Goodbye, Ann

Former Texas governor Ann Richards died Wednesday after a long battle against esophageal cancer. Thousands of people lined up Saturday and Sunday to pay their respects as she lay in state in the Texas capitol. I couldn't be among them, so I want to pay my respects here.

I met her very briefly in 1983, shortly after she had become the Texas state treasurer, the first woman to be elected to statewide office in 50 years. Even in that short meeting, she struck me as a most unusual politician, one who was willing to talk straight and tell the truth, whatever that might be. She was also one of the warmest, funniest, and friendliest people I have ever met.

I watched her over the years as she rose in Texas politics, never compromising the values that made her who she was. Molly Ivins related this story in her column of September 15:

At a long-ago political do at Scholz Garten in Austin, everybody who was anybody was there, meet-in' and greetin' at a furious pace. A group of us got the tired feet and went to lean our rears against a table at the back wall of the bar. Perched like birds in a row were Bob Bullock, then state comptroller; moi; Charles Miles, the head of Bullock's personnel department; and Ms. Ann Richards.

Bullock, with 20 years in Texas politics, knew every sorry, no-good sonofagun in the entire state. Some old racist judge from East Texas came up to him: "Bob, my boy, how are you?"

Bullock said: "Judge, I'd like you to meet my friends. This is Molly Ivins with the Texas Observer."

The judge peered up at me and said, "How yew, little lady?"

Bullock: "And this is Charles Miles, the head of my personnel department."

Miles, who is black, stuck out his hand, and the judge got an expression on his face as though he had just stepped into a fresh cowpie. He reached out and touched Charlie's palm with one finger while turning eagerly to the pretty, blond, blue-eyed Ann. "And who is this lovely lady?"

Ann beamed and replied, "I am Mrs. Miles."

In her keynote speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, Richards said:

You know, tonight I feel a little like I did when I played basketball in the 8th grade. I thought I looked real cute in my uniform. And then I heard a boy yell from the bleachers, "Make that basket, Birdlegs." And my greatest fear is that same guy is somewhere out there in the audience tonight, and he's going to cut me down to size, because where I grew up there really wasn’t much tolerance for self-importance, people who put on airs.

That's the kind of person she was.

As governor of Texas, she opened the doors of government to women and minorities. As President Clinton said in his eulogy at the Capitol, without her it would have been extremely unlikely that the honor guard of state troopers who escorted her into the capitol would have been led by "a woman in a cowboy hat".

Clinton went on to say that Richards "really believed we could make a world where everyone could be a winner ... where young girls grew up to be scientists, engineers, police officers and politicians, where people, without regard to color, condition or orientation were treated as God's children, where the dreams and the spirit were as big as the sky in her beloved home."

She made a difference in the world, and that's as much as anyone can hope for. She will be missed.


Molly Ivins' column can be read at http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/columnists/molly_ivins/

The full text and audio of Richards' 1988 keynote speech is available at http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/annrichards1988dnc.htm

The family requests that memorial gifts be made to the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders through the Austin Community Foundation, P.O. Box 5159, Austin, Texas 78763, 512-472-4483, or by e-mail: austincommunityfoundation.org.