Second of 10 profiles of The Enquirer's 1996 Women of the Year.
BY KRISTA RAMSEY
Enquirer contributor
On a recent Saturday morning, more than 100 women crowd into a meeting room at the annual Speaking of Women's Health conference for a session called ''The Healing Power of Humor.'' They enter quietly, sit primly and smile tentatively at each other.
Enter the presenter, Elaine Boynton.
Within minutes, Dr. Boynton, a health educator and consultant, has them grinning. Then they are nodding, chuckling, calling out answers to her questions, then wiping their eyes from laughing so hard.
The transformation is amazing, especially considering the topics Dr. Boynton covers: radiation, depression, weight gain, hair loss, menopause, cancer.
Her diagnosis: Life can play pretty rough with you.
Then she gives them her prescription: Face up to it with good humor and courage.
''Studies have shown that children laugh 400 times a day, and adults laugh 15 times a day,'' she says. ''I think that's sad. When did we stop getting up in the morning and saying 'Tah-DAH!?' ''
According to friends, family and fellow volunteers, Elaine Boynton never has stopped. For her enthusiasm, inspiration and dedication to health and women's issues, they nominated her for 1996 Enquirer Woman of the Year.
Some suggested the title should be plural - her achievements look as though they belong to a team of women. Adjunct professor of health education at New York University and the University of Cincinnati. Manager of corporate health promotions at Bethesda Health Care Inc. Director of the Northern Kentucky District Health Department. President and founder of Corporate Health Consultants.
Big titles. And when Elaine Boynton stepped into them, every one got bigger.
The daughter of a dedicated Lancaster County, Pa., physician, she dove into the work with energy and wit, determined that health could be as compelling as illness, that health education could empower, and that - most of the time - the whole thing could be fun.
In 1981, she inaugurated Wellness Week on Fountain Square by tossing a 2,000-pound salad.
As an adjunct professor, she started the University of Cincinnati's first courses on human sexuality and contemporary issues for women at University College. Enrollment skyrocketed.
In 1985 - when the topic was highly controversial - she started an AIDS task force for the Northern Kentucky health department.
''People raised their eyebrows,'' she admits, ''but I just thought it was a huge public health issue. If we let AIDS get out of hand, we will all be affected, if not infected.''
Elaine Boynton, whose charm makes any topic acceptable, has that way of punching a point home.
''Again and again, she has been willing to take on the most difficult subjects - sex, drug addictions, the medical community's prevailing view, AIDS and cancer - and address the issues with intellectual depth, plus a level of openness, honesty and courage seldom seen,'' writes Margaret Wyant, president of Grandin Properties, in nominating Dr. Boynton. ''The 'Wellness Lady' has repeatedly demonstrated the guts to bring one taboo issue after another into the open ...''
But long ago, Dr. Boynton learned that personal commitment counts as much as training and outspokenness. She has never forgotten going on house calls with her physician father. ''He would spend a lot of time with his patients, a lot of time listening,'' she says. ''I knew my father often took care of patients who couldn't pay.''
And she is grateful for her year abroad as a high-school exchange student, dropped into the home of a loving German woman ''who taught me to live life with such joy and such love that I was transformed,'' she says.
In turn, she set about transforming her own piece of the world. What she accomplished as a professional health educator, she matched as a wife, mother, friend and volunteer.
As a YWCA board member, she raised contributions to a new high, soliciting more than $250,000 for women's education, housing, health care and job training.
On the board of AIDS Volunteers of Cincinnati, she took five seconds to agree to chair the gala Night Against AIDS - then turned it into a $100,000 benefit.
Letters nominating Dr. Boynton for Woman of the Year are full of awe at her professional accomplishments. They're full of delight over her personal zest for life - girls' night out parties for friends, all-out family holiday celebrations.
And they are full of admiration for her courage in facing her own health issue. For three years, she has battled breast cancer.
She attacks it with optimism and education, promising to be ''the poster child for the cure.'' She uses it as a chance to educate other women on early detection, and to help found the YWCA Breast Health Network, which will provide information on detection and treatment to poor and medically underserved women.
Her quest has not been for survival. It has been for triumph.
And no matter their own personal issues - depression, fatigue, self-doubt, disease - she makes the women at this year's Speaking of Women's Health conference feel they can triumph as well.
''It's not what happens to us that hurts us, but our response to what happens,'' she tells her audience. ''Trials and tribulations are part of life. Misery is optional.''
The Enquirer's Women of the Year will be honored noon March 12 at a luncheon at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, Fifth and Elm streets, downtown. Tickets, $15, must be purchased in advance; call 768-8104, 9 a.m.-noon and 1-4:30 p.m. through Monday. Tickets also may be purchased in person during these hours on the 20th floor of The Enquirer building, Third and Elm streets.
JANET ACH March 3, 1997
WOMEN OF THE YEAR ANNOUNCED March 2, 1997
