A Woman with a Cause: Meet The Sixteen-Year-Old Anthony Museum Tour Guide
Guest blog by Julia Smith
Editor’s Note: Julia Smith is a recent Nazareth College graduate, and volunteered at the Anthony Museum as a receptionist in the summer of 2018. Her mother, Sue Smith, was one of the Anthony Museum’s beloved docents. This article was originally written as coursework for Julia’s class “Feature Writing.”
At sixteen, you would expect Lola DeAscentiis to be learning TikTok dances in her friend’s basement or haphazardly attempting to hydro dip her sneakers on the driveway. Instead, DeAscentiis commits her time to being one of the youngest tour guides at the National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House in downtown Rochester, NY.
“I’ve always had a passion for women’s history,” said DeAcentiis of becoming a docent. “Being right in Rochester, why wouldn’t I take that opportunity?”
A sophomore at Our Lady of Mercy High School, DeAscentiis began working at the Anthony Museum when she was only in eighth grade. However, because of her age (she was thirteen at the time), she was not allowed to give tours.
Instead, DeAscentiis jumped into working on community outreach initiatives such as the Anthony Museum’s Girl Scouts Program, which aims to connect social justice causes of today to Anthony’s legacy and life’s work. When DeAscentiis began high school last year, she embarked on a rigorous training schedule to finally become a docent at the Anthony Museum.
“I don’t want to say it came naturally since it was a lot of work, but getting to learn from the other docents and doing some reading on my own was something I really enjoyed doing,”she said. On the final tour before she received her certification, she caught the eye of playwright Mark Mobley, who incorporated her story into The Rochester Philharmonic’s bicentennial celebration of Anthony’s work, Women’s Suffrage: Past + Present. Her story was one of a select few featured among the likes of Mayor Lovely A. Warren; Susan B. Anthony Center Director, Dr. Catherine Cerulli; and Tamara Leigh, Director of Operations and Public Relations for the Out Alliance.
But Mobley isn’t the only one who recognized DeAscentiis’ talent.
“I have never in my fifteen years as an educator taught a student like Lola,” said Sarah DeMulder, DeAscentiis’ eighth grade English teacher and mentor. DeMulder describes DeAscentiis the way you would try to explain a once in a lifetime cosmic event, pausing in an attempt to describe a unique occurrence just right.
“We were reading Edgar Allen Poe and we did a few of his prose pieces and a handful of poems,” said DeMulder. “Lola’s response to that was to go out and get an entire anthology of Poe’s work and dig through it. She’s just constantly wanting more.”
When faculty members at Mercy decided to plan a centennial celebration for the ratification of the 19th Amendment, DeAscentiis was immediately added to the committee.
“I felt like it was necessary to bring Lola on board,” said DeMulder. “Lola’s depth of knowledge on the subject matter supersedes any of our knowledge. She doesn’t just know about it. She lives it and believes in it.”
Linda Lopata, Director of Interpretation & Visitor Services at the Anthony Museum, agrees.
“She’s very unusual for her age,” Lopata said. “She’s thinking about things deeply but she’s also incredibly engaging.”
“When people are waiting for their tour and then she comes out, you can see in their face they’re kind of like ‘what is this?’” said Lopata. “But by the end, they’re like ‘she was phenomenal.’ And that’s not because she’s fifteen— it’s because she’s really, really good.”
Even at her young age, DeAscentiis is already inspiring young women and girls through her work at the Anthony Museum.
“Having [tours with] children is really fun,” DeAscentiis said of giving tours to little kids. “They take what they’ve learned in school and they’re actually so excited…I just love their energy.”
DeMulder’s two elementary school aged daughters both look up to Lola as a role model. “I asked my now eight-year-old what she would like to do to celebrate her eighth birthday and she wanted to go back to the Anthony Museum,” said DeMulder.
“Her email starts with ‘futureprez,’” Lopata said. “I don’t doubt it.”
In her time away from the Anthony Museum, DeAscentiis tries to keep herself busy. She’s currently on the editorial board of her school’s newspaper, participates in diversity club, and even started a TikTok account called HERstory focused on educating the public about women who were often overlooked or under-appreciated in history.
“It’s been a really great way to connect and reach out to people,” DeAscentiis says of the account, which has accumulated over three thousand likes on the platform.
Even though the Susan B. Anthony House is more than ten times older than she is, DeAscentiis finds Anthony’s life of service more powerful and relevant than ever.
“My favorite part of the tour to give is probably the very last room: her bedroom,” said DeAscentiis. “At that point people definitely start to tear up a little bit at the end of her story. That just means a lot to me because her story really was that moving and if I’m able to convey that in the hour I have with those people, it makes me feel pretty accomplished.”
“If I’m able to inspire people through her story, I think that’s a really great start at carrying on her legacy.”
Don’t miss the new documentary, “Women and the Vote,” which premiers tonight at 9 p.m. on WXXI-TV. This film takes viewers to five cemeteries across New York state on Election Day 2020, where voters reflect on the sacrifice of suffragists who fought for women’s rights and weaves in historical photographs and reminders of the suffragist legacy.
Dr. Rebecca Hall is a scholar, activist and educator, who writes and speaks on the history of race, gender, law and resistance, as well as on climate justice and intersectional feminist theory.
Wake went viral when it started as a Kickstarter campaign, earning coverage in Hyperallergic and Bustle. Dr. Hall has spoken about her work and Wake to eager audiences at the National Antiracism Teach In, the Schomburg Center’s Black Comic Book Festival and at Black Gotham’s “Nerdy Thursdays” at the New York Historical Society. Wake was selected as Steph Curry’s June Literati Book Club Pick. An Indie Bestseller, Wake has also received glowing reviews from The New York Times, NPR, and The Guardian, calling the graphic novel “stunning,” “powerful,” and “a must-read.”
