October 1, 2006
1933-2006
A woman must have money and a room of her own...Be truthful...and the result is bound to be amazingly interesting. Comedy is bound to be enriched. New facts are bound to be discovered.
--Virginia Woolf
The only standard that truly matters is the one you set for yourself. And you cannot count on Prince Charming to make you feel better about yourself and take care of you, like some funhouse mirror that reflects you at twice your real size. Because Prince Charming may be driving a Honda and telling you that you have no equal . . . but that won't do you much good when you've got kids and a mortgage. . . and he has a beer gut and a wandering eye.
--Ann Richards
In the prologue to her 2003 book, “I’m Not Slowing Down—Winning my Battle with Osteoporosis,” Ann Richards tells the story of how, when she had just won a bruising political battle to become the Governor of Texas and was in fact still moving into her offices and the Governor’s mansion, she got word that Queen Elizabeth was on her way to Austin. After much high anxiety over insuring that she made no protocol faux pas, she went running down the steps of the Texas Capitol on her way to meet the Queen at the airport. In her head she heard her mother’s voice saying what she had no doubt heard many times before as she was growing up and a phrase many a mother has used to bring an over zealous child back down to earth, “Where do you think you’re going, to see the Queen of England?” But this time she thought to herself, “Yes, Mama, I am.”
Richards, who died of cancer at 73 on September 13, was as proud of her mother as her mother was of her. And her mother was an inspiration to her the way Richards has become for every woman I know who knows anything about her. She was an only child but she raised four children of her own and she said in her autobiography, “Straight from the Heart,” that she learned more about management from running a household than from any other occupation. At that writing, around 1990, she had already proven her management skills by saving the state of Texas more money (more than 1.7 billion dollars) through good fiscal practices than all the previous state treasurers in the history of Texas combined.
Richards was a feminist of the old school variety. One who believed that you could have your cake and eat it, too. You could have a career and raise a family. She paid a high price for that vision, though: a very public divorce and a battle with alcoholism that her political enemies were quick to exploit long after she had sought help and been on the wagon for years.
Richards was legendary in Texas long before she became governor and long before she stepped up to the podium at the 1988 Democratic National Convention to deliver one of the most electrifying speeches in American history--a performance that made her an instant national celebrity. One of her most oft quoted lines from that speech (referring to the Republican nominee that year, George Bush, the elder, his blue blood and his stumbling malapropisms) was, “ Poor George. He can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”
Bush won the election against Michael Dukakis anyway but Richards went on to become one of Texas’ most beloved governors. She was defeated in her bid for a second term by George Bush, the younger, who by vindicating the slight against his father, got a practice run for his later presidential remark about Saddam Hussein, “He tried to kill my daddy.”
Some say, though, that her defeat was the direct result of having stood up against the NRA and the gun lobby in its efforts to pass concealed handgun legislation--legislation which sailed through easily after Bush became governor. But when the battle was raging and the gun lobby was accusing her of trying to prevent women from defending themselves, she disarmed them not with a gun but with her veto power and her trademark rapier wit. "Now I'm not a sexist." she said. "But if you put a gun in the bottom of a woman's purse, she wouldn't be able to find it if she needed it!" She made fun of politicians (including herself) and she made politics in Texas fun and woman friendly.
When asked what she might have done differently had she known she would only be a one term governor, she responded that she “would probably have raised a lot more hell.” Though she was much loved, she had enemies on the left as well as the right. Anti-death penalty advocates felt she did far too little far too late for the over 50 death-row inmates who were executed on her watch. To this day, comparisons with Bush’s over 150 executions do not placate them. And I remember working for Greenpeace one summer in Austin where all the conspiratorial buzz was that Richards was allegedly profiting personally from a shady, mafia brokered deal to ship toxic waste products from New York to West Texas.
Richards was for the most part a middle of the road Democrat in a good old boy state that has been careening toward the outer reaches of the Republican right wing for years. She was a Clinton style Democrat who believed in pragmatic political compromise while keeping her eye always on the prize. For her the prize was more opportunities for women and minorities and reforms that helped the wretched of her state, including those suffering from substance abuse and overcrowding in Texas Prisons.
After her defeat, she went through a brief hiatus from public life during which time she could be seen walking casually and unescorted about the streets of Austin. I ran into her twice in local movie theaters, sitting next to her once whereupon she unceremoniously offered my girlfriend and me some of her popcorn. Hearing her speak at a workshop for women managers, my oldest daughter, a Texas state employee at the time, fell in love with Richards' folksy, inspirational message of empowerment through honesty, integrity and hard work.
It wasn’t long before Richards was back up and running, moving to New York to become a public policy consultant and a much in demand public speaker. “I’m not going to spend the rest of my life sitting on the front porch waiting for my children to come see me,” she explained. And she didn’t. At that 1988 Democratic National Convention she had said with the conviction of the old fashioned southern steel magnolia that she was, that women could do any job in politics that a man could do. “After all,” she said, “Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.”
Ann Richards wore high hair and high heels, though rarely moving backwards, I venture. Like the Queen of England, she believed in the importance of ceremony and grace as ways of signifying authority and family values. But it is said that when she was Governor, she told the many women on her staff that if their high heels were hurting their feet, not to hesitate to take their shoes off and go barefooted if that was what it took to get the job done. She, herself, often showed them how.
Hillary Clinton has said that she has tried at times to “channel” Eleanor Roosevelt. I believe Ann Richards actually succeeded in channeling Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway and a lot of others. She said she didn’t want her tombstone to read, “She kept a really clean house.” But I’m not so sure that wouldn’t be just the right metaphor for a life well lived.
In dreams, Freud said, the house is the body. For me it is the soul. Ann Richards, like Virginia Woolf, believed a woman should have a room of her own. And she had one. And like Hemingway she believed in clean, well lighted places. She had those, too. She lived a clean, well lighted life.
I have two daughters, born and raised in the good old boy state of Texas (as if any other kind of state existed). One lives in New York now and is getting married this very month. The other is launching a vegan newsletter in the very heart of cattle country. Life goes on. Texas, and even New York, is a little less good old boy than it was before Ann Richards came along. When my daughters are planning their futures, or cleaning their houses, or just feeling low, they could do a lot worse than to channel Ann Richards for a little advice. Rest in Peace, Ann. And thanks for the popcorn... and the memories.
--Larry L. Dill
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copyright 2006 by Larry L. Dill