Wilma Louise Victor, a Choctaw Indian and the Bureau of Indian Affairs' top-ranking woman educator, has been selected as one of the six women in Government to receive the coveted 1967 Federal Woman's Award.
A native of Idabel, Oklahoma, Miss Victor is Superintendent of Intermountain School in Brigham City, Utah, which is a home away from home for 2,100 Navajo youngsters from Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
She was selected for her “exceptional creative and executive ability in the administration of a unique and complex school program for disadvantaged Indian youth".
Miss Victor is the second Bureau of Indian Affairs careerist and the third Interior Department woman to receive the Federal Woman's Award, which was instituted seven years ago. In 1964 the honor went to Selene Gifford, now retired from her post as BIA's Assistant Commissioner for Community Services. Mrs. Ruth G. Van Cleve, Director of Interior's Office of Territories, was one of the recipients in 1966.
The panel of judges for the 1967 awards were: Robert Manning, editor of the Atlantic Monthly, Betsy Talbot Blackwell, editor of Mademoiselle, Kenneth Crawford, Newsweek columnist, Margaret Mary Kearney, WCAU-TV educational director, and C. Easton Rothwell, president of Mills College.
Miss Victor is a member of the Governor's Commission on Indian Affairs for the State of Utah, the Utah State Conference on Social Welfare, and the Council for Exceptional Children.
Her service with the Bureau of Indian Affairs began in 1941 at the Shiprock, N.M. Federal school on the Navajo Reservation. She enlisted in the Women's Army Corps in 1943 and was discharged in 1946 as First Lieutenant. She has been affiliated with the Intermountain School during most of the past l5 years, since it was opened in 1950 on the site of the old Bushnell General Hospital. As supervisor of academic programs, she developed a special program for Navajo youngsters who came to Intermountain in their sub-teens with little or no formal schooling.
When the Bureau launched another innovative education program five years ago -- the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, N. M. -- Miss Victor was appointed principal. She was recalled to Intermountain in 1964 when the need developed there for an expanded four-year high school program of academics and vocational training.
The Federal Woman’s Award winners were announced today by Mrs. Katie Louchheim, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Woman's Award and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State.
Other recipients of the Award are Miss Elizabeth Ann Brown, Director of the Office of United Nations Political Affairs, Department of State; Dr. Barbara Moulton, a medical officer, Bureau of Deceptive Practices, Federal Trade Commission; Mrs. Ann Mason Roberts, Deputy Regional Administrator (New York), Department of Housing and Urban Development; Dr. Kathryn Grove Shipp, Organize Research Chemist, U. S. Naval Ordnance Laboratory, Department of the Navy and Dr. Marjorie J. Williams, Director of Pathology and Allied Sciences Service, Department of Medicine and Surgery, Veterans Administration.
