THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Pat Reuss

“Everyone has value and deserves dignity, equality and justice.”

Interviewed by Mary Jean Collins, VFA Historian, June 2024

PR:  My name is Patricia Blau Reuss. I was born and known as Patty Blau in Fresno, California, which often shows up as the 260th rotten place to live in, bless its heart. Both my grandmas lived in shacks. We were on the wrong side of the tracks, but my dad and mom found each other; two of the bright kids in the families, and married. And so, my sisters and I are blessed because they pulled themselves out of shackdom, and we had a great life together.

He went off to the war, so I lived with my grandparents who lived next door. A shack means it’s like one bedroom. They’d just gotten a modern bathroom. Maybe when I was a baby, there was an outhouse.

So, most of my life I don’t relate, but there are parts of my life where I’ve worked with poor women, low-income women, struggling women, women alone raising kids like my mom was. She couldn’t drive. She had to go out in the parking lots and teach herself to drive. She went and took my dad’s job at the raisin packing shed. He was the director of the trucks that came in and out with raisins. She did that, and had to get there and so she taught herself to drive.

The minute he came home, she stopped driving. The day I was 15 and a half and got my driver’s license. She drove me there and then she never drove again. She said, “Oh, Patty, I just wish you were old enough to buy cigarettes and alcohol.” Even though right now I’m massively educated, I have disposable income, I am privileged, in the back of my mind, you can’t tell those stories.

I got an award from an anti-poverty group in Georgia named after a Black woman who had led the fight there, and the award was in her name. I’ve forgotten the wonderful name of the woman whose organization it was. We had faxes by then. My son and daughter-in-law came, I was with Natalie Revenson, Cathy Rogers came, and I sent a fax out, and Betty Friedan showed up. She was a friend of mine. So, I was not only the hit of the ball, but here came Betty Friedan.

But the point is, I got up there and related. It was my work on the welfare bill. And poor women and families and kids, and much of the audience, were Black women. Some had come from Georgia for all of this.

One woman came up and threw her arms around me and she was crying. She said, “When I saw a White woman was getting this award, I was horrified. And after I heard you talk, thank you, thank you, thank you.” But all of us Mary Jean, we all have that story. I remember Patricia Ireland. She looked privileged but she has an Irish shanty background herself.

We all have had times when we couldn’t pay the rent. We’re determined that we are going to make the world a better place. So, some of the anguish is relieved. We can’t relieve it all, but some of it is relieved. Anyway, so I digress. What was the next question? Did I ever stop talking?

MJC:  So, your parents, we’ve heard a little bit about them and where you lived. The next question is, how does your life proceed, and how do you get to the women’s movement?

PR:  I have been organizing all my life. I organized my dolls, I organized everything. In maybe second grade, I would finish my work and go in the back and charm all the other kids to come and we’d build things. The second-grade teacher said, “Patty’s flunking out all these kids because they’re having more fun with her in the back of the room.” So, they skipped me to third grade. My fourth-grade teacher on my report card said, I was “a little chatty.” I just was always getting people to do stuff.

My aunt was a social worker. My grandma, the March of Dimes. So, even though they didn’t have any money, they gave back to the community. And indeed, as my father grew in his career; he had graduated high school at 14, no college, he worked for a title insurance company. But he was a leader in the community, and this is me growing up. He was the treasurer of our Girl Scouts when I was in junior high.

And so, I just had modeling. I was always a do-gooder. I helped my mom and grandma. My story of raising the garage doors and opening them on voting day; people’s garages in neighborhoods. I miss that. Literally, we walked to this woman’s garage door two blocks away, opened the garage, two voting booths, my mom and my grandma, I’m chatting with everybody.

People vote, they walk home. It’s their neighbors. “Hi, Fred. Hi, Gladys.” I remember doing that. When I was in sophomore college, John F. Kennedy got elected. I hadn’t knocked on doors, but I’d done a little bit of talking.

I wanted to be a doctor and I went to the counselor at the University of California at Riverside, which is six miles from where I live. Luckily, my uncle had died and left me a car and so I had a car that we couldn’t afford to buy on my own. I just said to the counselor, “Okay, I want to be a doctor.” Well, he fell out of his chair laughing. This is 1959, okay? And, “I want to go to Stanford,” that was the elite school, and I had the grades to get there.

He just fell out of his chair laughing and said, “Oh, don’t be silly. First of all, we’ve already filled our 10% quota for girls in pre-med.” So, that sits in my gut and in my heart as I pass Title IX, as I save it five times, as I see women at the military academies, and the woman wins. I’m horrified about guns, but she wins the sharp shooting contest. I see Kaitlyn Clarke shooting three points. Sometimes you wonder if it was worthwhile, all that pushing, gabbing, organizing, and there it is.

Then, I met my husband at college. I was at Riverside, California; it’s just 50 miles east of Los Angeles and he was from San Bernardino, just a few miles away. And we married, student housing. So, no doctor for me, but I was a teacher. And that was probably perfect for me because I loved giving orders and teaching, giving advice.

I taught social studies. Of course, I forgot to teach them anything about the women’s movement or the civil rights movement. We never got there. The semester ended. And then the next two years, I taught physical education, where I taught basketball but the girls had to stop half court.

I’m telling you, these are all the reasons that I have it in me – every girl athlete I see striving for more. I remember myself in school trying to go full court because I was so good, and having to tell these girls to stop. Having the fastest runner in school, her name was Emma, seventh grade, but she couldn’t compete with the boys. She would have beat them all in track. The day I talked to her we both were crying. “When you go to the high school, there’s nothing for you to do.”

Anyway, I went to college and I organized, and I got some award. I don’t even remember what I organized. The dorms, probably. The underground railroad, so that we could come in late. So, if somebody was late, the windows on the ground floor and then special knock, and somebody would open their window, and you’d crawl in and not get demerits or kicked out of school. I know, I know. Crazy.

I was married for four years teaching school, and then my husband got a job being a professor at Purdue University in Indiana. We went there, and I had one son and was a faculty wife and did meetings and stuff with them. Then I had a second son and that’s when I found out about NOW.

The faculty wives, we were pouring punch back in a dining room. We really did. I don’t think we wore high gloves, but we really did pour the punch and the guys came in and got it. Then they got to go talk in the kitchen or the front room about politics, or whatever. Alice, the wife of the head of the department, said, “Have you heard about the new group NOW?” It was probably ’70s. Then somebody said, “Yes, I like them better than the red stockings,” or whatever the radical group that had started. That’s the first time I heard the word.

There, in Lafayette, Indiana, I organized a group of parents. We had a parent daycare thing where you went to someone’s house and they came to yours when you went out. When somebody had a sick child, you could only come see that sick child at visiting hours. So, I organized letter writing and calling radio shows, and we got 24-hour visits for parents with sick kids. Then later, somewhere else along the line, we got beds in the rooms of the sick kids, because that’s what that sick kid needed. Anyway, that started me off.

Then Birch Bayh was running for the Senate. In the old days, before phones and anything, you would sit, and had a list of the people who were supposed to come to the polls. They said their name out loud, you marked them off, and then at about 3:00 in the afternoon, you went to a pay phone, or your own phone, and called the campaign and told them the people who hadn’t voted.

Then you either went back and poll watched, or you started on your own phone tree. He barely got elected, and I was his friend forever because I’d been there at the beginning; which is my philosophy for all of us. The way I know so many members of Congress, and mayors, and whatever, is to be there at the beginning and find a campaign you like.

I never had any money, so I was not a big donor, but you’re there to say, How can I help? I’ll empty the trash cans in your little mini office. I’ll drive people places. They remember you as a helper, and then you door-knock. Then they remember you, and you’re at their celebration party and they hug you.

Sometimes they even recognize you. Sometimes they even would get a ticket and pass out free drinks to people in the crowd. Then they were yours. Then you called them up when you needed a vote. You got to know their chief of staff because you were Pat, the wonderful helper. That’s it.

In DC, the Women’s Campaign Fund used to have dinner parties for the new women in Congress that they supported. We were at the Mott House, up there right across from the Supreme Court, and that’s how I met a whole slew of brand-new members of Congress. I didn’t have any money. I got invited for free.

Other people had paid money, but my friends who ran the campaign fund invited me. I was like the first feminist, lobbyist, that they’d ever met, and we talked and we were friends for life. I’m trying to think, Claudine Schneider and Louise Slaughter; so many are gone and dead, but then I could call their office, give them a heads up, and people go, How do you know all those congresspeople? And It was a simple act of showing up.

Sometimes you can go to a fundraiser, they have the little card, you write your name down. If it’s $100 you figure, Okay, I’ll have two drinks. That’s $20. You write a check for $20, put it in, seal the envelope, and they go, Welcome Pat, to the party. They only find out later, I only gave $20 instead of $100.

Then, sometimes in the old days, when all the parties were all men who ran the packs, Chuck Lovelace would invite me just to be a girl. I’d go to a big fundraiser. Tip O’Neill was there, over in the corner were two African-American women, and I went over there and I always start with, Okay, here are the troublemakers. That’s what I’d say, and everybody laughs or giggles and they became lifelong friends. They lobbied for AFSCME and they lobbied for the UAW, and their group was one of the first to sign-on every piece of legislation that I promoted.

Eula has died, and Cynthia, I don’t know where she is, but I went and found sisters, and we bonded, and we were friends. There were no cell phones. There was no anything. We called on the phone. And when we had a meeting, you had to write people in the mail and put a stamp on it.

Some of that was just my dad, who everybody was his friend. He made friends with the supermarket checkout person. We’d be driving and there’d be someone walking along the road and he’d wave to him and my kids would say, Grandpa, do you know that person? He says, No, but we got to be friendly. Everybody is somebody, he would say. I think that’s a philosophy that has kept me going.

MJC:  So, you were at Purdue with two kids?

PR:  Yes, I was at Purdue with two kids, I found out about NOW, we organized the hospital, then my husband lost a job; a federal grant didn’t come through. I was nursing my second baby, a year and three months apart, and I felt funny. I went to the doctor, and I was pregnant with a third child. I went to the pay phone at a shopping mall and called my husband, and he said, Oh, my God, I’m going to have to join the army because they pay for babies. We talked about it, we said We’re young, we’re highly educated, we both can get jobs, we can do this. 

But we both regretted that we didn’t have the option that we said we wouldn’t have taken and that’s really important to my son and my daughter-in-law, but we didn’t have that option. I would have had to have flown with a nursing baby and a little boy in diapers still, to California. And this is important, to get two doctors to say I was insane. But, I had no idea how my mom and dad felt about abortion.

Later on, I found out my mother was ardently pro-choice. She grew up in the ’30s, and my dad even was. My son asked him once, Grandpa, when did you know about abortions? He said, We never asked. The women would go to Clovis and see a doctor and take care of a woman thing, and that’s all we ever asked. I really don’t think it’s men’s business. Now that same son, I heard him talking to his son when his son asked about it and he said, Our job is to support our women. It really is their decision. Isn’t that great?

Anyway, so there I am, we come back and live with my parents in Santa Barbara for three months. I’m pregnant with Tim. A phone call comes from a Professor we knew at Purdue. I’m up here at Montana State, they need a political science professor, and come up. John flew up to Bozeman, Montana, and interviewed, and he came back, and he said, Here’s the local newspaper. It was like six pages. I said, Where’s the rest of it? 

Bozeman had 18,000 people. And we just said, Okay, and we loaded up the U-Haul and showed up at Bozeman. Two days after we arrived in mid-September, there was a giant blizzard. We had about an inch between our door in faculty housing and the ground, and the snow blew in, and I announced that I’d had it. We were leaving. But then guess what? We got snow, the little toddlers went out playing in the snow, and the sun came out, and we fell in love with Montana.

And so there I was with faculty-wives that had the same sense of, There must be something more as I did. I started the Nursing Mothers Club; remember, that’s when Nestlé was pushing women not to nurse and get free formula. We knew that nursing, for lots of reasons, if only to give them your immunity and save money, You have a big glass of water and you have milk for a day.

Then, I’ve forgotten her name, somebody came to town, I couldn’t go, one of the caucus women. She came to Montana State University, the other faculty wives went, but John taught a class and I didn’t have a babysitter, or the money. They came back and said, Robin Morgan was wonderful and We’re going to start the Bozeman Women’s Political Caucus. If the NOW person had come, we would have started a NOW, right? So, it was just first come, first served.

All of my organizing kicked in. The business headquarters of the local dairy let us use their conference room and we had meetings. That was in the days before there were PACs. Official PACs didn’t start until the mid ’70s. We would have fundraisers and collect cash. Then the woman, or the fellow running for office that we were supporting, we just handed over cash to them.

John and I, since we’d been raised in Southern California, cooked Mexican food. We would have great dinners with margaritas; no one in Bozeman, Montana had ever had a margarita, and refried beans and burritos and enchiladas. People would come with cash; one woman was afraid we’d run out of margaritas. She took a cab to the party because her husband was late.

We just had a wonderful time. And literally at the end of the evening, after it was all over; I think people stayed to help with the dishes, I would hand maybe $120 to this young man who was running for office, who was an ardent feminist, and later became speaker of the Montana House and was made us proud.

I found out I was good at it. Later on, I realized I was following what I call Saul Alinsky’s motto, which is Celebrate and have fun. Everything we did, there was my little stinky, silly, fun-loving element in it. We always had fun. At the end of every meeting, we’d crack jokes, we would humor ourselves, whatever.

Then John got a good job that he was going to be the director of the brand-new Environmental Equality Council in Helena, Montana, the capital. That’s where I really had a good time. My grandma; I had these three little boys. They were like one and a half, almost three and four. She came to live with us, so I had a babysitter.

We had some wonderful woman who came way before me. We had rewritten the Montana Constitution and had an equality clause in it. There were two from ACLU who wrote the correcting bills, the enforcing bills and then because I had grandma, they wrote my testimony and I went over and testified.

One time, Grandma went off to her card club and I took the boys with me. So, I go to Montana to testify and stood in line and I had to take these three little boys. What are they, two, three, and four. We were up in the third floor and the balcony was connected. It’s like a racetrack. And literally, I said, “Sit here. I’ll be right out.” Well, they got bored, and they were running laps around the balcony. And some guard came in with them, holding them by the back of the neck, “Who belongs to these boys?” I said, “Me.”

And so the head of the committee went, “Get her up here right now.” They plunked the boys down. I broke the line, testified, and got out. It was good stuff. But there was some other stuff. Haircuts that women could get were way more than men at barbers. The whole thing with dry cleaning. Everybody thought we were silly, but we also got all sorts of other good stuff.

We had 112 members of the Helena Women’s Political Caucus, which we started. We met in my backyard. At the Methodist Church, the Minister of the Methodist Church and his Secretary, we mimeographed all of our flyers. Thank God for them. I’d go down there and we’d type up something and mimeograph it and hand it out.

We worked on elections, and laws, and because I was there early, I got to know the governor. Partly because the man who got John to Montana, they lived in Helena and his wife was the sister of the governor’s wife. So, you play your cards when you can find him, right? So, one day I was on the phone, the three little boys behind me trying to be quiet and not succeeding, I turned around and said, “Please be quiet. I’m on the phone with the governor.” And one of them says, “Mommy, what’s a governor?” They brought me right back down.

We got wonderful things done, and I got really spoiled. My mom, who was never sure what I was doing, said, “Well, you’re a big ripple in a little puddle.” And I thought, “Well, but everybody has to start somewhere, right?” We were the hot couple. I was the feminist political organizer, and John was the director of this wonderful new group that really cleaned up much of Montana. And he hired women. He was a good feminist, he hired women, and everybody thought he walked on water, too.

Then, something came up at the National Conference of State Legislatures in Denver, and we moved to Boulder, Colorado, which is too perfect for words. They had bike paths. I don’t think anyone else got bike paths. This was 1977. No one else in any city in the world had heard of bike paths, but Boulder had them. They had skiing half an hour away, it was just too perfect.

Started a Boulder Women’s Political Caucus, and we had a ball. We got to know the governor of Colorado, Dick and Dottie Lamb. Anne Gorsuch, who was Neil Gorsuch’s mother; at the time was a right winger in the state legislature, she decommissioned the State Advisory Commission on Women, and we fought that. But we had a wonderful time.

We elected a woman mayor, and she came and talked to my kids’ classes in grade school. I got really spoiled. But I also got to know because I worked on their campaigns, I even had a fundraiser for Pat Schroeder. Then, Tim Wirth running for Congress, who then became a Senator, and Pat Schroeder, who was just everybody’s idol.

I went to graduate school, of course, as I’m doing all of this, I got a master’s degree in public administration. It’s like an MBA, only it’s for nonprofits. I had a great time doing that. One time, I was writing a paper in the dining room, and my middle son goes, “Mom, I have to bring cookies tomorrow at the cub scout meeting.” I went, “I don’t have time for this.” But because my oldest son could read, he read the recipe. The middle son climbed up on the counter and pulled the stuff out. And I went, “Pray to God that it all turns out.” Next thing I know, they have baked chocolate chip cookies.

MJC:  Amazing.

PR:  The goddess was there for me, right? And then, our marriage broke up because we had a couple over, and John was telling the husband that I was a paraprofessional. And I just thought He has no respect for what I’ve been doing. He was sort of jealous because when we were in Montana, somebody called for John Reuss, and the governor’s assistant, who was a good friend of mine, said, “I don’t know of John Reuss, but I know of Pat Reuss.” And that just didn’t work.

So, we lived there in Boulder and had a great old time. Our marriage was over. We were still living together, but it was pretty much over. And Pat Schroeder, her chief of staff calls, Gary Hart, was looking for someone in his Denver office to do women’s issues. Pat Schroeder calls up Gary Hart. I get the job. I’d had a big fundraiser for Pat Schroeder. I literally saw a high house on a hill with a big deck, and I knocked on the woman’s door and asked if we could use her house for a fundraiser. The ballsy-ness or the breasty-ness or the ovaries of it all.

She said, “Sure.” She even said, “I’ll be out of town, but my maid will be there.” We had a fundraiser for Pat Schroeder, who cried because no one had ever done that for her. I just fell into it, and I guess I just thought I could. I don’t know. But you still can do things like that. You still can do things like that if you’re good-hearted, and have a good purpose, and are not trying to trick or lie or cheat or steal. And then you can also have a good time and fun and celebrate.

So, I went to work for Gary Hart for four months. Our marriage was through. John got a job in Washington, DC. and out of the blue, a woman named Ann Coker at the National Political Caucus called and said, “There’s a group in Washington looking for a women’s lobbyist, at the Women’s Equity Action League.” I went, “Okay.” I literally flew to Florida twice. Once in Tampa and once in Gainesville because we needed a guy named Pete Skinner, a legislator, to vote. We were one vote short of Florida ratifying.

But here’s what we did. People put us up in their houses that we’d never met before. A law firm gave us their law firm conference room, put every phone they had in there. We called. We had orange juice. I said, “We’ll have a drink after you call, but not before you call.” We came real close. We still didn’t succeed.

But one of the times, ER America paid for my trip to go to Florida because on the way back there, I stopped and interviewed. And ER America paid for it. God bless them. I interviewed with WEAL [Women’s Equity Action League], and I took the red eye there, June 1, 1979.

The woman, Meredith, I forgot her last name, picked me up at the airport and announced that very day that she was leaving WEAL as the executive director. I was acting, and I’m going, “Oh, good God, what have I done?” But remember, I had Gary Hart, Pat Schroeder, and Tim Wirth. Two really, really important men, and one woman that everyone idolized. And access to them, and the sheer chutzpah that I can do this. 

I knew some of it was being a PE teacher, and helping women learn how to work on a team and find everybody’s strong spot, and a place where that strength can work. So, I put [on] “Budget Cuts Hurt Women,” and we had a whole group. Nobody signed up for it, I just told them they were a part of it, and they went, Oh, sure. It was the Reagan budget.

I don’t know. I don’t mean to be modest because it was an art that I had practiced, trained for, put to good use, and it worked. If I was a painter, my paintings are selling, or a doctor and I saved people’s lives with brain surgery. It was whatever. I’ve just been organizing all my life. So, for 10 years I was with the Women’s Equity Action League. Have I missed anything on our questions?

MJC:  No. We’re doing well. Can you explain for posterity, talk about the intent, what WEAL did as an organization.

PR:  It was founded as an alternative to NOW because NOW was too brassy. She wasn’t anti-abortion, but she thought we shouldn’t be working on abortion, we should be working on the monetary stuff. At the Women’s Equity Action League, we never had more than 2,000 members, and I had this great boss who trusted me. We had WEAL, and WEAL Fund. WEAL was the membership and the fund was the C3.

We finally all joined together into the C3 because by law, the C3s could work on issues. And my boss was wonderful, we got along so well. She finally said, “Pat, you know why we get along so well? You’re just like my husband. I’ve learned to live with him, and I’ve learned to be your boss.” It was the trust, the confidence, and in return, I didn’t hide anything from her. I learned to do bullet points letting her know what I was doing.

We had a person getting interns from the Ford Foundation, so I always had one, or two, or three assistants, if not four or five. The first day I showed up there was Kennedy from Smith, John from Harvard, Lisa from Yale, and I of course teased them. I said, “Oh, where are all those schools?” Pretending I didn’t know what they were. I said, “Oh, us, California girls, we don’t think much about the hoity schools back east,” but they were wonderful.

We did fact sheets, and we went over to the Carter White House for a briefing on women in small business. I caught my heel in a grate and all the stuff in my arm spilled; here I’m trying to impress these interns, and they just picked it up, got my heel out, and we went on to the White House. But I took them to the White House. That’s my whole point. I groomed the next batch.

MJC:  Exactly.

PR:  At any given moment even in our friendly White Houses, “Oh, no, this is invitation only.” I know during Obama, I said, “Well, I’m not coming without my dear precious protege, Terry;” she worked for another group. They said, “I’m sorry, it’s invitation only.” I said, “Then I’m not coming. She is the next wave. She is going to be our next wave.” I don’t know if I got her there or not, but it’s the whole key.

Not only you should find your way through the door, put a brick, or your foot, or a chair, and hold it open for the next person. She said, “Oh, you have to come. Senator Biden loves you.” I said, “I don’t care. If his door isn’t open for the next round of our feminists, I don’t want to be there.” I didn’t know why that was so brave.

The Women’s Equity Action Committee, I worked on budget. Oh, my God, I worked on pensions, all the issues I hadn’t even thought about. Social Security, I was giving testimony; they had a committee on Women and Social Security. Then I read two weeks after I was here – Ann Coker a friend at the Women’s Political Caucus, wrote it for me.

And I never once thought I couldn’t do it, because I had a backup, I had strength, I had bosses that were behind me, I had interns to help and come with me. Some of it was, I was a swimming teacher, it was the buddy system, and I believe in that so desperately.

There I was in pensions; I was famous for pensions and insurance. I was on the Today Show;  John Dingle and Phineas, who is in Muriel’s book, wrote a bill, Non-discrimination Insurance. We never quite got it passed, but we made the insurance industry’s life miserable. Because women live longer than men, therefore they get smaller annuities and the men get charged more.

They say, Women will have babies, so we have to charge them more for health care insurance and the whole bit. Here I am, a political science and history major, and a PE and geography minor. I was a whizz-kid in math, but I didn’t know you-know-what from shinola about budgets, or pensions, or insurance. But I guess I’m a fast learner and had lots of good help. I was considered the expert, and I put together a crew and we went around and lobbied Congress.

I think about this, a woman named Eleanor Lewis was John Dingle’s Chief of Staff; I worked on the Americans for Disabilities Act and I put together a group called Women for ADA; just out of the blue, gathered them around. She called me up and she said, “You need to come and see Mr. Dingle. He’s not supporting it yet.”

So, John goes, “Of course, Pat, come on in.” I took moderate women’s groups, and they said, “I don’t know anything about it.” I said, “Whatever I say, just nod.” And so we went around the room, and they just nodded, yes. He got a phone call, and he hung up and slammed it. “They keep calling me to get me to support the bill.” I said, “Sir,” he goes, “Yes, Pat,” “We, are they.” And he went, “Oh my God, what do you mean?”

And then I had to talk about the pay gap for disabled women is 16 cents on the dollar, and he was horrified. And then we found some the women’s clubs that he was familiar with, and they called him from Michigan, and it just was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.

They were horrified because when you went in his office, there’s all the animals that he’s ever shot and killed. They went, “I can’t sit here one minute longer.” I said, “have to.”  So, then my lesson was, wherever you go, if you’re horrified, just find one good thing to say to the member of Congress. I said, “Try it. Tell them you like their tie.” So, the next time we were all together, I told whoever it was, I liked his tie, and it worked. “Oh, my God. My daughter gave that to me for Christmas. Isn’t it wonderful?” And suddenly we were all friends.

So, the sealed envelope to get into a fundraiser, “I like your tie.” There’s just all sorts of fun little tricks. I also have mild claustrophobia, so I stand by the door whenever there’s hearings or meetings or even parties. That’s where all the members come in and out, and they stop and we talk.

One day, I was going with a friend and she started to go out in front with the 100 people. I said, “No, stand back here, Susan.” So, we stood behind the stage talking to people there, and here came Kamala Harris, and here came Kirsten Gillibrand, here came Elizabeth Warren. They stopped, we talked, we got our picture taken. I said, “Sue, that’s how you lobby.”

You don’t go out in the crowd. You go and find where they come in, or they leave. You’re nice. Your eyes are sparkling. You have your little ERA Yes sign on. You go, “Oh, Senator Warren, Pat Reuss from NOW.” “Oh, yes, I remember. You endorsed me early in my race.” “Yes, we did.” Then we talk, and I even get whatever bill they’re working on.

Then WEAL, with its 1,600 members, just couldn’t thrive. So, in 1989, it folded and I was out of work, and I had these three kids. I think all of them were in college. So, two of them moved out of the dorms and they stayed at friends’ houses. The other one lived at home. I borrowed money for their college. They were in Montana and West Virginia. Ted lived at home and went to George Mason. And friends just sent me checks for $100. I said, “I’ll pay you back.”

Then Jane Danowitz at the Women’s Campaign Fund said, “You’ve been up on the Hill for me for 10 years.” She gave me a desk at the Women’s Campaign Fund. Then Helen Newborn calls me going, “I need you to work on the Violence Against Women Act. Nobody likes it.”  She hired me as a consultant, and then I set up the DC office for the Now Legal Defense Fund.

That was a rain. We were hot tamales, because the women’s campaign plan eventually moved right next door to the Mott house. My office window looked right out to the Hart Senate office building, and the Supreme Court was behind us. I had interns, and we were in the basement, but it was great. We just had a ball. That was the years when Paul Wellstone was in the Senate, and we just had a great old time.

There was one year I was doing Violence Against Women Act, FACE, the Clinic Violence Bill working with Ellie Smeal, and fighting Bill Clinton on the bad welfare bill. My boys, who now are so feminist and so supportive, we just say we can’t even remember, I don’t think I ever helped them with their homework and they got A minuses and got into good colleges and are successful now.

So, God bless them, I’d go to work an hour and a half, sometimes in the traffic, drive in the car, park; I think Sunrise parking was free. I know when we were outside by the Senate, I parked just on the sidewalk and went in the front door. And we saved affirmative action somewhere in those two years, which we have since lost, which is so sad.

As I said, we just had meetings. We’d have the task force in Sexual and Domestic Violence, and the American Psychology Association had a big, giant boardroom, and they let us use it. It was wonderful and everybody came. Remember the two women from AFSCME, the UAW came, and they got their reluctant, men bosses to let them work on the bill.

I’ll never forget, the American Federation of Teachers called about the male lobbyist, she said, “Oh, God, he’s going up to the hill and he’s going to call you because he’s been assigned to lobby for the Violence Against Women Act.” So, this poor guy, miserable as hell, I got him all briefed on it, and he went up, and the American Federation of Teachers helped get a sponsor or two.

Then good old Chuck Loves – whenever they were going off to a PAC party and AFSCME had given somebody $5,000, I’d ride in the cab with them and we’d show up and everybody thought I’d plunked down $5,000. Again, standing by the door when the members would come in, I would introduce myself. I just managed to catch it all together. It was like Dolly Parton’s patchwork coat of many colors.

Again, some of it is sheer genetics in my family where we’re the greeters and the do-gooders, and some of it was when you find out what works, it’s a recipe, and you do it. NOW, indeed, was my grassroots, and it was perfect.

Then, let me see. The big thing was getting VAWA passed. There was a woman, she was on the board in Seattle, and we needed Slade Gorton as the last senator to sign on to get, and we had to get 67. And she worked, and sat with them, and we practiced what they were going to say, and he signed on. He signed on about 20 minutes before the bill came to the floor. So, when he’s running for re-election, he bragged about how he was an original sponsor of the Violence Against Women Act. And I thought, “Well, 20 minutes. Hey, we’ll take it.” Those are good stories.

MJC:  And Senator Biden was a key person.

PR:  Oh yes, back then, ’91, I met him, and we were good friends and we’d talk. His staff person, they would call and say; I don’t know if I’ve I told him this, “Senator Biden is dragging his feet and we told him, you were upset.” I went, “I’m not upset.” “We told him, you were upset.” “Okay.” So, he was doing a hearing. I went to the hearing. No wonder my hips were out, I squatted down in my high heels to whisper in his ear, breaking the hearing. He went, “Oh, Pat, I’m so sorry. What have I done?”

I had to pretend I was mad at him, right? “Well, we have to do,” this or that, they’d given me my script. And he went, “Okay, I promise.” And then did whatever it is. So that relationship with the staff is what I’m talking about. They knew I wouldn’t tattle. I knew they wouldn’t tattle. But it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t even NOW Legal Defense Fund. It was that I had troops. I had the coalition people. I had the unions. I had the civil rights groups, reluctantly.

I know on the welfare stuff, the women in the White House were wonderful. We had a meeting at Christmas with Bill Clinton. To my right was Al Gore, who doodled the whole time in the West Wing conference room and wasn’t paying attention, so I wasn’t impressed with him. But Bill Clinton did a John Dingley. He goes, La, la, la, “And they,” speaking of welfare women, “They have so many kids.”

And then because I had nothing to lose, and knew that if whatever I said next, I’d get a raise for instead of fired, I said, “Sir, they have the same number of kids as you and me.” And he looked, “I only have one.” And then I said, “I have three. And what’s the average of three and one?” “That’s two.” I said, “Sir, that’s the average number of kids living on welfare have.”

“Well, you got me there,” he said. And he vetoed the bill twice. The women all have to sit around the back of the room, the staff, and they gasped when I did that. But I feel, come on. That was a good thing for a feminist to do. I did it with love and laughter, funny joke. So, he did veto it twice. We got some more childcare; it still was a faulty bill but we had a good time.

I’m trying to think what else. I do want to laugh because the one thing we worked on early on when I was still at WEAL, was what we now know as COBRA, the Consolidated Budget Reconciliation Act. It started out for widows and orphans, widows and divorcees. If your spouse died, or you got divorced, you had to pay, but you could stay on the family plan through the work – which was still cheaper because there were hardly any single health care plans.

I just said, If I had a nickel for everyone who used COBRA. We worked on it, we worked on it, we worked on it. We went to Barbara Mikulski and tried to get her to be our house sponsor. The unions were against it because they wanted to negotiate health plans with the union, and they thought COBRA would undermine them. The unions had told her to oppose it; it wasn’t called Cobra then, it was Health Insurance Continuation.

But then we sat with goofy old Dave Durenberger, who since has left the Senate with a small black cloud, along with Bob Packwood. We met with him and told him all about it. Then, in a conference committee on the Budget Reconciliation Bill, Bill Clay in the house brought it up for widows and orphans, and Dave Durenberger said, “Let’s do it for everybody.” Unless you’re fired from your job for malfeasance or whatever, you can do, COBRA. And the whole conference committee said, “Okay” and that’s how we got it.

It was ALICE, it was the Older Women’s League, it was the AEAW, it was AARP. Everybody logged in, and I’d call them and say, ‘So-and-so needs a phone call. Say, “So-and-so, do you have an AEAW in this members’ district?” “Yes, I’ll call her.” We called the whole conference committee and they all had heard of it, and that’s how we got the vote.

So, it’s like a recipe for making, I don’t know, risotto or something. Don’t forget the wine or the garlic or the butter. When you forced me into doing this, I just have been thinking of all these things.

Abortion has been one of my main things. When we read about NARAL starting, I sent them money at my husband’s encouragement at the time, for the National Abortion Rights Action League and women’s reproductive health care. It’s funny because anytime the subject comes up, I just stand up and I say, I’m sorry. I have spent a lot of my feminist life working for NICUs; infant care for babies that are born. Don’t tell me I’m a baby killer. 

I have worked for prenatal care so babies are healthy. We got this and we got that, and we got free vitamins for Medicaid women. And then for women who could barely afford it, we got daycare. And in the welfare bill, they wanted to say no more welfare money if a woman had another baby. That was the family cap, and we got that removed.

So, I said, Don’t you tell me that. You get off your high horse. I want to see you help them support the childcare center, and free birth control for everybody. And so, if they’re friends, they go, Yes, you’re right. And then if they’re iffy and fallen into the, But it’s sort of murder, I just go, No, it’s not. So that’s been, I think, if anybody said, What’s your top issue? It is reproductive justice and affordable access to an affordability of pregnancy, termination, abortion.

 Whatever I say will hurt somebody’s feelings, but I spent my life also trying to help men talk about abortion. Donna Brazile, bless her heart, she’s wonderful, she worked with me because when Jesse Jackson ran for President, he was part of the ilk of Black men. That’s a White man’s euthanasia of our Black boys and girls to get these women to have abortions. She worked with him, and he decided he was going to be pro-choice. And that was Donna Brazile. I gave her the whole thing.

And now, Al Sharpton, and all men; I’m waving my arms over at the TV. Suddenly, they all can say it. They suddenly all know that it’s a tragic decision that women and the men who love them, and the families, and the doctors, have to make. When you step in that doctor’s office with them with your old tired beliefs, and you never missed a period; then just get the F out of here.

The NOW Legal Defense Fund had a big planning meeting, and they weren’t going to do violence or poverty anymore, which was our tell star, what we were known for. But come on, it wasn’t a big, attractive thing to donors. Come on. Ellie tried to fundraise on our work on stopping violence against women, and we both would talk to each other, and the direct mail just was dry. No grants or funding. NOW LDF decided to change its name and do child, and I said, Adios.

Spent the last 10 years of my professional career working at NOW with the NOW Presidents and the NOW field who I adore. I feel like I know them all personally. If I had a bigger house, they could all come live with me; the NOW rallies, and the NOW rounds. Then I just got to be in my late ’60s and retired on Social Security. I am a privileged White woman. I’m privileged that I have fairly straight teeth. I’m privileged that I have a master’s degree and eight years of college. I’m privileged that my parents died and that I had a little bit of a pension.

And then my sister, who didn’t marry or have kids and was a highly compensated businesswoman, tragically got ALS and died. And so, she left me and my kids the millions of dollars that she was going to retire on. And we all say, I’m going to cry, we would rather have her, than one nickel of her money. And then I sold my house. We bought our first house at $30,000 and I sold my townhouse at $425,000, so I had a little equity.

I’m just leading the high life. I’m disclosing these things to you because it all was an accident. I never worked to get a job to accumulate wealth. My mother kept saying, “When are you going to get a real job?” And then later in life, as we’re sitting around the dining room table at our townhouse that I had for 30-some-odd years, my son said, “Mom, I know we don’t have a lot of money, but we’re really proud of the work you do.”

And then my youngest one, the one who joined the Navy Seals and was a rugby star, he calls up his first week at college at the University of Montana – remember he was born in Montana, so he’s a big sky guy – and his freshman year in Missou at the University of Montana, he said, “Mom, thank you.” I said, “What do you mean?”

“When I meet girls and I tell them what my mom does, they go, yes, when I ask them for a drink or to go dancing or whatever.” I said, “Well, Tim, they know you’ll be safe. If they mess around with you, I’ll come and get you.” So that’s where we are. I have so many stories, I tried to write them all down.

MJC:  Have we completed your paid work?

PR:  The 10 years that NOW was just trying to keep NOW working with the members, Olga Vives was the vice president of NOW, and she calls me in right before Christmas. And she goes, “Pat, we’ve got to help Hillary.” “Okay.” Here I go organizing again. So, she called some state presidents of NOW, and we got Marge in Virginia, we got Terry in Maryland, all on our own dime, and I organized the whole tour in Iowa for the caucuses. They grumbled, but everyone who came got a city.

Terry O’Neill got the college town Ames. I don’t know anyone in Ames. She called, she found a woman who had a big, wonderful house, and we would host it, have the wine and cheese, and would invite people to it. And so, 40 people showed up at this woman’s house.

Marge Signor had some town right by the Hello Blinds that make Venetian blinds, and we had it in the upstairs of a restaurant. She just called the restaurant, and we did a flyer that they could pass out. Nobody famous came, it was just to come and hear from us who had traveled to Iowa about Hillary. Women brought their daughters, and daughters brought their mothers.

We were financing this out of our own pockets. Then Muriel Fox says, “Pat, dear,” my middle name was Dear for Muriel. “How can we help?” I said, “Well, you can send some money for gas and to rent the cars.” God bless her. We didn’t have a fund, so they wrote it to Pat Reuss, who cashed it, and handed out cash to people to pay for their motel bill, and I rented the car.

Gloria Steinem sent money; Muriel just got everybody she knew to send Pat Reuss money. It came to me, I deposited it, and handed out cash. We were kind of rogue, and luckily, I had enough vacation time. I almost got fired, but I filled out my time sheet and used my vacation. My supervisor had given me permission, and it was my supervisor who organized it.

We were in La Quinta’s. We used the La Quinta’s rooms, we’d fill up our car with cheap wine, and cheap cheese, and cheap crackers. We went to Pennsylvania, we went to Ohio, we just had a ball, and everyone paid for it out of their own money.

Hillary didn’t win, but in Iowa, the night of the caucus, it had snowed and somebody did a run to the store for salt and we salted the sidewalk. Then we gave rides to the women in the retirement home to come and vote. One of them brought her boyfriend, and we asked who he was going to vote for. He said, “Obama” and we seriously thought of stopping the car and letting him get out.

Then, one of the women as they’re starting to count, went to the bathroom and stayed too long. Marsha had to go and get her out of the bathroom and get her back in to caucus the vote. It was Edwards and Obama and Hillary.

Those were important things, lifelong things, that we did. She didn’t win, but he won, and he was a good president. And so now I’m really thinking, even though National NOW has endorsed Biden and Harris, I feel like we need to do something like that again. Would we go to Wisconsin with Tammy Baldwin? And then if Wisconsin is the key state, do we stay in nice hotels? Do we get the local party to get a hall? Do we show up and be like Muriel?

Look, we’re old fogies, but here’s why we need you now. And we get kids, and we laugh, and tell stories, and jokes, and have soda pop, or whatever. Because you do know, that Biden isn’t perfect. They’re furious he won’t demand that the archivist post the ERA. And I patiently point out that if he did, there’d be a massive court suit with this Supreme Court. And because the timeline is still there and we haven’t eliminated it, we could lose it and then we’d have to start over and I’m not ready.

I saw Catherine East was mentioned in the book last night. Catherine East is a wonderful woman. She was at the meeting where Betty Friedan wrote it on the napkin. She called me, she was old and dying. She called me and made me promise that after her death, I would continue to work on the Equal Rights Amendment. I can practically remember what I was wearing in my kitchen with the wall phone, and I promised her. I still have my ERA stickers everywhere.

I’m working with Carolyn Maloney, the ex- congresswoman who chairs the coalition. Caroline is calling the Biden people and asking, “Look, if he doesn’t want to say the words ERA, it’s quite uncomfortable, those three initials. When he says, Kamala and I believe in women, see if he’ll just throw in their right to be equal under our Constitution.” We’re going to see.

She said, “You do it better.” “No,” I said, “Caroline, you’re a former congresswoman. Call up Chuck Schumer, talk to Ron Klain. Come on.” So, we’ll see. There are actually Ohio NOW members who say, “We will vote for Biden but we’re not going to work for him because he hasn’t done enough for the ERA.” And I just want to go, “So let’s cut off our noses despite our face.”

MJC:  Exactly.

PR:  I’m blessed to be still healthy. I’m just 82 years old and healthy and no gray hair, blessed with the family that two of my sons and their family are close. Blessed with grandkids that are progressive, feminist. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. The wives are just divine, divine, divine. They went out and married wonderful women. So, I am blessed and surrounded by it, but I’ve still got work to do.

Currently, my vocation is working with Virginia NOW. NOW is still in my middle name. We had three women in Congress, Democratic feminists. One of them, Elaine Luria, lost last time to a Republican woman down in Virginia Beach. The one in the hinterlands, Abigail Spanberger, who we adore, is running for governor, so she’s not running, a nice Democratic man is running, but he’s going to have a race.

And then here in my district, we elected Jennifer Wexton. I knew Jennifer Wexton’s campaign manager from other campaigns. I said, “Ray, I don’t have any money, but I just moved into a condo and I have two bedrooms. And so, if you have a young worker, you’re not paying crap for it, they could come and stay here with me. No food, but at least board;”

I’m six blocks from their office. A young man shows up and his name was Jenner, and he was a feminist, and he loved the New York Yankees, and he was perfect. But the point is, that he worked his heart out, but that was what I offered. Nothing was on the books.

Jennifer Wexton, our champion ERA state senator, goes to Congress, and about a year ago was diagnosed with a Parkinson’s version of ALS, just like my sister died of, and is now unable to speak, unable to hold her head up. But she has a machine that she blinks her eyes so she can talk. My sister had that, too. The last time I saw her, she was sitting in her wheelchair, not talking, I went up and loved her, and she said one word. She said, “Kiss.” I didn’t know if she meant, Don’t kiss me, or kiss me, or kiss of, but I figured it was the kiss and I gave her a great big kiss on her forehead and told her how much I loved her.

Her seat is now up for election so that’s what I’m working on right now. And getting ready to get rid of Glenn Youngkin, our governor, and get Abigail Spanberger back in, and some sanity. And making sure that Virginia, with our borders on states that don’t have any access to reproductive choice, or pregnancy termination, or abortion, or intensive life-saving medical care, whatever you want to call it, that we’re still here for them.

That’s our goal, and we have a great team. We were going to have a Drag Queen Show fundraiser last fall, and I forget what happened. The man was going to let us have the restaurant, and provide the food, and then something went wrong and we didn’t have it. But everyone was excited that Virginia NOW was going to have a fundraiser that featured drag queens.

One final thing. Last night, at Muriel’s thing, who I adore, and I’ve told you this, when I met Muriel, she walked out of a press conference in a hotel, and she just was so beautiful and smelled so good and dressed so smartly. I went, “I’ll never be like her.” Well, forget all that. I am trying to be like her. That she was generous, and loving, and supportive, and all the things we know about Muriel.

She got a big award at NOW, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 years ago. I said, “She’s been like a mom to me.” You know it’s hard to please your mom. So, I work regularly to make sure she’s proud of me. But in the thing last night, in her tribute, there was a film of Betty Friedan at the first big street march. And Betty Friedan has certainly taken her share of criticism for many things. Some deserved, some not deserved.

And in her speech, I heard her mention women of color, I heard her say the word gay; she may have choked on it but she did. She came around eventually on the LGBT issues. And I heard her say, “None of us are free until we’re all free.” And she said that way back in, what was that March?

MJC:  ’68? ’72?

PR:  Yes, one of them. And so, I’m proud of NOW. We are criticized [for] being a White, privileged, women’s movement. And part of it was that I could do it because I had a husband, and I had a modest job, a grandma who lived with me, and I was a homemaker. And so, they could have a nap and I could be starting the phone tree, or baking the cookies for the party, or having the party at my house.

We were privileged women, but I’ve spent my life putting my foot, or the brick, or whatever, in the door to hold it open. Saving a chair, demanding, and as we started at the beginning of this, remembering my own roots and watching the struggle. And then being a single mom, I came to WEAL, I earned $13,000 a year in 1979. And a couple of nights, I got up because I was afraid I couldn’t pay the rent. In my sleep, I was unclasping the curtains from the curtain rods, trying to find money for the rent.

Then the boys, they got shoes at cheap sneaks, and we went to the day-old Pepperidge Farm Bread store. But you know what? They grew up to be just these wonderful giants of caring, wonderful people. Getting Teacher of the Year award. My one son has never had to do a resume, he has been recruited for every one of his jobs because people admire him, and he does such a good job. My middle son is the emcee of every event because he’s so wonderful. Sometimes we get together and we’re in awe.

Finally, my littlest son said, “Mom, when can I have a pair of pants that we buy at the store?” because I made all their pants that had an elastic waistband because I didn’t know how to do a zipper. So instead of buying it at the store, I learned how to make zippers in their pants. And then he said, “When can I have a pair of tennis shoes that aren’t hand me downs?” So, we went actually to a real shoe store and got tennis shoes.

So, I know what that feels like. And I will never stop working on behalf of struggling low-income families, especially single-mom families, and whatever I can do for them and advocate for them. I still do, and still care. It’s all volunteer because I have that luxury. I don’t have to punch in a time clock or drive anywhere.

My daughter-in-law who has a job she’s had for 35 years, she’s at the American Association of Blood Banks. She does membership and sales, and they adore her. She said, “I’m thinking of going to Spain for a month. Nobody knows whether I’m in Vienna, Virginia or Barcelona, Spain. My phone is still available. I’ll just have some different hours.” She’s the one you call all over the world. She is the backup to the person you call if a tragedy happens and you need blood, she will get blood to you.

MJC:  Wow. Beautiful job.

PR:  Oh, a hard job. I’m thinking, “Wow, she’s right.” My other son works for the American College of Radiology, and his work is all phone and computer. So, they’re looking for a house in Barcelona. That’s privilege, but they do, they give back. God bless them.

MJC:  I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your telling your story, Pat. Thank you.

PR:  I felt like I was writing my obituary.

MJC:  You’re writing your life story. That’s a different question.

PR:  Two, three people called after last night, “Oh, you’re famous.” I went, “No, no, stop it. I’m a hard worker that got recognized.”

MJC:  And that’s good. It’s good that you got recognized. It’s good that we got recognized because I’m in that book, too.

PR:  I haven’t bought the book, and then at the end of the program, it said, “Get your discount.” So, it was too late for me.

MJC:  Well, go on the website. Do you want me to send you the website?

PR:  No, I’ve already bought the book.

MJC:  Okay, good.

PR:  I did love the clips, and God bless Muriel. Muriel, Betty Friedan, they were moms to me in as far as telling me I looked nice, they were proud of me, I did good work. But they always had one more thing for me to do.

MJC:  Absolutely.

PR:  And to please them and then to do good, I picked myself up and got busy with whatever. I’d have lunch with Betty Friedan and she had a list of things we were going to do. Muriel would call, “Pat dear,” and then there’d be a list. And you just didn’t want to disappoint or let these people down, and I tried to be that person for the next round of the generation.

MJC:  Absolutely. And you do. And you are.

PR:  All right, my angel. I don’t come to DC anymore, I’d be right there, hugging and squeezing you.

MJC:  Me, too.

PR:  You know where to find me. Love you.

MJC:  I know where to find you. All right. Thank you so much, Pat. Love you, too.

PR:  Thank you.