The Story of Granny D

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A

Fri, 4 Nov 2005 22:29:20 EST

The Story of Granny D/ Granny D in SF/new 'reform school' info

 

 

 

Friends,

 

I thought you might find a little inspiration this fine day in Doris

" Granny D " Haddock's speech yesterday before 800 cheering people in

San Francisco. As many of you have been an important part of her

odyssey, I think you will enjoy this concise retelling. Next she heads

to Portland.

 

Sincerely,

Dennis Burke

 

Ps. I will post this on http://GrannyD.com, where there are other

interesting items, including the start of her " New England Reform School. "

 

 

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Thank you all.

 

I would like to share with you some of the joys of walking. I will

tell you about the early hours of Valentine’s Day, 2002 and the time

leading up to it.

 

I would first like to impress upon you the healthfulness of walking.

Many people manage to exercise a bit each day, and I applaud that.

Many walk a mile or so, and that is quite good for you, at any age.

 

When I was 89, I began a quite aggressive schedule of walking. I got

up to five miles a day, then to ten: Five miles out, and then five

miles back to home. When I was comfortable with that I began doing

something a little different: I didn’t turn around at the half-way

point; I just kept walking. I walked across the United States.

 

It was not easy, as I have suffered from emphysema for many years,

after fifty years of smoking†" though I quit many years ago. It makes

the uphill miles quite difficult, to say the least. I have a rather

bad back and arthritis. The first miles across the continent were the

most difficult, despite my training. But when I was as good as I

thought I was going to get, I flew to California and began.

 

My reason for taking this walk was to talk to as many Americans as

possible about a campaign finance bill that I was hoping would pass

Congress. It was a bipartisan bill, supported by Senators McCain and

Feingold. The point of it was to remove corporate money from federal

elections. I had already talked to everybody I knew in New Hampshire,

and had sent thousands of their signatures off to Washington on

petitions. It was time to branch out a bit.

 

My son was of course concerned. But he is unusual in that he believes

that, when people find their missions in life, we should all support

them in their efforts. So he set out a training schedule for me and

helped me to find people along the way who would take me in and walk

with me. He was, and remains, my guardian angel.

 

Many years ago, in 1960, he saw me off on another journey. My late

husband and I, along with two Eskimos and a preacher and a few others

and a large, white dog, crammed in a Volkswagen minibus for a trip to

the far coasts of Alaska, where a small native fishing village was at

risk of being a test site for a nuclear blasting program. I think my

son took some pride in how his mother and father took up that cause,

came home and worked the halls of Congress and the White House until

the program was stopped, just in the nick of time. He, too, became

friends with the Inuit people who, as a result, became our family

friends. He has been the hero of causes of his own choosing, and I

have watched him with all my admiration.

 

The Mojave Desert was difficult to walk across. My new friends in the

desert followed me with an old van, so that I did not have to carry

all my water. Even so, it was a long way. When I crossed out of it,

and found myself on a bridge over the Colorado River at Parker,

Arizona on my 89th birthday, the United States Marine Band was on that

bridge playing Happy Birthday to me. A TV truck from Good Morning

America and a live microphone from National Public Radio were there to

interview the crazy old lady. The mayor of Parker put me in a parade

and had me talking about campaign finance reform all over town.

 

After that, in the deserts of Arizona, I was hospitalized once for

dehydration, but, after a short rest, I continued through the deserts

of Arizona and New Mexico, where the winds and sandstorms were

sometimes so severe that they sprung the door of the support van and

sent me into a blind stumble. I lost count of the times my old straw

hat went sailing.

 

After New Mexico, there was a thousand miles of Texas, and then

Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio. Almost every day there were

reporters from little newspapers and small town television and radio

stations walking with me and learning all about this important bill in

Congress.

 

With every day, my arthritis seemed improved and my lungs stronger. It

was the exercise, but it was also the elixir of having an important

mission in life and to be doing it.

 

A reporter from the New York Times, Frank Bruni, heard some Members of

Congress talking about how they had better get on the stick with this

reform bill, because, didn’t they know, Granny D was coming.

 

He wondered what all that was about, and came to walk with me. He said

he came to see if I was the real deal or some kind of stunt. He

couldn’t keep up with me, so his story reported that I was the real

deal. After his story, other newspapers and networks began to treat

me a little more seriously, though they were always more interested in

how many shoes I had worn out than anything about the reform bill. I

had to force them to talk about the serious aspects of the issue, and

I got pretty good at it.

 

John McCain wanted me to come off the trail and join him in New

Hampshire when he announced for the Presidency, but I told him I would

keep walking. Ross Perot met with me and said he would pay for

anything I needed, but I only needed water and a little food three

times a day, and that was never lacking.

 

In the South, I made speeches where Martin Luther King, Jr. had made

speeches, and I said we all were fighting for our freedom now, as the

special interests had stolen away our government from us, and thereby

our freedom. More and more people started walking with me and calling

their Congressmen. I met the head of the AARP and told him how

important this bill was. The AARP started sending information to all

their members, and the switchboards in Congress started to glow red.

 

Always in my mind was the dread of the Appalachian Mountains ahead. I

do hate climbing hills. By the time I crossed Ohio into West Virginia

and began the long climb, blizzard conditions were all around me. I

had a support car drive behind me so I could walk between the beams of

the headlights and not lose my way. But it was perhaps the most

difficult thing, physically, I have ever done.

 

At this same time, I did not know if all my labors were going to come

to anything, and I had no idea that I was making any difference

whatsoever. I was chilled to the bone. I was grieving over the

decline of my daughter, who was losing her memory to Alzheimer’s

disease, which had taken my husband a few years earlier. It was a

hard climb.

 

Two college girls were my constant companions in that blizzard, and

their spirits lifted my own. Wherever I went, before or since, I have

figured out a way to have young people along, as it makes all the

difference in the world.

 

The Eastern Continental Divide is near Cumberland, Maryland. It was

my 90th birthday as I walked through the town. The people of

Cumberland, from the mayor to the school children and the musicians of

that beautiful town, accompanied me singing through the streets and to

their old railroad station, where I made a speech and we had some cake.

 

But the road ahead, another 100 miles remaining to Washington, was

three or more feet deep in snow and walking would be impossible. It

had been the worst blizzard in recent memory.

 

Well, that snow was sparkling and beautiful. It laid itself out along

the old tow path of the historic C & O Canal that George Washington had

surveyed. I sent home for my old cross-country skis and said goodbye

to the dear people of Cumberland.

 

There were a few reporters with me, but all but an intrepid woman from

a London paper quickly gave up in the snow. The dear woman trudged

behind as gamely as she could for several days.

 

A day or so out from Washington, the snow turned to walking path along

the furious upper rapids of the Potomac. I followed the river into

Georgetown and then across the bridge to Arlington Cemetery. From

there, the next day, I would walk the final miles through Washington

to the Capitol Building, were I would make a speech on its steps. I

would walk not down the Capitol Mall, but along K Street, Lobbyist

Row, were we could make a ruckus and upset their morning’s work.

 

The morning broke clear and cold. A truck from Good Morning America

and another from the Today Show rolled up to my starting point that

last morning. There were a few of us. Then, up from a subway

entrance, a few more. Some were familiar faces†" people I had met

along the way. People whose doors I had knocked on and asked for a bed

for the night. People who had walked a mile or ten with me. And then,

with the arrival of each subway train, more came up from above--and

then more, until the sidewalks were filled with over 2,300 people with

their signs and banners, hugs and hoorays and handshakes.

 

We indeed marched to the Capitol and raised a ruckus on K Street, with

Jim Hightower at the bullhorn. In the last mile, we were joined by

many Members of Congress who marched with us, and joined us finally on

the Capitol steps for a fine round of speeches.

 

But my dear McCain-Feingold bill was nowhere near passage.

 

In the months ahead, I would walk around the Capitol, sometimes around

the clock in the cold, so that the Senators would have to meet with me

if they did not want to see me dead on their doorstep. I met with over

half. I threatened a few, saying I would walk across their states

against them when they ran for reelection if they did not support the

reform bill. The heavy lifting was of course being done by the good

government lobbyists and by Senator McCain and Feingold. I was just a

citizen making the little difference one person could make.

 

I was in the Senate Gallery when the debate began. I was in the Senate

Gallery when the vote finally came down in favor of the Bill. In the

hall, moments later, I got a bipartisan hug from Senators McCain and

Feingold, who knocked my hat off in the process.

 

But it still had to pass in the House of Representatives, and we were

told that simply could not happen.

 

We kept at it anyway. You may be wondering what the limits might be

for protesting at the Capitol. If, for example, you go into the

Rotunda of the Capitol Building, start reciting from the Declaration

of Independence, and unfurl a banner suggesting that Members of

Congress declare independence from the special interest groups, will

you be arrested and jailed? Yes I was. Twice.

 

But just when the bill seemed doomed, the Enron scandal happened.

Enron had given millions, of course, to Members of Congress, and they

were all scampering around as if cockroaches had just gone up their

pants legs. They needed to redeem themselves. And there was the

reform bill, just sitting there. That is usually how reform bills

pass, you wait for the right moment.

 

So it was the day before Valentine’s Day, 2002. I took a walk

through all the halls of the House of Representative’s office

buildings, leaving little lacy valentines at each office, urging the

Members to not break out hearts†" to finally pass the campaign reforms

that America longed for.

 

We had, out on the sidewalk where they had to pass under them on their

way back and forth from the Capitol Building, large banners that said,

“The Enron Congress: Redeem your sorry selves: pass campaign

finance reform.â€

 

We lobbied them on the sidewalk, though it was bitter cold. The wife

of Representative Christopher Shays came out to visit us, as did

Senator McCain. Someone sent out some hot soup and tea from time to

time. In the early afternoon, someone came up to me and said she was

from the Minority Leader’s office†" Mr. Richard Gephardt. Would I

come up and meet with him, please.

 

I sat in his office and he told me that he thought he had the votes to

pass the bill that night. He gave me too much credit for the whole

thing, and I advised him that I understood very well that I was just a

pin prick on this thing. Well, he replied, we’re all just pin

pricks. I said I was sure he was at least half-right.

 

In the Gallery, well after midnight, I struggled to stay awake. The

moment came. The votes came. The impossible happened. It passed. Mr.

Gephardt, Mr. Shays, Mr. Meehan, who had led the fight, turned up and

waved to me. It was done. So many miles, so many cold days and

nights, so many hot desert miles and gritty winds. It was done.

 

I walked out of the building an hour later with Mrs. Shays and

Representative Shays, and with Representative Meehan and with a few of

my friends. The great plaza between the Capitol and the surrounding

park was pitch dark. We said goodbye and went our own ways, each of us

in our own state of bliss.

 

A staffer for Mr. Meehan had told me that the hardest thing about

getting other Members of Congress to go along with the bill was that

they said people back home just didn’t care. But after my walk

began, the staffers could say, “my, haven’t you heard that a

great-grandmother is walking across the nation for this bill, why, of

course people care!†It was extraordinary that one person, by

caring more, could make up for so many who cared too little. It

remains a fact in this nation, in this wobbly democracy, that each of

us can make a difference with our caring and our determination, if we

are prepared to make some sacrifices and never give up.

 

Did the new law really do any good? Well, it is the snare that Mr.

Tom DeLay wishes were not there, and it has pushed corporate money out

of the game quite a ways, though rich individuals are giving more than

ever. The only real solution is the public funding of campaigns, as

the states of Maine and Arizona have pioneered very successfully.

 

If nothing had come out of my walk, there is yet this: my doctor said

that, at the end of my walk, I was biologically ten years younger than

when I began. So, even if you do not have a cause to walk for, walk

anyway.

 

But you need not walk alone; there are causes enough for our

attention. And, believe me, there are years enough left in all of us

to make a plan, get involved, and make a damn difference. I am here

to tell you that, if I can do it, you can do so much more, and the

world needs you.

 

Will you get in trouble? I hope so. But you will never get in too

much trouble if your cause is just and if the pain and risk are

applied only to yourself, as Gandhi taught us.

 

When I was in court, before a judge who could have sent me away for

quite some time for my protests in the Capitol, here is what he said

as he sentenced me (and my son, and the friends who joined me) to time

already served:

 

" As you know, the strength of our great country lies in its

Constitution and her laws and in her courts. But more fundamentally,

the strength of our great country lies in the resolve of her citizens

to stand up for what is right when the masses are silent. And,

unfortunately, sometimes it becomes the lot of the few, sometimes like

yourselves, to stand up for what's right when the masses are silent,

because not always does the law move so fast and so judiciously as to

always be right. But given the resolve of the citizens of this great

country, in time, however, slowly, the law will catch up eventually.

So it becomes my lot to apply the law as it is at this time. Perhaps

not as it should be but as it is. With every confidence that to the

extent that it is lacking in righteousness, it will reach that point

eventually given the resolve of her citizens to make it right.â€

 

Last week, Senator McCain sent me a letter and said that they could

not have passed the bill without my doing what I did. I think his

attitude to this old New Hampshire woman pretty much assures us that

he is running for President, but I was happy to get the letter.

 

And now it is your turn to follow your own soul, to do what your heart

requires of you.

 

Thank you, and good luck.

 

 

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http://newenglandreformschool.org

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Dublin, NH 03444

USA