have thought that one day we would hear the words ‘government’ and ‘women’ in the same sentence,” Taylor said during her acceptance speech. “We have truly come a long way.”

Dolores Spikes, the first African-American to earn a math doctorate at Louisiana State University, was another inductee.

In 1988, Spikes went on to become the first female president of the Southern University System of Baton Rouge. She has since retired and serves as president emeritus for the state’s university system.

“At this point, women are doing a lot better than they were in my day, but we can do a lot better,” Spikes told the audience. “This association has a good mission and philosophy that will lead by example.”

Eric Paulsen and Sally Ann Roberts, news anchors with WWL-TV’s morning news, were named the association’s Blue Ribbon Honorees. The award recognizes their coverage of the catastrophic events in the wake of the 2005 hurricanes.

Former Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco was awarded the center’s first Lifetime Achievement Award. She was the first female elected Louisiana governor and chairwoman of the state Public Service Commission.

Blanco was absent because of a prior engagement. Her daughter, Karmen Blanco, accepted the award on her behalf.