PERSONAL HEROINES

March is Women’s History Month. ( Don’t we deserve a year at least?) I’ve been thinking about some women in my life who don’t get their quota of publicity, will never be on a postage stamp, but whose strength has inspired me.

My mother  was a woman before her time. Although extremely hard of hearing she wouldn’t wear hearing aids, thinking they would make her look old. (In those days the aids were attached to a long cord.) Yet when my father’s business failed, she refused to excuse herself as disabled and got a job as a secretary, successfully hiding her struggle to hear dictation clearly. Preferring to be her own boss, for years she had a one-woman business as a public stenographer. She finally got hearing aids when my daughter was born. “I want to hear the baby when she cries,” my mother said. One of her steadiest clients was a lawyer. Her familiarity with legal jargon proved helpful when she and my father “retired” to Florida, for she found work as a legal secretary in a large law firm. She remained there as a valuable employee until mandated out at the tender age of 85. Widowed by then and living in a residential hotel filled with other lonely widows, she instigated a series of Sunday afternoon concerts, inviting the women to her room to hear her beloved Pavorotti records, accompanied by generous servings of cookies, tea – and whiskey!

Norma was the Human Resources Director at my mother’s first job, but her past was more glamorous. She had been on Broadway in musical comedies. So when I was a stage-struck teenager my mother asked Norma to accompany her to a college production I was in. The goal was to have Norma review my amateurish acting and discourage me from pursuing a career in theatre. This backfired because Norma thought I had talent and told me I’d go far in theatre. ( How far I did and didn’t go is another story.) For years Norma encouraged me when I was rejected and applauded my rare successes. She confided that she had given up her career for marriage. When her husband died she had been reluctant to start over again. If she had regrets, they were kept shrouded. In her eighties she had to move into a nursing home, where she continued to wear bright print dresses, sparkling jewelry, and one of her colorful wigs to hide the spare gray strands. When asked to perform at the annual Christmas party, she sang the requested songs, and graciously led an animal chorus of “Old McDonald.“ Not once did this former musical comedy star betray how much the setting dismayed her, nor how lonely she was.

Ruth was my husband’s cousin. I was intimidated the first time I met her– not because of her appearance ,she was petite and frail – but by her assertiveness. .I later heard that when her husband left her, she was so devastated she felt she had to get away . So she moved all the way to Italy, where she unexpectedly found a new career. American directors were filming in Rome by then and since she could speak fluent Italian, she was hired to coach some of the stars. The people she worked with – Kirk Douglas, Ava Gardner, Elizabeth Taylor, among others – became friends. But my greater memory is her supportiveness after my husband died. In a series of letters across the ocean, she encouraged me to believe that my life wasn’t over, that just as she had gone on to make a new life for herself, I could, too. She invited me to visit her in Rome, a feat I couldn’t imagine. Get on a plane by myself? But after three years I did go, inspired by her courage to be a woman succeeding on her own.

Three women who have not only inspired me ,but still insist on walking into my pages, for they have all shown up in in my stories and books. It heartens me to keep them alive that way.

WEBSITE: www.annehosansky.com
BOOKS: COME AND GO – available through BookBaby.com, WIDOW’S WALK –iUniverse.com; TURNING TOWARD TOMORROW –Xlibris.com, TEN WOMEN OF VALOR and ROLE PLAY– available through CreateSpace.com and Amazon.com; also Amazon Kindle.

Comments are closed.