Ok so I know this is the third post of the day, but I just heard about the passing of Molly Ivins, a Smithie from the class of '66. For those of you who don't know who she is, here's a very sweet article about her.
I just wanted to say a little something about the woman. I know she was an author and an activist, but what I will remember about her was her sense of humor. When I saw her at Rally Day in 2001, I thought I was going to piss my pants. She was a woman who didn't hold anything back and you could tell she wasn't afraid to tell a person what she thought of them to their face. Some of her political views were a bit rabid to me, but c'mon, she's a Smithie, and honestly, to another Smithie that's the only thing that really matters.
My favorite Molly story was the one she told about her hometown: The KKK, the Ku Klux Klan, came to demonstrate in Austin just two weeks ago; they came on the Saturday before the Martin Luther King holiday to protest the fact that the state of Texas now recognizes the birthday of Martin Luther King. We don’t have very many Klansmen in Austin, so they had to bus them in from Waco. Forty of them got off wearing sheets and hoods and were met by 5,000 citizens of Austin who “mooned” them. It was really artistic. It was sort of like a wave on Congress Avenue. And that’s the kind of thing I mean about having a little fun fighting for freedom.
She made me proud to be a Smith woman: "It wasn't that Smith taught me that women can do anything," Ivins said. "Smith taught me to simply assume women can do anything! And as I went forth to conquer the world in 1966, I didn't yet realize what a great gift that [concept] was. It took me a long time -- and I'm still grateful for it."
RIP
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