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City employee group Willow honors Joan Thompson, Debbie Martin and Clara Luper legacy at Women’s History Month kickoff
Summary
At a Willow kickoff event marking Women’s History Month, city employees honored local leaders Joan Thompson and Debbie Martin, and Reverend Dr. Lee E. Cooper Jr. highlighted the Clara Luper sit-in memorial and the role of everyday leadership.
Bridget Shinn, a lieutenant with the police department and the incoming chair of Willow, opened the group’s 2026 Women’s History Month kickoff, describing Willow as “a resource group committed to supporting, developing, and connecting women and allies to achieve both career and personal success.”
The event honored two long-serving local officials: Joan Thompson, credited with leading the 1994 modernization of the city’s solid waste operations that introduced 90-gallon automated carts, one-person collection trucks, a scheduled bulk-waste program and curbside recycling, and Debbie Martin, recognized for more than five decades of city service including work alongside multiple mayors, city managers and council members and leadership during the 1995 bombing response.
A presenter who spoke on behalf of the develop committee recounted Thompson’s career in sanitation beginning in 1964 and said the transformation she led helped the city reach an estimated 32,000,000 pounds of recycling annually. Toni Mitchell, chair of the develop committee, invited attendees to sign in via a posted QR code and join a short walk to view the newly installed Clara Luper sit-in memorial following the program.
The program’s central conversation was a fireside chat with Reverend Dr. Lee E. Cooper Jr., senior pastor of Prospect Church and a former city council appointee. Cooper framed leadership as a practice rooted in influence, saying, “Leadership is simply influence,” and he traced how Clara Luper’s work as a teacher and organizer led young people to stage the 1958 Katz Drug Store lunch-counter sit-ins that helped spark later sit-in movements nationally.
Cooper described the Clara Luper memorial as a life-size bronze recreation of the Katz Drug Store lunch-counter sit-in, with figures modeled on the original 13 NAACP Youth Council students (roughly ages 7–17 at the time). He said the project involved national partners: an early consultant was sculptor Ed Dwight of Denver, who recommended Studio ICE in Brooklyn to fabricate the figures; the project team worked with local models and shipped a four-ton counter to a foundry in Berkeley, California for casting before installing the pieces in the downtown plaza.
Organizers said plaques that explain the memorial’s history are not yet installed; attendees were invited to join a brief, five-minute walk to the plaza at the conclusion of the program. Event leaders also thanked partner organizations including the local NFBPA chapter, the Office of Culture and Engagement and HR for support.
The Willow kickoff combined recognition of long-serving city employees, a local history lesson on civil-rights-era organizing, and a practical invitation for staff to connect with the new public memorial honoring Clara Luper.
