Two incredible women died Friday: one changed the face of a nation, and the other permanently impressed onto people living in a relatively small portion of land.
The first was Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a champion for gender equality and a feminist who proved women could do anything they aim, even under the seemingly impossible situations.
Ginsberg’s mother died before the future Supreme Court Justice graduated high school and journeyed to become one of only nine women in Harvard Law School’s class of over 500.
As if that wasn’t enough, Ginsberg was pregnant while trying to prove her worth; her husband was diagnosed with testicular cancer, but she still excelled in her career.
In 1971, Ginsberg wrote her first Supreme Court brief in Reed v. Reed, and at a time when many banks wouldn’t issue a woman by herself a credit card, the court ruled 9-0 that gender-based discrimination isn’t constitutional when deciding the administrator of an estate.
And for the next 50 years serving on the Supreme Court, Ginsberg forever changed the face and the laws of the United States.
Although soft-spoken, Ginsburg was a genius.
And she kept politics separate from friendships– as seen through her close relationship with Antonin Scalia, a friend she joins in the afterlife.
The second woman was my grandmother, Mary John Wasson. She was 96.
Both were particularly small women– RBG was 5’1. Mary was 5’– but acted like giants.
Both chose to fight for their principles in the face of people larger and more powerful than them.
While overseas in a bad suburb of London, Mary witnessed a bar fight from across the street (it was the middle of the day, but people day drink frequently in England)
A man threw another man out of the backdoor of an unmarked building.
The thrower had already won the brief fight but continued kicking the already knocked out man– until my grandmother scolded him.
“You leave that man alone. He’s not hurting you, and you should be ashamed of kicking a man who’s not fighting back,” the school teacher said.
He stopped and left. She likely saved the life of some drunk man.
She chose to fight for what she believed in, even when that meant mailing letters to the editor and Congressional representatives across the country.
Mary did this through highlighting fiscal responsibility and transparency in the State Journal Register.
In one letter, she scolds Congress for tacking on a last-minute, 300-page amendment the night before a fast-track vote.
“Certainly, we have seen speed in passing “stimulus” packages/bail-outs galore, as well as government (taxpayer) ownership/control over private enterprises — undreamed of heretofore. But do we see “transparency” as to exactly where and how much money went to this or that and what benefit to taxpayers came of it?”
“Think about it,” Mary ended, echoing my own edgy prose.
To many outside of rural Southern Illinois, Mary was a nobody. But to so many in and around Equality, she was everything– a school teacher, a Sunday school teacher, a librarian, and the driving force behind why hundreds of children chose literacy and a romance for reading, learning, and civil debate.
I was one of those children.
As a child, Mary spent hours holding me on her lap, reading stories, books, and poetry, repeating them again and again and again.
She refused to back down when she knew she was in the right– likely a contributing source to my hardheadedness and anti-authoritarian tendencies.
Only a few decades separate her and I sitting at a desk typing for newspapers.
Mary fought via words against large, wasteful government with a spending addiction.
I fight the same, and against draconian policies.
Both women will be dearly missed.
Such an amazing tribute to an amazing Grandma ❤