Today is National Women’s Equality Day, a day set aside to commemorate passing Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 that allowed women the right to vote. This was the culmination of a long battle fought by many heroes so secure women’s suffrage. They risked life limb and incarceration to secure this important right for women in this country to vote and share in this deciding who leads our republic. Women like Soujourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton are heroes of this movement for the rights of women. While these are strong historical figures, I look closer to home as an example of the rights of women. I look to my own mom.
In the early seventies my father passed away, leaving my mother a single parent to raise two young children aged five and three. Through Shea day I was a registered nurse, she had not worked for a few years and her skills were out of date. In order to get back in the workforce, my mother packed us up, moved from Rhode Island to Maine so she could finish her Bachelors degree. We were going to live in Maine for a year an return to our home in East Greenwich. It was certainly and adventure for for the three of us. It was 1972.
Because Main was never intended to be outer forever home, Mom put our house up for rent and retained her residency in Rhode Island. So when the 1972 election rolled around, she was still registered to vote back in East Greenwich. On Election Day I had the day off from school that day. My mom got my little brother and me up early in the morning and we drove to Rhode Island. For those not familiar with the geography, that was an all day long drive down Interstate 95 though New England, evading traffic patterns in Boston and Providence. A single mom in a wood paneled Chrysler station wagon with two small children made the trek, the long drive to be able to cast her ballot in the national election.
I was seven years old at the time. It was a great day. I was a seven year old boy who got to spend a great day with his mom. More importantly, I learned just how important the right to vote is. My mom, who had to juggle working, a college course-load and raising two young rambunctious boys. Because of that example of my own mother, I made sure I registered to vote as soon as the law allowed. Over the last thirty-seven years, I never missed a vote, even when I was serving in the military away from home. My mother passed from this life in 2017. Her example of the importance of just how important the right to vote is lives on in me.
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