CAPE WOMAN ATTENDS NATIONAL EAGLE FORUM

Cape Girardeau resident Julia A. Kridelbaugh returned Tuesday from St. Louis, where she attended the 20th annual Eagle Forum Leadership Conference.

The conference was held Sept. 27-29 at the St. Louis Airport Marriott Hotel. Friday night's speaker was national radio talk show host and Cape Girardeau native Rush Limbaugh.

More than 400 conservative, pro-family leaders from all 50 states attended the conference, which included sessions on how best to participate in the process of self-government and policy-making at every level. A variety of speakers on education, entertainment, the economy, legislation in Congress, and pro-life issues led the sessions.

Eagle Forum has been involved in conservative, pro-family issues since 1972 and has more than 80,000 members nationwide. Its current priority projects are tax reduction, parents' rights in public schools, and maintaining the anti-abortion plank in the Republican Platform in 1992.

Eagle Forum also is noted for challenging the feminist agenda. In her banquet address at the conference, Eagle Forum founder and president Phyllis Schlafly said, "We stand ready to present the common-sense and pro-family side of all the issues raised by the radical feminists, including their current goals of putting women in military combat, federally mandated parental leave, setting up a federal baby-sitting bureaucracy, and establishing quotas for executive-level women by crying about a `glass ceiling' which only they can see."

Kridelbaugh said that the Saturday night banquet featured Eagle Forum's Seventh Annual Fulltime Homemaker Awards. This year's recipient was Sally Atwater, widow of Lee Atwater, former chairman of the Republican National Committee. In Missouri, Joanne S. Bundy of Ballwin received the award.