Still Standing on Their Shoulders
A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats
The Equal Rights Amendment to the US Constitution was proposed in 1923, and finally passed the House and later the Senate in 1972. Its purpose is to provide for the legal equality of the sexes and prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex.
This blog is my short tribute to the fearless women I met as a geriatric care manager during my mid-20s.
Around fifty years ago, Nicole Kidman, Angela Bassett, Robin Wright, Uma Thurman, Halle Berry, Marisa Tomei, and Sara Jessica Parker had one thing in common: they were all born around the time that the four women in this blog were finally hitting their stride.
Helen unpacked her pencils and got to work drawing the latest rendition of a plaid pantsuit to go on sale. Women were newly permitted to wear pants over skirts in more progressive cities like New York. She was excited to draw this suit for Macy’s to be featured in a full-length ad in the Sunday NY Times!
She was finally independent and self-sufficient. Single, she managed to score a one-bedroom apartment in Midtown Manhattan without needing to have a man co-sign for her, and do what she loved — draw the latest fashions in the modern era for her contemporaries.
While it would take her at least three days to do a full-page ad, working all day and night to get it right, she knew Macy’s would appreciate her attention to detail for their full-page spread. Helen planned her sketches way ahead of time as she would need to submit multiple proofs just to get one approved and then she’d get paid after it ran. She would sit for hours, espresso in hand, perched from her 32nd and Park Avenue apartment as people rushed in and out of the Pan Am and Met Life skyscrapers. What gave her a sought after edge above other male graphic designers was that she’d had the patience for the tiniest details for women’s clothing down to the buttons and cuffs. Since women were now starting to buy their own fashionable clothes and getting more store credit approvals (usually with their husband as guarantor) Helen drawing the latest fashions became a major coup for nearby department stores like Lord & Taylor, Bloomingdales, and Macy’s.
Residing on 34th and Park, Dorothy worked as an office manager. Her single, independent life in an elevator building (complete with doorman) in Manhattan was hard-fought and won, as she grew up in poverty in the midwest. Dorothy moved to NYC knowing no one without any family. One random day leaving the 6 train she made the front page of The Daily News because she stopped a mugging — that was happening to her! She hauled off and slapped him so hard with her purse several times that it knocked the mugger to the ground, and her self-defense efforts lasted long enough that someone snapped a pic. She saw herself on the cover the next day and kept that issue her whole life. The fight in Dorothy knew no bounds. “You gotta be NY tough,” she’d say with a raised eyebrow.
Her main theme was her will to win in life. Dorothy was all fight, no flight. Winning meant escaping poverty and living independently. Not relying on a man for her financial wellbeing and to be respected as a professional. Her happiness was derived from being swept up by the energy that only The Big Apple can bring. Dorothy was on fire!
Vita only knew how to work hard and play hard. Her weekends were spent with generous amounts of Italian white wine and luscious foods of the Upper East Side. Bronx-born and bred, her work as a project manager for a construction contractor in the tri-state area meant that she was also always seen as “one of the guys.” She kept a short pixie cut and often wore loafers or flats.
Vita was the only woman employed by a firm that had over fifty employees. While she loved her work, the mob ties in her life through her work, and social circles, ran deep. They were admittedly a source of stress, and paradoxically, entertainment for her. She lived in a constant state of fear and loathing because she wanted to live in NYC, but the sacrifices she’d made for her safety and mental health to do so without a college degree, pushed her into numbing her feelings. On the outside, she was a success and lived independently on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in Sutton Place on the thirty-second floor of a doorman building with a view of The City that wouldn’t quit. On the inside, she was so lonely she couldn’t stand it and would pace the streets of Manhattan for miles searching for connection.
During her time in construction, she had also amassed mink and fox furs, multiple diamond necklaces, ruby and sapphire rings, diamond pendants, and loads of scarves from exotic places. Her wall of photos with the stars she partied until dawn with at the time included Frank Sinatra, Angie Dickinson, Shirley MacLaine, and Barbara Streisand — and for Vita, copious amounts of Vicodin as her go-to. Her supplier was her physician. And she would cash her checks downstairs at the local watering hole while toasting to the remains of the day.
Ida played tennis each weekend with Truman Capote and often partied in the Hamptons during long summer months. She was a writer by trade and grew up in Queens. When she found her fourth-floor walk-up in Gramercy Park she was smitten with its charm and close proximity to all the things she liked, including coffee shops. Ida was a loner in many ways, but she always appreciated her time dating and getting to know new friends through her work. Marxism was popular and she would often dive right into it in an effort to connect with the human condition. Many of her friends had underground beatnik parties and she would often go to speakeasies.
Her penchant for sweets meant much time spent on the tennis court or walking up and down the steps in her building. She traveled the world and would have been a travel writer if romantic poems hadn’t gotten the better of her.
Helen, Dorothy, Vita, and Ida all aged-in-place in the apartments they launched their lives from. Once locked into an affordable rent, time got the better of them and they never left. It became increasingly important that each kept the sights and sounds of familiar surroundings as they aged since they did not have families of their own. This often meant they became “shut-ins” or it got harder as they aged to get out. Each lived to be older than eighty and made stable with state-subsidized home care, Medicare and Medicaid, and a home visiting case manager — me. All four of them had osteoporosis. Vita lived with Parkinson’s for over a decade, she often fell as a result of years of drinking alcohol. Helen broke her hip at home, never recovered, and died of a heart attack. Ida suffered from dementia and heart conditions and was shuttled off to a skilled nursing facility where I never saw her again to say goodbye.
Each of these women had a profound effect on me in the mid-90s in New York City, as I shepherded them for years through the byzantine, disenfranchised travails of growing older in America. I wish I had spent more time with them and learned of their stories more deeply. They were pioneers for their time. Each independently earning a living, free in the world, making new self-determined decisions, and forging a path of fearlessness that should never be taken for granted.
The ERA is still not ratified in every state as of the date of this blog post.
