By Laura M.
My mother Betty, born in 1932 in Ohio, grew up in Kansas, Chicago, Minneapolis and Athens, Greece, where her father was posted after World War II as head of the US mission there. An honors history major at Swarthmore College - where she was in the same class as Michael Dukakis - she has always been interested in current events and politics. She met and married my father in New York City when she was in graduate school, and my father was starting out in journalism. She raised four children on the upper west side in the rent controlled apartment where she still lives and where the picture was taken.
My father died in 2010 and only my older sister still lives in New York, but the rest of us come back to visit when we can, and I happen to be here with her right now.
My parents raised us all to be interested in the world around us. She took us to marches against the Vietnam war and in support of the United Farm workers, among others. After a peripatetic childhood, she has been in this same apartment since 1962.
She is doing so well for her age and is still active in her church, reading group, social justice group and other groups. She still has friends around her age who she sees regularly in the neighborhood. But she’s also great at making new friends!
She has been writing postcards to voters since they started becoming popular in 2016 and it’s something we love to do together. She also calls and writes her representatives, and donates to candidates and pro- democracy and environmentalorganizations.
She is my role model.