The following was sent out by Amy Manuel, Dem candidate for Denton County Commissioner
It was with great sadness that I learned yesterday of the passing of Governor Ann Richards. I am from the generation that had no heroes. However, Governor Richards was my hero.
A couple of weeks ago, someone said to me that I reminded him of Ann Richards. There is no greater compliment in my book. Ann Richards was the epitome of all that is good and right in Texas Politics. She had a sharp quit wit, while always standing by her principals. She did more for women in politics in Texas than anyone before or since. Ann used humor to make her point, and in doing so, her words were remembered for years to come.
Who among us doesn't know the quote, "Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astair did, backwards and in high heels."
That one line told the world in the days of women's liberation, that we women were capable of anything that a man could do. Not only that, but we achieve greatness despite unequal circumstances and odds laid against us.
I have always admired a quick wit and a sharp tongue. No one possessed these traits more than Ann Richards. We all remember her words at the 1988 Democratic Convention. "Poor George. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth."
Many do not know just how much Ann Richards did for women in politics, especially Texas women. Though she was not the first female governor of Texas, she was the first to get there on her own. Once there, she helped to bring diversity to the capital of Texas. She gave jobs to people who normally would not have been allowed in the door. Her daughter has carried on her good work through the Texas Freedom Network.
Last night, someone told me how her daughter, a Republican, received encouragement from Governor Richards to pursue a career in politics. It did not matter to Ann Richards that the young girl in question was a Republican. Ann saw talent and intelligence and dedication, so she persuaded this young women to follow her dreams. This mother said that her daughter owed her career to Governor Richards and that both she and her daughter would miss Ann Richards very much.
It is my greatest hope that I may live up to the standards set by Ann Richards. She represents what many of us young women just starting our political careers hope to be one day. She was remarkable. She was the best of the best.
Goodbye, Ann Richards. You are gone but not forgotten.
Amy Manuel for County Commissioner
www.AmyManuel.com
Ed. note: The following was written by my father, Ed Martin.
January 10, 1992 was my daughter Amy’s fifth birthday, and the Texas Democratic Party was having our annual fundraiser. As the party’s Executive Director, I had work to do, but we wanted to be together as a family for Amy’s birthday, so we were all at the Governor’s mansion at a reception. During the reception, Ann greeted us and we learned January 10 was also her Dad’s birthday before she sang Happy Birthday to Amy, who as a second year student at the University of Chicago is now fully confident she can do anything just as well, if not better than, any man.
As she sang to our daughter, a seven year old boy was singing along, and with the wisdom of a Mom and a teacher, Ann made sure to talk to Phillip Martin, too. The conversation turned to reading, and Phil was a voracious reader and wasn’t shy. In fact, later that evening he walked right up to candidate Bill Clinton all by himself and stuck out his hand like an old pro. But when Ann asked him what he liked to read, something about her overwhelmed him and he couldn’t answer, so Ann reassured him that he had her permission to read a book every week.
I never worked directly on Ann’s campaign or state staff, but that same Phillip Martin asked me to share a few memories. I remember getting off an elevator at the Texas delegation hotel in Atlanta in 1988 and seeing Ann walking up and down the hall in her robe, talking out loud. I can’t remember what she said – something funny about the keynote speech she would give, something human you’d say around the house. But the sight of her embodied that perfectly imperfect humanity that made millions of Texans understand she was our Governor, one who really worked for us.
In fact, what made Ann Richards’ election and service so important was that you didn’t have to have an up close personal experience to feel like she was your own personal Governor. Something about her broke through that TV screen and newspaper photo and became personal.
You could feel it that night in Atlanta after her keynote speech when a lot of non-Texans made it to the Texas hotel for a party with her pal Jerry Jeff on stage. The crowd was getting crazy and Jerry Jeff was about to stop trying to play. We needed to find Ann quickly, and she was way down the corridor in crushing mass of people with her son Dan. We got Ann to the ballroom, where she took the stage, told a personal “Jacky Jack” story about the old Jerry Jeff and thanked everyone, leaving a happy musician to playing to a happy crowd into the night.
The next morning, wary of another corridor crush on the way to the Texas delegation breakfast with featured guest, our own Vice Presidential nominee Lloyd Bentsen, we took Ann to the hotel ballroom by way of a shortcut through the hotel kitchen, when she observed that “I could get shot in here.” Coming from Ann, it was a funny commentary on who and what we are. And from that morning forward, she would never leave the national stage.
The 1989-1990 election cycle was difficult. From September, 1989 through February, 1990, the State Party and the Texas Democratic Women conducted 28 organizing and training events across Texas. On one or two weekends, our whole young family drove together across Texas to one of these sessions, and the enthusiasm of the Richards supporters was a reality that was inescapable. Later in 1990, my brother was hospitalized the entire general election season and passed away the Sunday morning before the election, the same day the headlines screamed that the polls were showing a Richards comeback victory was possible. But my brother Larry was proud that we were able to take him to the drive through early voting location that was set up at 10th and Neches in 1990, where he voted for Ann, too.
For me, when the people of Texas walked up to that Capitol, a cloud was lifted. On that crisp clear morning in 1991, I was walking with our Democratic National Chairman, Ron Brown, who kept commenting on the energy and genuine passion he saw in the people on the Avenue that bright day. I recalled my early days campaigning in Houston with Mickey Leland and Craig and Benny and how cool it was in the 70’s to have new faces in the Capitol, including Ann Richards, Rep. Sara Weddington’s legislative assistant.
In the 70’s, those new faces shocked some folks, but 1991 it was more than that, those new faces became a “New Texas.” And when that woman in the white suit with the white hair smiled and took that oath, it was not about any one of us, it was about government being for all of us.
In August of 1991, I was running out the west door of the Capitol during a redistricting special session, late to join my family to plant a tree in my brother’s memory, and as I flung open the door I nearly knocked Ann flat on her ass. When I apologized and told her why I was hurrying, she told me to slow down or they’d be planting me, too.
I may have slowed down a little since then, but I think the best thing we can do to honor Ann and the others who have gone before her is to live every day to its fullest. After all, there is nothing we can’t do, even if we have to dance backward a while to move forward with humanity and determination.
I was listening/reading to the 1988 keynote speech by Ann Richards today... I had never heard it before. In fact, I don't think that I had even been conceived by that point.
So this is my first time to hear the great Ann Richards speech. It is probably the first time I have heard any of Ann Richard's speeches that were at all campaign-related. Being born in 1989, all I have heard are fabulous stories.
However, you don't have to be one who was there to catch something that is important know. There was one paragraph in Ms. Richard's speech that I find very, VERY key.
(Another wonderful story to share. - promoted by Phillip Martin)
A lot of folks have written about Ann Richards' wit and charm, and the funny and meaningful things she said and did for Texas. They are stories about her warmth and compassion, inspiration and insight, and what a privilege it was to know her. They are all true.
I owe her my very life.
I worked for Ann for three years when she was first elected Texas Treasurer. She hired me because I had a reputation with budgets, learned at Bob Bullock's knee, and she knew the Treasury would need more money to bring it into the computer age.
After some months, Ann figured out that I had a secret: I suffered from addiction, as she had. My disease had affected my work, health, relationships and everything else in my life. I was a mess, but didn't know it. Ann knew.
Ann could have fired me--many bosses would--but she chose a different path, and I know now that it was the only path that could have saved me.
Ann hired a management consultant to poke around and assess how we were doing. The consultant found the usual things: streamline the organization; improve customer service; move people around. But she also knew about addiction, and how it infects people’s lives and workplaces.
On Ann's instructions, the consultant spent about 12 hours on the phone with me over five days. She described her own experiences with alcohol and other drugs and how they affected her life. We talked about how my work was going; what I thought other people thought of me; what kinds of friends I had; how my wife and I got along. She asked if I thought I had a problem; I never answered that question, but I stayed on the phone with her.
By Friday afternoon, I agreed to get help. Naively, I thought I could learn to drink and use drugs in moderation, like other people. I promised to see Ann the first thing Monday morning.
Ann told me about her own experiences with alcohol. In fact, several years earlier I had seen her on an airplane after too many little bottles. She told me how it was, how some friends helped her get help, and how her life had changed in the several years since.
She offered to take me in her car to a treatment facility right then. Too dumb to take her offer, I needed time to organize things before I could go away for 28 days. She told me to take a week, but, "If you're not in treatment by next Monday, don't bother coming back here!"
I went to treatment the next Monday, and I learned that I will never drink or use drugs in moderation, like other people, because I am addicted to those things.
I came back to the Treasury a different person, still a mess, but making changes. Ann had reorganized my job by then, giving me less power and more freedom to find my way.
Today, more than 20 years later, I remain sober. I believe I would have died in a year, maybe two, if Ann had not orchestrated my treatment and facilitated my recovery.
I heard of Ann Richards's death this morning, and I was deeply saddened by the news. Ann Richards meant so much to so many people, and was an inspiration to so many young people, and especially young women across the state. I was particularly impressed with her interest in cultivating young leaders. I remember seeing her frequently in Austin and on the UT campus at Democrartic and pro-choice events. I was very honored to be able to introduce her on the West Mall at UT during early voting in 2002 when she emceed a rally with all of the statewide Democratic candidates.
I am remembering Ann tonight by reading and listening to her 1988 convention speech... "Poor George. He can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth." There is no one that I know that can match that woman's wit. What a Texan, and what a Democrat! Let's remember what she stood for, and continue her fight for the values that we believe in.
Ann Richards, the former Democratic governor who died Wednesday, will be remembered at a noon service Monday at the University of Texas' Erwin Center in Austin.
She will lie in state in the Texas Capitol Rotunda from 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday and from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday. Both the services and Capitol events are open to the public.
Her burial at the Texas State Cemetery will be a private ceremony, the family said today through spokeswoman Cathy Bonner.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that memorial gifts be made to the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders, to open in August in the Austin school district, through the Austin Community Foundation, P.O. Box 5159, Austin, TX 78763, (512) 472-4483, or online at www.austincommunityfoundation.org.
Leave a note if you plan to attend. I know some folks are driving across Texas to come.
(This is too wonderful a story not to read. - promoted by Karl-Thomas Musselman)
It’s kind of odd, but when I think about Ann today, my mind keeps roaming back to two colors: orange and blue. Lemme explain.
In 1989, I had the honor of serving as Ann’s travel aide for a day on a trip through East Texas. In Texarkana and Lufkin, she gave speeches to business leaders about the success of her unclaimed property program and how the state’s economic prospects were tied to improving public education. For her, it was pretty tame stuff, but it was what she needed to do to show she was more than a life-support system for wicked one-liners.
However, our landing in Orange signaled that something new was up. As the plane taxied to a stop, we peered out the window and saw about a dozen men waiting to greet us. Every one of them was wearing the brightest orange, double-knit blazer you’ve ever seen. I’m talking about an orange as bright as the orange sherbet at El Azteca (as it turned out, they were all members of the Orange Chamber of Commerce).
She turned and looked at me with that now-famous mischievous grin and said, “Now isn’t that the most wonderful thing you’ve ever seen?”
Outside, she was greeted like a rock star that had dropped into a small town nobody cared about. It was all big smiles, dainty handshakes and kisses on the cheek.
We climbed into a limo that fell into a motorcade led by a crazed constable in an orange Comaro – with flashing lights affixed to the top – roaring up the street at 60 miles an hour and screeching to a halt at each intersection to block cross-traffic. Ann gave me one of those mischievous grins again. I felt like the groupie that I was.
We arrived at some hall – a hotel or convention center or something – where they were holding the annual NAACP dinner and Ann was the featured speaker.
As we entered the room, folks rushed toward her, a scene that would be repeated over and over in the coming years. Men and women, old and young, of all races and ethnicities, of all persuasions, were drawn to her. As Molly Ivins would put it, Ann had Elvis.
Frankly, I was surprised by the diversity of the crowd. All the local Anglo elected officials were there. Their shaved necks gleamed like fireballs, yet there was a comfort level in the room that suggested these people knew and respected each other.
As it came time for Ann to speak, I told her the press had left, so we wouldn’t be getting any coverage of her speech. I expected her to be unhappy about it, but she wasn’t and went back to adding notes in the margin of her already beautiful speech.
When she started, I recognized the words as they flowed along. But you could also see and hear that Ann’s emotions were building, unlike the day’s previous speeches. Somewhere along the line – maybe 15 minutes in – she cast the speech aside and started roaring with a fury the likes of which I’ve never seen before or since. The crowd went crazy – repeatedly interrupting her with standing ovations and screams and shouts and amens.
It all came so fast and furious that I don’t remember the words. But it left a deep, permanent impression on me and I suspect everyone in that room. Afterward, I felt like I’d stood in the face of a hurricane.
So yeah, when I think of Ann, I’m going to remember orange.
And blue, the gleaming blue eyes of her granddaughter, Lily, set against the brilliant blue of the Texas flag as Ann held her aloft after telling us there could be a New Texas. And there was for a time. We owe it to Ann to make it so again.
I was greatly disheartened today when I woke to discover that our beloved Gov. Ann Richards had passed away.
Citizens throughout Texas I'm sure were shocked and saddened to hear about her passing.
I first met Ann Richards when she was running for Governor, and even then as a candidate she was bigger than life.
She was such a fine woman, a great Texan, and a superb mentor and politician to so many Democrats. I was honored to earn her endorsement in my 2002 Congressional Campaign and always counted myself fortunate to have known her and to have earned her support.
As Texas Governor, she instilled faith and confidence in government and how it was working for the people of Texas. Her humor and homespun common sense maden her an admired Texas icon. She will be greatly missed. It may be a long time before another woman, indeed another Texan of her character, sensitivity and wisdom graces Texas politics.
July 19,1988 will forever be the day that I fell in love. I was 12 years old and I was sitting on the TV room floor next to my grandfather. See it was different back then and my grandparents raised me to watch the news every night and to know the importance of voting.
I had heard of then treasurer Ann Richards, but I had never seen her speak. When she came on to the screen of our 1977 Panasonic television, I knew that I was seeing something that would change my life forever. That night my love of politics was fueled, and the knowledge that a women could not just be important in the boys club but hold her own and then some, was something that a very young impressionable latina was in awe about. She was the first real feminist I had ever heard speak, “If you give us a chance, we can perform. After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.” I new then in there that no matter what I did in life or where I went-politics would be by one true love; And Ann Richards would be the women I forever aspired to be like.
I later met her when I was 16 and she dedicated the opening of the major highway connection that linked HWY 281 with Hwy 83 and made the “gateway to Mexico.”
She gave a message that day to all of us high school kids and said for us to go to college and make a difference in our communities. I met her again at a wedding in Austin, and she had some kind words and her trademark smile and laugh.
I just want to thank her for all she did for us, and especially all she did to inspire a young latina in more ways then she could ever know.
The Queen of Texas politics is gone, she is dearly missed. Thank You Ann, we love you and miss you.
Governor Ann Richards was a Texan from birth. Ann was born in 1933 in Lakeview, Texas and grew up in Waco. Proving from an early age that good things do come from all parts of Texas.
I was born during the Depression in a little community just outside Waco, and I grew up listening to Franklin Roosevelt on the radio. Well, it was back then that I came to understand the small truths and the hardships that bind neighbors together. Those were real people with real problems and they had real dreams about getting out of the Depression. I can remember summer nights when we’d put down what we called the Baptist pallet, and we listened to the grownups talk. I can still hear the sound of the dominoes clicking on the marble slab my daddy had found for a tabletop. I can still hear the laughter of the men telling jokes you weren’t supposed to hear talkin' about how big that old buck deer was, laughin' about mama puttin' Clorox in the well when the frog fell in.
Ann went to college at Baylor and eventually moved with her husband David Richards to Austin. Once in Austin, Ann received a teaching certificate from the University of Texas.
Ann was a leader and great political mind early in her career. She helped elect Sarah Weddington and Wilhemina Delco to the State Legislature. She campaigned aggressively to ensure Texas ratify the Equal Rights Amendment in 1976. After serving as the Travis County Commissioners Court she became the first woman elected in a statewide office in 1982 when she became the State Treasurer.
In 1988 Richards exploded on the national stage when she gave an impressive keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention.
Two years later, incumbent Governor Bill Clements announced he would not run for re-election which opened the door for Ann to show the state what she could do. As Glenn Smith described a night on the hard road to victory, you understand everything that made Ann a Texas legend in life.
I drove Ann to dinner one night, just the two of us. The election outcome was very much in doubt. It was raining, and my wipers screeched on the windows.
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” she said.
“Know what?” I mumbled.
“Know what to do if we lose. There are so many people depending on me. Young people. Women. Texas. We just can’t lose.” If WE lose, she said. I didn’t respond. I didn’t know what to say. We rode along in silence, with the damned windshield wipers shreeking.
Ann wasn’t worried about her losing. She was worried about us. She didn’t want US to lose, and by “us” she meant all Texans who had been so casually forgotten by an ignorant good-old-boy system, by a racist past that still haunts us today, by a cold-as-coffin-nails callous state government somehow always trumped old small-town Texas neighborliness.
The rest is history. Winning and working hard for Texas during her term as Governor. Kelley Shannon of the AP describes Ann's successes simply.
In four years as governor, Richards championed what she called the "New Texas," appointing more women and more minorities to state posts than any of her predecessors.
She appointed the first black University of Texas regent; the first crime victim to join the state Criminal Justice Board; the first disabled person to serve on the human services board; and the first teacher to lead the State Board of Education. Under Richards, the fabled Texas Rangers pinned stars on their first black and female officers.
She polished Texas' image, courted movie producers, championed the North American Free Trade Agreement, oversaw an expansion of the state prison system, and presided over rising student achievement scores and plunging dropout rates.
After hearing the news of her passing last night Mayor Will Wynn was quick to say:
Ann Richards was my friend, an advisor and an inspiration. In fact, my very first $100 contribution to my first city council campaign in 2000 was from Ann. Her passing is devastating for so many of us and serves as a reminder to cherish the people we love. I will think of what she unknowingly did for me by setting a very high bar of public service to the community.
After all that she had accomplished in life, she still found time last year to lead a Mayor's Book Club discussion of "Writing Austin's Lives" as well as volunteering down at the Austin Convention Center sorting donated clothes during the Hurricane Katrina exercise.
I am asking that flags at City facilities be flown at half-staff until further notice in memory of our Governor; a public servant and Texas legend. We will keep her family in our thoughts and prayers.
The current chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, Boyd Richie, added, “we lost a true Texas hero in Ann Richards. Ann knew the real meaning of public service, and her dedication to empowering others was evident throughout her entire political career. Ann was a trailblazer and a real treasure, and I know people of all political persuasions are saddened by her passing”
Governor Richards leaves a lasting legacy behind. Ann once said,"I did not want my tombstone to read, 'She kept a really clean house.' I think I'd like them to remember me by saying, 'She opened government to everyone.'"
She did just that.
Ann inspired a generation of young men and, more importantly, women to become involved in politics. Her daughter Cecile Richards is the current president of Planned Parenthood and will surely continue her mothers mission.
Ann Richards left this world doing everything she could to make Texas a better place, and she will be greatly missed.
