A life in politics

By Mary Leonard, Globe Staff, May 9, 1999

SALISBURY, N.C. -- Elizabeth Hanford Dole's first venture into presidential politics was, by her own account, a bomb. Despite a spirited campaign invoking the name of Queen Elizabeth and the slogan "the modern world is giving women a big part to play," Liddy Hanford -- in 1953 the first girl to run for president of Boyden High School -- lost to the male machine.

It was a lesson in how to lose, a gracious and grown-up Dole recalled in her autobiography, "Unlimited Partners." But it also was a failure that she determined then and there never to repeat.

"Liddy made a promise to herself that she would move on and prepare better next time," said Mack Lampert, a Dole classmate since kindergarten and still a friend. "There were no sour grapes, but in my opinion, she's been trying to make up for it ever since."

Just four years later, she got it right. Dole's 1957 campaign for president of the Women's Student Government Association at Duke University was so well-oiled and her message so effective that even her opponent voted for her.

"She was so well-spoken, so thoughtful, so poised -- I had to support her," recalled Karen Black Miller, who now lives in Greensboro, N.C.

Today, Dole has something greater to prove: that she has the strength, stomach, and savvy to compete in a large field of Republican men to become the first female presidential candidate of either major party. Her friends in her native state aren't surprised: The woman they still see as both a pioneer and a work in progress has always had her eye on the biggest prize.

She came of age when girls were groomed to be ladies and wives, and careers were meant for men. That didn't quite suit the goal-directed Dole, who described herself as "an in-between" female of the '50s. "It had been said, somewhat cynically, that there were girls with dates and girls with data," she wrote about her time at Duke.

Still, Dole didn't wait a decade for the feminist movement to open doors for her. Blending brains and ambition, self-discipline, and Southern charm, Boyden High's 1954 "Girl Most Likely to Succeed" became Duke's "Leader of the Year" in 1958 and one of a few women in the Harvard Law School class of 1965.

"She saw a place for herself in the world that pulled her to challenges other women of her day wouldn't even consider," said Margaret Kluttz, one of Dole's girlhood friends and a former mayor of Salisbury, a town of 24,000 north of Charlotte. "I have no doubt about her readiness to be president. She has been preparing for this all of her life."

Last weekend, Dole demonstrated she can stray from the expected script when she took on the National Rifle Association -- and got booed at a New Hampshire GOP dinner -- with a call for stricter gun-control measures in the wake of the Littleton, Colo., school massacre.

Her campaign committee, still in the exploratory stage, crowed about a new USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll showing Dole in second place in the GOP field, 18 points behind but gaining ground on Texas Governor George W. Bush.

Dole and Bush are the current odd couple of Republican politics. He hones the image of a Texas wildcatter from a Connecticut Yankee family, the boy who played hard but didn't work very hard in prep school. She, by contrast, was Miss Prim and Perfect, the straight-arrow debutante who compulsively tried to please her parents and was so put together that she painted and repainted the frames of her glasses to match her frocks.

Like Bush, Dole was a child of privilege. John Hanford, her father, was a formidable businessman, a workaholic, and a staunch anticommunist who built a family bomb shelter and made a fortune in wholesale flowers. Mary Cathey Hanford, her mother, was the quintessential Southern matriarch, strong of faith, industrious as a community volunteer. She is said to have doted on her talented daughter and obsessed with the achievements and success of the little girl who nicknamed herself "Liddy."

Mrs. Hanford, who had given up a promising musical career to marry and raise a family, seemed to live vicariously through her daughter, friends said. Now 98 and ailing, Hanford has made the family's large and handsome Tudor home on historic Fulton Street a shrine to Dole, and she has filled 24 scrapbooks with her famous child's clippings, photos, and awards.

"Mother instilled a strong sense of duty and responsibility in Elizabeth," said John Hanford, Dole's only brother, 13 years her senior. "In everything she did, Elizabeth gave it her best shot. She was really quite exceptional."

While Dole still calls her mother "my best friend," Mrs. Hanford's expectations put intense pressure on her daughter to produce -- not simply to do her homework, a dominant theme in Dole's life -- but also to win essay contests, perform in piano recitals, get the best grades, and collect pennies for the poor.

"I learned a strong work ethic on South Fulton Street," wrote Dole, who did not respond to requests for an interview. "Self-improvement was a measure of personal growth. It was also a way to satisfy my goal-oriented parents."

To satisfy her maternal grandmother, also named Mary Cathey, Dole dutifully spent Sunday afternoons in her parlor listening to Bible stories. Dole attributes a deep spirituality more to the lessons of her devout grandmother than to the sermons in the United Methodist Church to which her parents belonged.

Even at play, Dole strived for perfection. Lampert, the friend since kindergarten, remembers how Dole came home from college one summer to find her friends water-skiing. Self-conscious as a child about her lack of athletic ability, Dole got an instructor and fell into the lake "over and over again," Lampert said, until she mastered the sport.

"As a boy, I was impressed at how her wheels were turning, how she knew she needed the skill and was willing to take the fall to acquire it," Lampert said.

It was an idyllic time for families like Dole's in post-war Salisbury, which was then a strictly segregated town and is still proud of its downtown monument honoring Confederate soldiers. Along with fine manners, gracious living, and social connections, the sense of noblesse oblige was strong here in the 1950s, and many of her friends believe it is where Dole learned the art of networking and the value of public service.

"If you had the means, the time, and the ability, you had the obligation to do the right thing," said Rose Post, a reporter for the Salisbury Post who has covered Dole's career from her days at Duke to her most recent job as head of the American Red Cross. "Liddy is a product of this noblesse oblige."

Friends remember Dole as a girl who was popular, fun, and loved to laugh. "She wasn't some gooey little thing," said Peggy Looney, one of 18 girls in a clique known as the "Debs" that Dole led. "She didn't do anything that was wicked, but she wasn't always toeing the line, either."

But she was different, the overachieving product of parents who encouraged her to think for herself and be independent. "Most Southern girls were strictly taught how, when, and where things were properly done," said Meetta Lampert, another Dole classmate and also a Deb. "I was told I could be a nurse or a teacher or a mother. Being a lawyer like Liddy never would have entered my mind."

Indeed, Mrs. Hanford tried to steer her daughter into home economics in college, but Dole preferred political science. Dole carefully built a case and consensus in her family for the course she wanted to take -- a recurring pattern through her career as Dole repeatedly defied convention and her parents' hopes that she would return home.

There was no debate about Duke: Dole's brother had been a Big Man on Campus at the Durham school, and it was the prestige choice of parents in the South who wanted more than a finishing school for their daughters. "Duchesses" took classes with Duke men, but they lived on a separate campus and had their own deans, clubs, organizations, and student leaders.

They also had their own handbook of social standards. According to "Design for a Duchess," proper Duke women wore hats and hose to church, sunbathed only in a designated area behind the gym, and never talked out the window to friends. Not every rule was enforced -- many, in fact, were ridiculed -- but manners, civility, and reserve perfumed the air.

The atmosphere in Durham was perfect for Dole. She found the deans to be strong mentors, like her mother and grandmother, and the opportunities for leadership that boys denied her in high school were wide open and encouraged in Duke's Woman's College. She took a class in public speaking, virtually unheard of for a woman, and she not only majored in the man's field of political science but also earned the department's highest honors at graduation.

Budding politician that she was, Dole plunged into sorority life and student activities, from the choir to the newspaper to the drama club, making a name for herself and building constituencies across the campus.

"Everything Liddy did, she did for a reason," said Ellen Bradley Cole of Chelmsford, a member of Duke's class of 1958 and head of the women's judicial board her senior year. "Everybody accepted her ambition. That was our Liddy -- get ahead! -- but I'm not sure everybody liked her."

Classmates who found Dole too good to be true urged Miller -- then Karen Black -- to oppose Dole in the race for student government president. It proved to be a daunting experience for the unprepared Miller. Dole covered the campus with posters and pictures, presented a solid platform, and gave an excellent stump speech.

"People think she is programmed for this presidential race," said Miller, who lost to Dole in a landslide. "I can tell you, she's been programmed all her life."

Dole campaigned as a progressive who would respect tradition but still work to change restrictive rules, such as dorm-closing hours. "With our changing world, it was and is necessary for us to change in order to adapt, even in our university life," Dole said in her 1957 speech to the women students. "We must remember that our influence is far-reaching, for Duke graduates will become leaders in our world tomorrow."

As usual, Dole came to the job prepared. After the editor of the school newspaper, the Duke Chronicle, criticized the president-elect for lacking knowledge of parliamentary procedure, Dole spent the summer memorizing Robert's Rules of Order. "Come September . . . I could have held my own with the legislature in Raleigh," Dole wrote.

Her female classmates rewarded her well, tapping her for White Duchy, an exclusive, secret sorority of outstanding seniors, and electing her May Queen, an honor recognizing community service more than beauty.

In 1958, the Duke Chronicle named Dole "Leader of the Year," the single student, man or woman, who had "contributed most significantly to the improvement of the university." The newspaper cited her efforts to establish a campus-wide honor code, expand the foreign-exchange program, provide student-leadership training, and maintain good relations with the administration.

"She didn't make waves, and she most certainly didn't take risks," Cole recalled. "She was the type who always wanted smooth sailing."

It didn't necessarily seem that way back in Salisbury. Dole's path from Duke to Harvard, with a summer at Oxford University in England in between -- increasingly perplexed the Hanfords. According to Dole, her mother "lost her dinner" the night in 1962 when her only daughter, who already had a master's degree in education, announced her intention to go to law school.

"Don't you want to be a wife and a mother and a hostess for your husband?" Hanford asked her daughter.

Dole acknowledged it had crossed her mind, but her brother said he knew it wasn't immediately in the cards. "Back in Elizabeth's years, there was no such thing as women having it all," he said.

Dole did have a serious boyfriend named Dick Jones at Duke, and some in Salisbury were surprised when an engagement ring didn't follow the fraternity pin she wore.

"They were quite in love, but they couldn't get together on how much leeway Dick would give Liddy," Looney said. "He wanted to practice law in a small town in the mountains, and I don't think that was the way Liddy wanted to spend her life."