Blog Archive » 2006 » September

My last blog about women in television news was, in part, a reflection on the ways in which some women must assume facades and artifice and superficial images in order to reach what passes for success in the popular culture.

Today's reflection is about a Real Woman, a genuine heroine, someone whose legacy will live for generations in the lives of children who have called her Godmother. She wears her own shoes, too — I have seen them, and they are the sturdy shoes of a woman who has done the hardest kind of work from her youth to her elder years. Even well into her eighth decade, she could run circles around those carefully constructed television personas with their five-inch spikes.

Irene Hobson is a living legend for many young people in her neighborhood today. She is also the legendary "Miss Irene" who worked here at Trinity for 55 years, from 1945 to her retirement in the Year 2000. Through my student days and on into my professional life at Trinity, Ms. Hobson's steady, cheerful and wise presence each day was one of Trinity's great charms.

But it took a member of our new first year class, Ms. Ashley Judd, to teach me about the great power of Miss Irene's presence in the lives of other young women. Ms. Judd wrote one of the most moving admissions essays I have ever read. She wrote about her Godmother: "There are many people who have influenced me…but none of them come close to being like my Godmother, Irene Elizabeth Hobson. She is truly an inspiration to many others and me…My godmother has been through a lot of trials and tribulations in her life. Even still, she bounces back with her head held high and ready to accept her next endeavor."

Ashley describes Irene's young life: "Being born December 18, 1919 was a struggle within itself. A struggle to survive as an African American woman in such a segregated and racist time. In addition to the day-to-day struggles, she had to deal with the death of her mother at the young age of seventeen. By losing her mother, she had no choice but to drop out of school and get a job to support herself."

Ms. Judd goes on to relate the story of Ms. Hobson's work life, first with a doctor's family, then at Trinity starting in 1945 at the age of 26. Irene retired in 2000 at the age of 80. While at Trinity, "Ms. Hobson became very fond of the nuns and they of her," writes Ashley. "I have learned that just as she is my mentor, the nuns were her mentors and she refers to many lessons learned from them…." Ashley writes that one of Irene's most joyful moments was receiving her long-delayed high school diploma in 1999 at a special ceremony at Archbishop Carroll High School.

The real meaning of Irene in Ashley's life comes through in these words: "Ms. Hobson has never has any children of her own, but she has certainly been a village mother. She has been a godmother to many children…helping them to have a better, stronger and wiser life. Even at her age, she is still assisting the younger generation…"

The best compliment that Ms. Judd accords to Ms. Hobson is the desire to follow her example: "I am positive that I will not take on the responsibility of a godmother until I have given it strong consideration. Having a godmother such as Ms. Hobson lets one know that it is a major responsibility and I would not be any less of a godmother than she. Often times, I wonder if she has thought about the impact that she has had on children's lives…"

Ashley closes her tribute to Irene with this poetic imagery: "As one grows older they will see and understand some of the things they may not have understood when they were younger. They will appreciate many individuals who have helped them to bloom. They will reach back on the memory of all of the village people. In my thoughts and reflections, there in the middle of my village will stand a short, strong-minded, once hard-working individual whom I have called Godmother."

Irene Elizabeth Hobson, we salute you! Thank you for being the Village Godmother for generations of young women, Trinity Women, Sisters of Notre Dame and all who have had the pleasure of knowing you! Many thanks to Ashley for giving me permission to share this wonderful tribute with the Trinity family.

Up til now I've tried to avoid the Katie Couric frenzy. Couric became the anchor of the CBS Evening News last week, the first woman ever to sit as the "sole" anchor on a prime time news program of one of the "Big Three" networks. But a commentary by Sally Quinn in today's Washington Post triggered a memory that sharpened my focus on the Couric phenomenon.

Memory: a long time ago, truly in the last century, I had a brief, close encounter with CBS News. I was a young lawyer with the Street Law clinical program of Georgetown University Law Center, a legal education program working with the D.C. Schools. This was long before the 24/7 fascination with legal news, before "Law and Order" or "CSI," even before widespread cable, good heavens, before anybody even heard of the Internet. Dark Ages, indeed. CBS News was starting a Saturday afternoon news magazine program for children called "30 Minutes" — yes, it was intended as a spin-off for kids of the network's highly successful "60 Minutes" program. The producers wanted a short segment on each program explaining legal concepts affecting children. Long story short, even though I wasn't looking for it, as part of my Street Law job I landed the part-time assignment providing two minutes of on-air legal commentary each week on issues like locker searches and child custody. Yes, it was a blast going to New York each week, taping the segment and being on national TV, albeit at 1 pm each Saturday. This innovative program wound-up winning many awards, including several Emmy awards.

For a few brief moments, I flirted with the idea of pursuing a full-time career in network news. But a CBS News executive took me to lunch to set me straight: aside from this experimental kids' program, in 1981 there was not much demand for a woman lawyer on TV in a major market. I could try going to some no-name town in the Midwest, start in local news and work my way up. He wasn't optimistic. Or, more likely, I could take a job as a secretary in the Washington or New York offices of a network and hope that some male executive would take a shine to me. Of course, I'd have to get a "makeover" — a substantial one! "The talk" was not subtle. I went back to teaching kids in D.C. about the legal system. (Greta Van Sustern, by the way, was a colleague working in another Georgetown legal clinic at that same time; her timing was clearly better than mine in pursuing a legal news broadcast career!)

I remembered all of this as I read Sally Quinn's column discussing the double standard that Katie Couric has had to endure as she's taken the anchor chair. "Brian Williams and Charlie Gibson, recent successors to the anchor chairs on NBC and ABC, didn't have anywhere near the same build-up or scrutiny [as Couric]. Nobody mentioned their clothes or hair…" wrote Quinn. She goes on to quote CNN's Judy Woodruff, who remembers being criticized for the length of her skirt during an interview, and Barbara Walters who recalls her brief time as ABC News co-anchor with Harry Reasoner as "the worst professional experience of my life."

After reviewing the intense scrutiny and high stakes for Couric, Quinn goes on to state emphatically, "Katie Couric has done a brave thing. She hasn't just stepped into a man's shoes. She's wearing her own."

Opportunities for women in broadcast journalism have come a long way since that executive told me I'd have to start as a secretary and hope to find a male mentor to have a shot at the news. Yet, in the real power broadcast seats — still the nightly news for the "Big Three" and now a few others — women are still pioneers, still viewed as "experiments" more likely to be judged for the color of their lips than the words they enunciate.

Because of trail blazers like Walters and Woodruff and so many other notable women journalists, and because of her own charisma and professionalism, Couric may well succeed where other women could not sustain success for long. She is determined and tenacious. She's wearing her own shoes, which is a good thing, since she may need the spikes.

Katie Couric

6:45 a.m. — I rolled up to the front door of Main at my usual hour this morning, and found that a group of students already beat me to the front steps! Sporting bright blue "Vote" T-shirts, they were heading out to neighborhoods to help get voters to the polls, and to various polling places in Washington to help ensure smooth elections today in the city. My friend Martin Trimble of the Washington Interfaith Network organized the Trinity volunteers for the polls, with the help of Dr. Shelly Tomkin and Associate Dean Barbara McCrabb.

I'm proud of these Trinity students and all who are engaged with today's elections in D.C. and around the region. Today's election for the District will choose our next mayor, chair of the council, and numerous councilmembers. This is a very critical election for our city; the leaders elected today will have a great impact on local education and the regional economy for years to come.

I urge all members of the campus community who are registered voters (and I hope you are!) to vote in today's primary elections in your respective jurisdictions.

Even now, five years later, I find it hard to look at the pictures. Towers of ash, figures in windows, shadows of planes, jagged shards of a place where once I entertained friends and colleagues at the very top, Windows on the World, a name that said it all about the hubris and power of the World Trade Center.

That morning thousands of ordinary people in the New York and Washington regions got up, kissed the family goodbye, and went to work. They wore the uniforms of their trades: the whites of kitchen workers on top of the world, the stylish cuts of New York's day traders and investment bankers, the brass of uniforms at the Pentagon, the heavy gear of firefighters, the relaxed fit of people flying across the country. Nearly 3,000 never came home again. Tens of thousands still bear the wounds, physical and emotional. Millions still live with the vague fear that it could happen again, fed by the constant reminders in airports and street corners and daily headlines of some new suspicion. Even more millions live with the aftermath, the amalgamation of violence and conflict and death and destruction that marches across Iraq and Afghanistan and so many other places under the tattered banner of the War on Terror.

September 11 surely has become one of the most complex and difficult of all days on our calendar of remembrances. The date does not really commemorate something that happened in the past, because the events of that day in 2001 triggered still-unfolding reactions that are likely to continue for many years. The reaction of this nation to the unprecedented attack on our very shores continues to be a source of both unity and divisiveness — few Americans want to say that we should have done nothing in response, but increasing numbers are willing to express discomfort, if not outright disagreement, with the tactics of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many have come to accept, however begrudingly, the curtailments on personal freedom in public places — the airport discomforts being the most egregious, but other forms of surveillance and intrusion as well. Despite some political rhetoric, there's really no huge public outcry over federal intrusion into records of our use of telephones and libraries and bookstores and federal financial aid and who-knows-what-else. If they catch the bad guys, we'll be happy — or so we think, until it happens again.

September 11 introduced a whole new concept of war, not nation against nation, but civilization against outlaws. Yes, some nations may harbor and encourage the criminals, but in fact, terrorists have no loyalties except to their own ideologies. That's what makes them so dangerous and difficult to capture. They are criminals, and like domestic criminals on our streets, they defy eradication; we can only hope for some serious controls.

In exercising those controls, this nation and all nations must consider the balance between catching the criminals and destroying the very freedoms we are trying to protect. I know almost nothing about waging war, but I know a little bit about defending civil liberties. As a nation we need to insist on robust security, yes — security for our persons and property, to be sure, but also security for our freedoms, which are the whole point of this beautiful nation. We cannot let the ultimate legacy of September 11 be the continuing erosion of freedom in a nation founded to ensure liberty and justice for all.

The headlines frequently remind me of a few lines in a play by Robert Bolt about St. Thomas More, A Man for All Seasons. More was having an argument with his son-in-law Richard Roper about the extent to which law should be set aside to prevent evil, in this case, to catch the man who would ultimately betray Thomas More with false testimony. Roper said he'd cut down every law in England to catch the devil. More exclaimed, "Oh, and when the last law was down, and the devil turned on you, where would you hide, Roper, all the laws being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast, man's laws not God's, and if you cut them down — and you're just the man to do it — do you really think that you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the devil the benefit of the law, for my own safety's sake."

Later, when King Henry VIII tried to change the laws on marriage so that he could divorce his wife and marry another, then-Chancellor Thomas More resisted, refused to go along with the King's desire to shape the law for himself, and ultimately accepted execution rather than abandonment of his religious and moral beliefs.

On September 11, we remember those who died. We reaffirm our commitment as citizens of the United States to defend our freedom and way of life, the rule of law and the meaning of true justice, which is not vengeance. We reaffirm our pledge as citizens of the world to work for justice and peace for all people. We do not honor this day by indulging a sense of victimhood or thirst for revenge. We honor those who died by doing all that we can to strengthen our way of life. Education continues to be the most powerful weapon we have to fight ignorance and fear, to illuminate rights and justice, to sustain hope through the dark days of war and terror.

See
September 11

As I turned to the Style section in the Washington Post today, I was pleasantly startled to see a familiar face gazing out from the feature story photo. Sharon Brady Raimo '69 was comfortably perched in a circular cutout in a bright orange wall at the spectacular new building she took from concept to reality as the CEO of St. Coletta Special Education Public Charter School. What a triumph for this remarkable Trinity Woman! Sharon has been an unstoppable force in creating this incredibly progressive center for the education of special needs students. So powerful was her vision that she not only secured the $32 million required for the building, she also convinced renowned architect Michael Graves to design it.

Sharon Raimo is yet another exemplar of the extraordinary commitment of Trinity graduates to progressive education and real social justice. Because of her drive, her effective advocacy, her large vision, the lives of special needs students and their families are so much the better. We will have an appropriate occasion in the months ahead to celebrate with Sharon the opening of St. Coletta's new facility and her many accomplishments. Congratulations, Sharon! Trinity is proud of you!