Council Speaker, when there was a budget surplus, we restored funding so that libraries could stay open six days a week instead of five.)
I’m not a fast reader, so it takes me longer than most to finish a book. But I loved the way we learned. Our teachers were terrific. Our classes were interestingly structured. We had a marvelous program in our junior and senior years that put English, history, and theology together under Area Studies. They were team-taught by the three separate departments. One year you did Europe. The next year you did the United States. They put the juniors and seniors together. We had great literature classes. Some of our classes were held in the convent, so we would sit on couches and comfy chairs and listen and talk. That place probably gave me the best sense of confidence about my intellectual abilities.
In grammar school, I had loved reading the biographies of great political and civil rights leaders like Eleanor Roosevelt, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy, and Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. I learned so much from biographies of nonpoliticians who did important things, like Helen Keller; Booker T. Washington; George Washington Carver, who was born a slave and became a leading botanist; Molly Pitcher, who fought in the Revolutionary War; Marie Curie, who discovered polonium and radium; and Dr. Charles Drew, who discovered plasma. Those biographies got me hooked on politics and government, which I came to love. I saw the evidence that one person could have a positive impact on the world. The biographies also inspired me to want to do something—and to maybe even be the first at something—that made a difference in people’s lives.
Academics and reading weren’t the only inspiring parts of high school for me. For example, you might not think that organizing Sports Night at Old Westbury was the beginning of a life in politics, but I was one of the lead organizers, and I loved it. Lots of schools did it. Some call it Sports Night, but others call it Color Night. Half the school was the blue team, and half the school was the white team, and we had themes. So you’d have to do an entrance that was on the theme, and a dance, and cheerleading, and there’d be athletics. People would work on Sports Night for months. You either did it perfunctorily or you got totally into it. I got totally into it.
My freshman year the theme was “The Wild, Wild White West,” because I was on the white team. Another year it was a mythology theme, and another it was “The Great White Way.” My father always jokes that between the political demonstrations I organize, which can include costumes and thematic signs, my professional career is just an extension of Sports Night. I loved the group activity of it. I actually loved every big activity in high school. I was editor of the newspaper and senior class president—not such a feat in a class of twenty-four. But we had fun both in school and outside. And I had my own car, which made getting to school and going out on weekends a lot easier.
I had all the freedom a teenager could want, probably too much. My father never set a curfew—I came and went as I pleased. I don’t think he was prepared for raising a typical teenage daughter, especially since my sister hadn’t gone out a lot when she was in high school. And now that my mother was gone, he was thrust into this role that he had no frame of reference for. In the generation in which he grew up, it was the wife’s job to set the rules and keep tabs on what the children were doing. I didn’t always make it easy for him, and I don’t think he was always happy about the things I chose to do, but he never said a word.
Aunt Julia, who still lived with us, financed my social life in the kindest manner. She devised a way to be my unofficial banker. I didn’t have a formal allowance, so whenever I needed money, I’d go to her underwear drawer. She kept a statue of the Virgin Mary in
I’m not a fast reader, so it takes me longer than most to finish a book. But I loved the way we learned. Our teachers were terrific. Our classes were interestingly structured. We had a marvelous program in our junior and senior years that put English, history, and theology together under Area Studies. They were team-taught by the three separate departments. One year you did Europe. The next year you did the United States. They put the juniors and seniors together. We had great literature classes. Some of our classes were held in the convent, so we would sit on couches and comfy chairs and listen and talk. That place probably gave me the best sense of confidence about my intellectual abilities.
In grammar school, I had loved reading the biographies of great political and civil rights leaders like Eleanor Roosevelt, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy, and Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. I learned so much from biographies of nonpoliticians who did important things, like Helen Keller; Booker T. Washington; George Washington Carver, who was born a slave and became a leading botanist; Molly Pitcher, who fought in the Revolutionary War; Marie Curie, who discovered polonium and radium; and Dr. Charles Drew, who discovered plasma. Those biographies got me hooked on politics and government, which I came to love. I saw the evidence that one person could have a positive impact on the world. The biographies also inspired me to want to do something—and to maybe even be the first at something—that made a difference in people’s lives.
Academics and reading weren’t the only inspiring parts of high school for me. For example, you might not think that organizing Sports Night at Old Westbury was the beginning of a life in politics, but I was one of the lead organizers, and I loved it. Lots of schools did it. Some call it Sports Night, but others call it Color Night. Half the school was the blue team, and half the school was the white team, and we had themes. So you’d have to do an entrance that was on the theme, and a dance, and cheerleading, and there’d be athletics. People would work on Sports Night for months. You either did it perfunctorily or you got totally into it. I got totally into it.
My freshman year the theme was “The Wild, Wild White West,” because I was on the white team. Another year it was a mythology theme, and another it was “The Great White Way.” My father always jokes that between the political demonstrations I organize, which can include costumes and thematic signs, my professional career is just an extension of Sports Night. I loved the group activity of it. I actually loved every big activity in high school. I was editor of the newspaper and senior class president—not such a feat in a class of twenty-four. But we had fun both in school and outside. And I had my own car, which made getting to school and going out on weekends a lot easier.
I had all the freedom a teenager could want, probably too much. My father never set a curfew—I came and went as I pleased. I don’t think he was prepared for raising a typical teenage daughter, especially since my sister hadn’t gone out a lot when she was in high school. And now that my mother was gone, he was thrust into this role that he had no frame of reference for. In the generation in which he grew up, it was the wife’s job to set the rules and keep tabs on what the children were doing. I didn’t always make it easy for him, and I don’t think he was always happy about the things I chose to do, but he never said a word.
Aunt Julia, who still lived with us, financed my social life in the kindest manner. She devised a way to be my unofficial banker. I didn’t have a formal allowance, so whenever I needed money, I’d go to her underwear drawer. She kept a statue of the Virgin Mary in
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