Ann Richards: She Opened Government To Everyone
By Vince Leibowitz on Sep 13, 2006 in In Memoriam | | Sphere: Related Content |
Dorothy Ann Willis Richards
1933-2006
Texan. Democrat. Progressive. Leader. Governor.
Champion Of The ‘New Texas.’
Fighter.
“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.’”
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More so than any leader of my generation, Ann Richards defined, to me, what Texas government should be about.
In a college speech class, I once had to do one of those exercises where you could have any five people—living or dead—over to your house for dinner. Ann Richards joined Lyndon Johnson, Leonardo DiVinci, 20th century composer John Cage and Thomas Jefferson at my fictitious dinner table.
I’ve always been an Ann Richards fan. I only got to meet her a couple of times, both times only briefly. She was tough-as-nails, but with compassion. She admitted her faults with aplomb, and spoke with a firey passion absent from too many of today’s politicians.
For my generation, I think Ann Richards defined modern Texas politics.
No, not George W. Bush, not Karl Rove, and not James Leininger. Ann Richards.
If you’re between 25 and 30, you looked at Ann Richards’ smiling face in your college Texas government textbook. Depending on your age, if you’re at or near 30 right now, the very first vote you cast may have been to re-elect her in 1994. I miss getting to cast my first vote for Ann by a month and a half, but followed her re-election campaign closely. In high school when we talked about state government and what was going on, it all came around to Ann Richards. She was the leader.
For more than four years, it seems as though every night on television, you saw Ann Richards. Either in a story about prisons or a story about school finance, somewhere in your nightly newscast was a picture of Ann Richards.
For most of the time I’ve been seriously politically conscious as a child (she won the nomination for state treasurer the year I started kindergarten and gave her 1988 address, which I watched on TV, when I was in junior high), teenager or young adult, Ann Richards was a part of the Texas political landscape I’ve known and loved.
For the Texas political landscape to be without Ann Richards’ presence is like a field without bluebonnets. Â
We will miss you, Governor.
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i hate dallas | Sep 14, 2006 | Reply
Really good post! Yes, she will be terribly missed.
PC Higgins | Sep 14, 2006 | Reply
People should have been concerned when she didn’t go to Nelly Conolly’s funeral.
I think they were goos friends and she probably really wanted to go, plus all the former governor’s went.
Still it came as a shock, and even though I thought she was too conservative at the time, I soon warmed up to her.
She was a true lady and Texan.
Thanks for your touching tribute.