Paula Hawkins (1927-2009)

It may seem odd to longtime readers of Blast Off! to see an obituary to a Republican here, let alone a fairly favorable one. But I have personal reminiscences of Paula Hawkins, who died on Friday at the age of 82, and while I no longer agreed with her politically, I always thought of her as a good Floridian and a fine person.

Hawkins (right, with President Reagan and iconic Florida congressman Claude Pepper) served one term in the U.S. Senate and it happened to coincide with my junior and senior year in high school in Broward County. At the time, I was a loyal Republican (like my parents), and although I wasn't old enough to vote, I supported Hawkins and many of her positions, which were colored significantly by her Mormon faith. I have met many members of Congress over the years, but Paula Hawkins was the first: I met her while participating in the Close Up government studies program in Washington, D.C., in 1983, and I remember her as charming and informative without being condescending to a bunch of kids. She invited us to visit the Florida House, a Capitol Hill residence owned by and dedicated to the people of Florida doing business in or touring the nation's capital, and I remember marveling at (of all things) the free orange juice available there. I regularly stopped by the Florida House, America's only "state embassy, even as a D.C.-area resident in the late '80s and I always credited Sen. Hawkins with bringing it to my attention.

Paula Hawkins was a dyed-in-the-wool conservative who once described herself as "feminine" as opposed to "feminist" and who opposed the Equal Rights Amendment as contributing to the "downfall of the father's responsibility to support the family." Nevertheless, I always respected her and am sorry to witness the death of yet another icon of my childhood.

In memoriam: Jennifer Ingrum (1972-2005)

I hope you'll indulge me in another personal moment ... I was messing around on Google, looking up former students of mine, and I just discovered that a special student of mine when I worked as an instructor with the Close Up Foundation died in 2005 at the age of 32.

When I knew Jennifer Ingrum, she was a student at Gallatin High School in Tennessee. We corresponded for a while during my master's degree program at Vanderbilt University, but unfortunately we never saw each other again, despite the proximity of Gallatin to Nashville.

I'm moved and touched more than I can say to see that she led an honorable and selfless life:

Maybe Ingrum felt a certain affinity for HBO's ["Sex and the City"] since she, too, was a young, attractive single woman making her way in the big city, but the affinity was only skin-deep. A teacher at John Philip Sousa Middle School in Anacostia [a D.C. neighborhood], there was nothing shallow, nothing frivolous about Ingrum, except for the fun and silliness she shared with her family of friends in her beloved Capitol Hill neighborhood.

"She threw herself into life," said [Rigel] Oliveri, a Justice Department civil rights lawyer [and Ingrum's college roommate].

Jennifer Lee Ingrum, who died of melanoma March 28 [2005] at age 32, grew up in the comfortable small-town atmosphere of Gallatin, Tenn., where she was a cheerleader, an athlete and class salutatorian. She and Oliveri met in 1990 as freshmen at the University of Virginia. Oliveri recalled that her friend, strong-willed, outspoken and idealistic, sat in on classes she wasn't taking just to satisfy her hunger to know.

[...]

[Upon moving to D.C.] Ingrum found jobs waitressing, first at Hamburger Hamlet in Georgetown, and then on Capitol Hill at Tunnicliff's Tavern and at Jimmy T's. To her collection of people, she added her co-workers and tavern regulars.

But she wanted to do more with her life, and she wanted it to involve at-risk children. Still waitressing at night, she began volunteering with Horton's Kids, an Anacostia organization that provides tutoring and mentoring to neighborhood children.

In 1995, she got a job as the education coordinator at the Langston/Carver Boys and Girls Club in Northeast Washington. Within a year, she became the club's director.

"She loved it," Oliveri recalled. "She had her friends buy Christmas gifts for the kids, arranged sports teams and had friends coach. The girls who came to the club particularly loved her."

Ingrum decided she could be an even more effective advocate for at-risk children as a classroom teacher, so in 1997, she went to Harvard University for a master's degree in education. After two years in graduate school and a year teaching at a charter school in suburban Boston, she came home to her Capitol Hill neighborhood.

She was accepted by the DC Teaching Fellows program and got a job teaching children with emotional and behavioral disorders in a self-contained classroom at Sousa.

The article goes on like that ... I've no idea if her experience learning about government in D.C. through Close Up (and, in part, from me) had any impact on her decision to teach in D.C. as an adult. But, I hope you'll forgive me if I go ahead and think so.

I don't know whether it's proper to say, Jennifer ... but I'm proud of you.