Tish Sommers

Letitia Gale Innes was born in Cambria, California and raised in San Francisco, the daughter of Murray Innes and Katherine Dorsch Innes. She studied dance as a young woman, including three years in Germany in the 1930s. She attended the University of California, Los Angeles. == Career and activism ==

During World War II, Innes worked in the parks department in Los Angeles. and chaired the program for a "thanksgiving harvest festival" in the city. In the 1950s, Sommers and her second husband worked for social and civil rights causes in the South. which offered a network of job training and counseling centers for career housewives who went through divorce or the death of a husband. Sommers chaired the National Organization for Women's task force on older women in the 1970s. She was also a NOW board member and led the Jobs for Older Women Action Project. She won the Western Gerontological Society Award in 1979, and the Unitarian Universalist Women's Federation's Ministry to Women Award in 1981. In 1982, already facing a cancer diagnosis, she was keynote speaker at a conference on employment at Sonoma State University. In 1983, she testified before a Congressional hearing on Medicare and aging. In 1984, she once again spoke before a Congressional committee on aging and healthcare. == Publications ==

• The not-so-helpless female: How to change the world even if you never thought you could; A step-by-step guide to social action (1973) • "Freelance Agitator Argues for Hiring Changes: Look Out Job Market!" (1978) • "If We Could Write the Script..." (1980) • "If I Had a Billion..." (1981) • "Caregiving: A Woman's Issue" (1985) • "Three Caregivers Tell Their Stories: Seriously Near the Breaking Point" (1985) • ''Women Take Care: The Consequences of Caregiving in Today's Society'' (1987, with Laurie Shields) == Personal life and legacy ==

Innes married Sidney Arnold Burke in 1938; they later divorced. She married fellow activist Joseph Sommers in 1949; they adopted a son, and divorced in 1972. Sommers died from cancer in 1985 at the age of 71, in Oakland. Some of her papers are held in the San Diego State University Libraries. In 1991, a biography of her was published, titled ''Tish Sommers, Activist: and the Founding of the Older Women's League''. == References ==