Feisty Women

My mom’s trusty typewriter got a lot of use - albeit a tad dusty now.

I come from a long line of feisty women. My mom was known for her persistence in writing opinion pieces to the Mansfield News Journal in the 1960s and 70s. When she felt strongly about an issue - and there were many - out came her old Royal typewriter, the onion skin paper, and the carbon paper, as she always kept a copy. 

Her mother was feisty in a different manner. She came to live with us when my mother gave up rescuing her from repeated falls in her hometown a hundred miles away from us. Grandma just wouldn’t give up gardening her large back lot despite those falls. 

And then she persisted in getting on ladders to wash light fixtures in our house, driving Mom to distraction and ultimately, Grandma Blue ended up in the Mansfield Memorial Home where she could be watched full time. Mom was feistier than Grandma.

Turns out my birth mother was feisty as well. She ran away from home to give birth to me rather than marry as her only option in the mid-1950s. Apparently, she’d watched her older sisters marry young and was determined not to remain in the Appalachian coal mining town of her childhood. 

That means both nature and nurture have provided a strong blueprint of action for me.

That feistiness can cause trouble. 

I worked for our Republican congressman in the late 1970s, answering phones and greeting guests who came to his D.C. office. John Ashbrook represented the right wing of the times, running against Richard Nixon in the 1972 Presidential primaries because Nixon wasn’t conservative enough.  

While there, Phyllis Schlafly frequently visited, using the couch across from my desk between meetings where she tested out her advocacy messaging. During one visit, she was promoting the idea that a woman’s role was best served as a wife and mother at home in support of her husband’s ambitions. That women should not aspire to be in the workplace at all.

I just couldn’t help it. 

“Mrs. Schlafly?” I said. 

“Yes, dear,” she politely responded. 

“Aren’t you a wife and mother, m’am?” 

“Why yes, I am,” she smiled. 
“Then why are you out here in D.C. working rather than at home with your children taking care of your household?” 

The smile left her face and I didn’t last long in Ashbrook’s office. 

I did learn a lot, though. I watched smart grown men leave Congressman Ashbrook’s  inner chambers quaking at his screaming and railing at whatever mistake he had found in their reasoning, And that taught me that feisty is one thing. Aggressive bullying behavior is something else. 

And it needs to be called out and condemned always. It’s how this country will ensure that we will retain the core freedom to have all voices heard in public. Even Phyllis Schlafly’s.