The Women Behind Us

The party game was not meant to make me feel stupid or show my ignorance, but so it happened. Dave and I were attending a large gathering in the late ‘90’s for a friend who was moving. The goal of the game - in which guests had a card with a celebrity’s name pinned to their backs – was to spark conversation. While sipping drinks and dipping into passed hors d’oeuvres, we’d ask questions about “our” person in trying to guess his or her identity. 

I’d ascertained that my person was a woman, a famous woman, someone connected with the news. Someone older than me. Someone who lived in the U.S. Someone who lived in D.C. Someone connected with The Post. 

“The Post?” I said. “Um… The Connecticut Post?” Brilliant guess given the previous D.C. hint. I hope I didn’t look as vacant as I felt. 

“No. The Washington Post…?” Whomever was trying to guide me was kind but clearly incredulous that even with that hand-it-to-me hint, I had no idea who was pinned to my back. With a questioning tone as to my extraordinary obliviousness and “Duh” left unsaid but implied, the clue-giver told me the name. 

“Katherine Graham…?” 

Sigh. The name was no help. I had no idea who she was. 

That was long ago, and having just finished Katherine Graham’s autobiography, Personal History, I know her better, and I grieve in imagining what she’d think about today’s threats to the free press and Jeff Bezos’s take-over of her cherished family newspaper. 

Hers is quite a story. A woman from an affluent, activist, highly-connected family who inherited what was a local, but successful, newspaper when her husband – the president and CEO – shot himself in the room next to where she was napping. Beyond the unimaginable cruelty of that event, that scene, was the reality of the “welcome” she received in 1963, when she stepped into a leadership role previously held only by men. 

But for secretaries, she was the lone woman at every board meeting, at every business lunch, at every conference. I don’t think the term “imposter syndrome” had been coined yet, but that’s how she felt. She was shy by nature, cowed by her powerful mother, and accepting of the subordinate role society had decreed for women. No matter how much she learned or accomplished as CEO, when things went wrong, she felt it was her fault, her inadequacy. But for her father and husband, she would never have had this role; she didn’t earn it herself, after all; such was her thinking.  And the men around her, but for a few, reinforced that. 

Nonetheless, she was publisher and president of The Post from 1963-1991, through the  assassinations of JFK, his brother, Bobby, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. Through the Civil Rights and Women’s Liberation movements. Through the escalation of the Viet Nam war, release of the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, and Nixon’s downfall. Since my newly-forged bond with Ms. Graham, Dave and I have re-watched “The Post,” “All the President’s Men,” and “Watergate,” diving deep into those tumultuous times, and suffusing our spirits with stories of people who had the courage to do the right thing.

Beyond my membership in Katherine Graham’s fan club, I have also been captivated by Suffs, a show Dave, Casey, and I saw at the Bushnell in Hartford, now streaming on PBS. Ms. Graham was not the only void in my knowledge of women warriors. I was vaguely aware of suffragists Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, Carrie Nation, Ida B. Wells, and Susan B. Anthony, but Inez Milholland Boissevain and Doris Stevens? No. I know and exalt them now, for Shaina Taub, playwright and actor, wrote her musical, Suffs, after reading Jailed for Freedom by suffragist Doris Stevens. I have re-watched the show and endlessly re-played the songs since I learned of it.

Suffragist Inez Milholland Boissevain leading the 1913 Suffragist Parade in Washington, D.C. 

Where in our textbooks were the suffragists struggles and triumph enumerated? I went to all-girls schools from K-12^thgrade; surely women’s history would have been emphasized there? 

Maybe it was. Maybe I just didn’t have the sense to be interested. Until recently, I took my rights for granted, and the limitations women had faced seemed a battle long over and settled. Not so long over, however, for had I married Dave a year earlier, I would have needed his permission and presence to get my own credit card. I churn to imagine it. How did my strong-willed mother tolerate that? Like Katherine Graham, for a time, she accepted the way things were.

Today’s women can thank Emily Card, Bella Abzug, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephanie Lipscomb, Jeanne Hubbard, Gloria Steinem, and Ellen Sudow – many whose names are largely forgotten – for their  work in the passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act in 1974. 

I was complacent for so long. Fortunate in my parents and the life I was born to. Fortunate in my times, and beholden to the women who fought for the rights I enjoy. The suffragists, civil rights activists, and feminists of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s faced the same arguments broadcast today by those who feel threatened: that granting rights to others diminishes one’s own. 

For me, worry has been a constant since 2015. Clearly, push-back follows progress. As my poster collection expands – No Kings! Melt ICE! Support the Vets! Black Lives Matter! My Body, My Choice! – I wonder what Katherine Graham would make of Donald Trump. She’d find him familiar – the rants, threats to the press, surveillance, and enemies list – but she’d be stunned that we let it happen again. 

 

 

    

Al Jolson Memories

My first gift to Dave, my then-college boyfriend, was an Al Jolson record. Most people under the age of 50 probably haven’t heard of the man, and even then, it was a surprising choice for a 19-year-old. Many decades later, our musical choices tend toward Crosby, Stills, and Nash; Bonnie Raitt; James Taylor, and the Beatles, but this evening, Mr. Jolson is providing our evening serenade. 

Dave is working in the dining room while I’m in the kitchen stirring chopped cabbage into sauteed onions. A pot of water is boiling for the Pennsylvania Dutch medium-wide noodles I’ll add to the dish at the end. Musically, Al has swung into April Showers, “It isn’t raining rain you know, it’s raining violets…” and I smile, sway and stir, imagining Mom, Dad, and Uncle Ding swaying and singing along with me.

At college during the 70’s, the rebellions of the 60’s still reverberated in our ideals, clothing, music, and distance from those of our parents. Or so we thought, but judging by the gift of that Jolson album, the songs of their youth had filtered in and were woven into our childhood soundtracks. Now, Al sings on, and as the chorus rolls around again, Dave and I join in spontaneously, “it isn’t raining rain you know….”

In truth, it doesn’t feel like violets these days, and I’m not talking weather. My sisters recently told me that ICE has leased a facility less than two miles from their homes. I’m scared for them and ready to protest when they call. Environmental regulations and voting rights are being undercut, and the U.S. is at war with Iran. From this perspective, my parents’ era seems safe and enviable, but that’s a “good old days” illusion I have to shake. They grew up during World War II, and Dave’s dad and uncles fought in Italy, Africa, and the Pacific. Many of these same songs played in the background while terrified families awaited word of their sons overseas.  

The Mills Brothers follow Jolson and croon their flawless four-part harmony. I’m amazed when, without thinking, I chime in, the words spooling from who knows what deep corner of memory. 

I call in to Dave, “Where’d you find these songs?”

“Sonos.”

“Yeah, but what did you search for?”

“Al Jolson.” Ah. Al. And on cue, Jolson bursts in with “Me and My Gal.” Dave belts out the words in his best – pretty good – Jolson impression. Oh, my heart is full! I am smiling and teary at once, about the memories and the gift of the present. 

After a big orchestral flourish, Sonos moves on to “Anything Goes” and scandalous glimpses of ankles and stockings. I dance in place while pouring a can of Fresh Catch beer into the cabbage and onion mixture. Then, talk about random mess-with-your-head moments, the next Sonos selection is Jimmy Durante singing “I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places…” which does me in. Dave has requested that the song be played at his funeral, and I always say, “OMG, Dave. You’re killing me. Everyone will cry.” He has backed off and said, “You don’t have to...” 

But I will. I know I will. And the song will be saying exactly what I feel. Maybe I’ll be seeing the blessing of right now: the dining room table scattered with a jumble of papers, a phone, cans of cranberry lime seltzer, and Dave tapping at his computer keyboard.