coverage go to the book tab on our website, booktv.org. >> good afternoon and welcome to the session on trailblazing women. this is going to be an exciting channel and i'm glad you're here. this is the seventh annual book festival, thank you c-span for covering it and thank you to all you all rated the cold rain and whether even though we are in june. i'm cheryl kagan andis my honor to be the senator for pittsburgh and ross well in the maryland state senate . on social media today if you are following along at home you can to at our authors and the book festival we are also on histogram and facebook and everything so i'm delighted to have marlene pressman and john noris here. our country is at the brink of possibly electing a first woman president and none of that would be possible without some trailblazing women the two who have been profiled in these wonderful books we're going to talk about today. i had never heard of betsy margolin before reading this book by marlene kessler. you're going to enjoy hearing more about her, about marlene and bessie. he was a trailblazing lawyer and you will hear over and over the first ever or the only. betsy margolin argued before the supreme court more than almost any other woman in the 20th century. she fought for over time, for fair labor laws, for reasonable pay against child labor . she also was tennessee valley authority working to bring jobs and power, electric power to the rural south. she went to work for the labor department did she went to nuremberg to help prosecute nazi war criminals. her story is incredible. and it started in an orphanage and it started with real challenges in her life and her story would have been lost to history if it worked for her protcgc marlene pressman who herself is an attorney in baltimore. she worked for three different attorney general's, attorney general's in maryland and help transition our current attorney general, wonderful brian cross. she's done remarkable work in the community and this is her first book, it's new, hot off the press and i hope you all search both of these books and so i'd like to maximize our time with our authors, each of these two are going to talk a little bit about their subject, talk a little about their journey and i've got some questions and then we will open it up to audience questions so without further ado i'd like to turn this over to first-time author marlene cressman, welcome. >> thank you senator kagan. thank you and you all for braving the weather as well. i'm quite honored to be at the gaithersburg book festival as a first-time author even to say that is quite exciting and to be here in the presence of such wonderful and impressive authors. betsy margolin, i will start off with telling you a little bit about her because read something from my book would be meaningless when so few people have ever heard of this amazing woman area i like to think that we've all heard of and many of us love the notorious rpg. before there was a notorious rpg there was an audacious bessie margolin and she was raised in a jewish orphanage in new orleans where she learned powerful lessons in social justice that shaped her into one of the 20th century's mostinfluential attorneys . beginning in the 1930s, she earned rare law degrees for a woman from both tulane and yale and went on to leave her mark on some of the biggest issues of her day. she was the only woman on the brilliant legal team that brought and kept fdr's new deal alive. she was defending the constitutionality of the tennessee valley authority which was allen's and basically as socialist by the power companies who believe that government had no rights in robbing them of their power literally over providing power to some of the most impoverished americans in thetennessee valley . from there she went to the labor department to give birth essentially to the brand-new law that had been enacted, the fair labor standards act of 1938 and she was one of the few women. she was the only woman from the labor department who shepherded that law through the courts and he was there in the labor department as every facet of that law was being challenged and as we know much of it continues to be challenged to this day. her only real time away from the labor department was six months when she was compelled to join a brand-new and exciting legal pursuit, justice jackson had stepped down from the supreme court to become the us chief prosecutor for nazi war crimes in nuremberg. betsy was drawn to this new and exciting challenge and during the six months in nuremberg germany following world war ii was credited for drafting the rules under which more than 200 prosecutions were held, trials were held, fair trials of some of the second tier nazis, often the people that you've seenin movies . this is the stuff that the subsequent proceedings were made of. these were the doctors, the judges and the industrialists. she, at the labor department when she returned, she -- when ruth bader was only 12 years old, bessie had already argued and won her first case at the supreme court and went on in her career to win 21 of 24 cases that she argued at the supreme court all to protect the wage and hour rights of american workers. and she was one of only three women in the 20th century to argue two dozen times at the u.s. supreme court. she also championed equal pay. she oversaw the strategyings and -- strategies and personally argued the first appeals in those cases and was a founder of n.o.w. she knew all about the feminine mystique and how to lean in long before those books were ever written. and if you think she had, if you think she was all work and no play, think again. [laughter] bessie's penchant for passion sparked a federal investigation and likely cost her a federal judgeship. but the story that i bring to this is a little more personal. i got to know bessie margolin. she was a friend and, in many ways, a mentor to me. i was orphaned at age 11 and was a ward of the very same jewell fare agency -- jewish welfare agency that raised bessie. and because of that, i got to know her during my time in college, law school at gw and into my own legal career with the state of maryland protecting public health. so i'm thrilled to restore her to her rightful place in history, and i'm happy when we're done to answer any questions you have about the process and more about her. in sho it really is a tribute to government lawyers and government employees. many people leave applause or simply enacted and the battle is done. with all due respect to our legislator who is our moderator, but those in government service understand the incremental baby steps that occurs only after a lot of past to put it into action and that nobody is ever stronger by its failure to be enforced. so anyways i hope that all federal employees, government workers appreciate that bessie margolin represents excellence in public service. so thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you for the presentation and thank you for writing a book about a woman and a heroine, he wrote that a lot of us would never have heard about without your hard work. marlene is on twitter at marlene trestman if you like to fin find follow her if we do better. and john norris. john underscore age underscore noris, not as easy to find but worth finding and worth reading. as much as bessie margolin is a new name to a lot of us, mary mcgrory is not. i'm not sure how many of you like to meet grew up following mary mcgrory's defeat, incredibly insightful, well-written column first in the washington star and then in the "washington post." she was great at zingers and educating and enlightening and holding accountable our government leaders and others. she also wrote about squirrels and cooking, and shed a whimsical piece side of her asoa well. i just had a quick personal story because in 2001, december 2001 i was talking to my friend bob asher and singing mary mcgrory praises, he said she should call her up in a tradition so. i was in the house of delegates at the time and she generously invited me to lunch.h. i was so nervous because i just didn't know what to say to the awesome mary mcgrory, that i invited a reporter friend to go with me because i thought he could handle the conversation if i got to tongue-tied. so i have wonderful memories of having had a lovely lunch with her in july of 2001. it was really a treat to readad john norris is a book about mary. john norris is the executive director of the sustainable security and peace building initiatives at the american progress, so that's long enough i just wanted to read that. he's been offer as well as a policy guy. is been published in the "washington post" and political and elsewhere. he had to go through 166 offices of mary mcgrory's papers in the congressional archives at the library of congress, and interviewed countless people. he had a lot more resources than marlene had when she was starting her book. john norris, welcome, thank you and tell us more about mary mcgrory. >> it's a pleasure to be here today.ore it's great to be -- too happy with marlene. the subjects of our biographies. have a lot in common once you do second of it. by almost any accounting of mary mcgrory was one of the mostou important journalists of the last 100 years. she was the first woman to win a pulitzer prize for commentary. her columns appeared in 200 papers around the country for the better part of a half century. she was one of the most important liberal voices in american political debate. she appeared on nixon's infamous enemies list with two stars an asterisk by her name which he always said was one of the greatest honors she had ever been recorded during her lengthy career. been accorded during her lengthy career. [laughter] so there's a lot there to begin with. but as with marlene and bessie, one of the things that really struck me about mary was almost the virtual impossibility of her emerging as the person she became. she grew up in a lower middle class family in boston. she was the first one in her family to graduate from college. she grew up in boston at a time when if you were a bright, young girl, your career choices were you could be a nurse, you could be a teacher, or you could be a nun. [laughter] and that was really about as wide as the horizons were expected. when she said that she wanted to go into the newspaper business, she fell in love with a cartoon character, jane arden, that ran in comic strips around the time, kind of the forerunner to brenda starr, and people thought it was just unacceptable, that newspapers were not the place for a proper young woman. as the author, eric halterman put it, journalists were seen as a career for those with insufficient imagination to be winos or gangsters. [laughter] but mary kept at it. she broke into the book review department at the boston herald traveler. she labored away in the book review department both in, at the traveler, then the washington star here in washington washington, d.c. for a good number of years, for 13 years. she wanted to cover politics. and for anybody who had the pleasure of meeting her later in life, it's fairly amusing that her editor at the time said, well, mary, we think you're too shy to cover politics. [laughter] which i imagine the presidents whom she subsequently terrorized fairly regularly with her columns would find that somewhat ironic. mary got her big breakthrough with the army mccarthy hearing. her editor at the time sat her down, and asked her a question that would send any head of a modern human rights or human resources department running from the room screaming. he began the conversation by saying, mary, you don't plan on getting married or having kids anytime soon, do you? because if you're not, we might give you more to do here at the newspaper. she said she'd like to at some point, but didn't have any immediate plans. so her editor asked her to add humor and flair and color to the news pages and sent her to cover the mccarthy hearings. it was an amazing step onto a very big stage. she produced a column for every single day of the hearings. it became a national sensation almost overnight be in large part because mary's style was really extraordinarily brave. this was at a point when mccarthy had destroyed the career of innumerable journalists and state department officials and people in the u.s. military. mary could have played it safe, she could have played it easy. she described mccarthy as a bully. she said that she'd seen his like at weddings and wakes back in her hometown of boston her whole life and called it like she saw it. she did so in tones and a writing style that was really revolutionary for the time. it was very conversational. she had a wicked sense of humor. she poked fun at people, and she talked about the politician and personalities of politicians as easily as we talk about relatives and friends around the kitchen table at the end of a long day. and that was really unheard of at the time. she combined what we think of traditional column writing with a style of a police beat reporter. she was relentless in making the rounds. she would be out there on the campaign plane, she'd be out there at congressional hearings. she insisted if she couldn't see a subject with her own eyes, she couldn't cover it properly. and it became very much of a lightning rod for opinion in this town. she got, in just a couple of weeks of covering army mccarthy, she got more letters than she had in her entire career as a book reviewer. people wanted to take her out to dinner, people wanted to bring her home, people wanted to denounce her, throw her behind bars, they questioned her ancestry. it was really a remarkable reaction. shortly after that she was featured in time magazine. and, again, to speak to the sexism of the day, there's a fascinating back and fort in the correspondence, she had to go to extraordinary lengths to talk the time editors out of not describing her as washington's top news hen. and they couldn't really understand why a woman would not particularly want to be described as a top news hen. she did eventually, she went into syndication not long after. she was offered a job at "the new york times" by famed washington bureau chief scotty resten. but scotty resten, when he offered her a job, unlike the male reporters, he wondered if perhaps she could help cover the phones in the morning. she was somewhat insubstituted -- insulted by that and stayed at the washington star, understandably. it was a time when marriage was a career-ending proposal for reporters. there were a number of women at "the new york times" who went so far as to conceal their marriages to they wouldn't be fired as reporters -- so they wouldn't be fired as reporters. and again and again it was made clear to mary she had a choice, she could get married or have a career. she chose to have a career, but it was a very difficult choice for her, and i think it really speaks to her importance as a trailblazing columnist and a trailblazing woman. she covered the kennedy years with incredible verve. she knew jack and bobby very well. they were friends. they came from boston. she loved them. they butted heads. it really felt like a family relationship in a lot of ways. her kennedy -- her column on jfk's funeral, the series of columns she wrote after his assassination are still some of the finest columns we've seen in american political writing in the last hundred years. they're still taught in journalism classes as really an example of how to get your opinion across and do it well. you know, and mary -- because she was a somewhat nontraditional columnist -- her work usually appeared on the first or third page of the newspaper. and she saw it as her job to blend commentary and hard reporting in a way that we're quite used to now but was really revolutionary at the time. and she had remarkable access throughout her career. she was behind the scenes, she was in the hotel suites of presidential candidates. she became one of the leading voices speaking out against the vietnam war at a time when the eastern establishment was fairly mum on it. she became a hero to the youth movement and the student movement opposed to the war. they really were amazingly odd bedfellows, that they didn't know what to do with this woman with perfect diction who wore chanel suits and spoke in almost victorian english. but she loved their cause, and they loved that she was highlighting their cause. she became really instrumental in trying to push bobby kennedy into the presidential race in 1968 to stand up against vietnam there was an amazing transcript of her interview with bobby in november of 1968 that really highlights she really crossed a lot of boundaries of what we'd think of from a traditional journalist. she sat down and instead of asking bobby do you plan to run she said point-blank, bobby, you need to run. you need to end this war, you need to stand up to president johnson, and you need to speak out. they had a very difficult conversation. bobby said that -- well, most of his family agreed with her. he couldn't do it, he thought it would split the party. and mary became quite close to gene mccarthy in his insurgent campaign against johnson after that. but one of my favorite exchanges between mary and bobby came the day of the tet offensive. bobby had held a press breakfast in washington, d.c. where he made his famous somewhat shermanesque statement where he couldn't imagine any situation where he would run against lbj. bobby was not aware that at that exact moment the tet offensive was unfolding. so when the story ran in the newspaper later in the day, it made it sound like bobby was saying despite the tet offensive, there were no conditions under which he could imagine running against lbj. mary, incensed at seeing this in the newspaper, sent bobby kennedy a telegram that said, in full: apparently, st. patrick did not drive all the snakes out of ireland. [laughter] you know, and this was the point where bobby was the most feared political enforcer in the united states. and mary was absolutely comfortable going toe to toe with the guy and telling him exactly what she thought. one of bob pie's aide -- bobby's aides said, well, that's it, we've lost mary. and interestingly, bobby said, no, no, this is a family thing, this is an irish thing, we'll get it sorted out. and they did in the end, in a way. but mary had a remarkable career spanning more than five decades covering every presidential campaign during that period. she was an incendiary talent. she changed how we write, how we think about politicians and what we expect in terms of coverage. and she led a fantastic life that i think as a writer you're attracted to good stories, and you're attracted to really good lives, and mary certainly led one. thanks. >> thank you, john norris, marlene trestman, for those great -- [a >> both of these authors newth their subjects personally, and so i read them both as really love letters to these twoy, dynamic, amazing women. so when we talk about women trailblazers, i was struck by a couple of things. they were both important and hampered by both her gender and their faith. mary mcgrory was catholic when that wasn't so common and, obviously, the jfk, our first catholic president. and then bessie margolin because she was jewish. they bolted out with both faith and gender issues but i'd love to know for all of their accomplishments during her time at the country edge, what if you could give us one or two briefth examples of the impact their work is had on women today. marlene, why don't we start with you? >> absolutely, thank you. there's so many ways. very specifically in the law that he argued and won the first equal pay act case that went to an appellate courts. it set set the standard that continues to this day. and that is the work need only be substantially equal and not identical to warrant equal pay under the act. that seems so common sense, and that was a piece of litigation that took years of hotly contested litigation to establish. in other ways bessie whiskey row supporter of men and women of talent. and the people whose careers shn nurtured and help and shaped continue to this day. one of her most important protéges, karen clauss, went on to become the first woman labor solicitor i remember when bessie introduced me to her when i was in law school, so i personally have been shaped by the kind of inspiring life.net to lead. she literally open courtroom o doors for every woman who followed. she at the time, especially in the tennessee valley authority in the 1930s, there was fierce opposition to a woman appearing in the courtroom. and the opposition would come not only from lawyers but from the bench, from the judges and often from witnesses who did not take kindly to having a woman there. so opening those doors. and she did it with such dignity and elegance your their she was representing the people in the jobs that make our jobs, and the cutters unlock characters and vegetable packers. and she did in well tailored suits and finely manicured nails to make sure that these peoplesd of jobs and the law that congress passed would be respected.re that so there are very many ways. >> in mary's case i think, clearly, without mary's work in her career we would not have enjoyed the same work from molly ivins and gail collins and maureen dowd and anna quinlan, a whole generation of really good political writers. wind lin, a whole generation of really good yous. -- writers. i think for a lot of editors the idea that a woman can write as well as a man, if not better, and cover politics as well as a man was really shocking. you know? and newbie noise of the washington star took a lot of grief from his fellow editors and colleagues at ore newspapers that he would send a woman out to do this work. but again, they both are -- both our subjects had a penchant for looking quite stylish and being very pulled together. but at the same time, mary could -- she liked to drink scotch, she smoked cigarettes, and she could talk politics like an old boston hand. and i think that rather favorably impressed her subjects, that she could recite yates from memory -- cretes from memory and was quite literate in her writing style. one of the editors at the star laughed after one of mary's columns saying it was the first time per cleese has made it on the front page of the star in some time. [laughter] but the fact she was out there day in, day out, she wrote 3,000 columns -- 8,000 columns in her career. that is an amazing amount of production. for those 8,000 columns she missed a grand total of one deadline when she was stuck on a tarmac, you know? and i think there is not an editor alive who wouldn't take a really good political reporter who can produce 8,000 columns and miss one deadline. >> thank you. i was just going to follow up, if i could. i think the other thing that both mary and bessie had in common and had to was that they were able to endear themselves to the men around them. the only reason that they were able to succeed was that they could win the respect of people around them by, perhaps, doing more, doing better. and just like mary, bessie played at the tva weekly poker games. she was,ertainly, no -- she was well acquainted with a cocktail. and those were important ways to make sure that she was where conversations were being had, that she could be at the table and be given the assignment and the trust of people she needed to champion her to get >> so both mary mcgrory and bessie margolin were at the cutting edge. quick research, i found rather than just one in each newsroom, 37% of journalists are women, and 34%, according to the bar association just a couple years ago, 34% of voters are women. we are making progress and it's in large part and thanks womenes like this who helped lead the way. i wonder if each of you couldth tell us about the choices each of them had to make and each of you referenced it a little between the personal lives and their professional lives, the sexism they encountered and the choices that and the choices about the intimate interpersonal life and their career. they dealt with a quite different.d john, why did you go first? >> as i said it was very much a true choice, career or romance for mary. she was extraordinarily secretive about her romantic life both because she saw it as a potential jeopardy to her career and also because she was quite religious in a lot of ways. and i think was always very hard for her. for one of the reasons it's still very hard today, that a lot of men would be intimidated idea idea of romantic a woman whose byline was bigger than their own. and that sense of having to get along with the men and kind ofow be charming and flirtatious really was important to. i think it's very hard for a lot of modern feminists to kind of understand that these women they could out a way to get by with the hand they were dealt. for mary that meant a lot of times talking to politicians and saying, could you help me understand this, senator, aa little better? this is so complicated. and then the senator would open up the paper the next and be s like, oh, my god, i can't believe i said that to her. again and again they would fall for the same trick. it does totally serve them right. that combination of being the guy laying in being one of the few women out there and being literate and be able to drink and smoke made merr it very enos attractive to a whole generation of politicians. enormously attractive to a whole generation of politicians. and one of the most famous incidents was manufacturely was at home in her -- famous incidents, mary was at home and she got a call in the early evening. the person identified themselves as secret service and said that president johnson was just about to stop by. mary naturally assumed it was one of her colleagues yanking her chain and said, sure, sure, president johnson's going to stop by. she looked out her door, and there were two agents posted at the elevator. she furiously cleaned up her apartment. they had a couple drinks, and then president johnson in what, for me, will go down as some of the worst pick-up lines in human history -- [laughter] said to mary, you know, i'm craze i city about you -- crazy about you, i want to be with you. i know you loved jack kennedy, now you should love me. you know, i can't really see that working on a lot of people -- [laughter] but it definitely would not work on mary mcgrory. so so this identity and wanting to be attractive and engaging to men knowing that you had to keep them at a certain arm's length, i think, really played an enormous role in her life and career. >> from bessie's perspective, an interesting link is, as john talked about mary being essentially asked to pledge that she would not marry to get the job at the post, bessie very similarly in 1933, to get the job that she had, you know, a doctorate in law from yale. she was top of her class at the tulane. she had references from the future supreme court justice william o. douglas who was her professor at yale. but to get the job at the tva, one of her big supporters at yale wrote a letter and said what he knew tva needed to hear to hire a woman, its first, and what would be its last woman for the next 20 years, woman lawyer, was that she would not be deflected by considerations of marriage. and so she began a federal government career with a pledge that she would be married to her job instead of a woman. but as it turns out with bessie, interestingly -- and maybe this human quality that endears her to me and certainly nothing be i knew when i knew her personally -- was this penchant for passion. having decided the only way to be a woman lawyer in the 1930s when 2% of america's lawyers were women was that she could not be married. but the men she was most attracted to were men of her intellectual capacity, men who shared her progressive spirit, their attitude toward the new deal and who were they? the people she worked with. and most of the people she worked with happened to be married and probably had children. so in her case, this very human decision to fall in love with her boss at the tva later became fodder for a very nasty congressional investigation of the fcc where her boss later went to work. and it's interesting that the mccarthy time period gave rise to some of mary's most challenging as well as her biggest supports and her challenges. but it was all caught up in that same fear of reds and congressmen who accused the fcc as being a nasty nest of communists. but what saved her -- and, again, the interesting overlap, and we'll have to talk more about this -- it was actually lyndon johnson and sam rayburn, young congressman at the time, who saved bessie and her boss, larry fly, when rayburn and lbj got word that this congressman was going to be asking her boss publicly, in congress, about their affair which was to be alleged to be costing the government honeymoon trips, the word got back through lbj and sam rayburn, quote: there anticipate going to be no sex in -- there ain't going to be no sex in this investigation. there's too damn many of us that are vulnerable on that score, end quote. [laughter] [applause] so the investigation and the romance had other repercussions including what i think may have cost her a federal judgeship. she had other challenges including her age which was really a more gender and age combination because although a young white house staffer said that her age, 58, might tend to disqualify her from consideration for a federal judgeship, she watched as men were placed into 15 federal judicial vacancies and 6 of them were older than she was. so lots of challenges and amazing that both of these women got as far as they did. >> and we would both like to thank lbj for just being so fantastically quotable throughout. [laughter] >> i have a lot more questions that i'd like to ask, but i want to make sure that we have an opportunity for our audience members. so while you continue to think, i'm going to toss one more question out there, and then we'll take questions from the audience. in the meantime, for those following along at c-span or here in the audience, @gburg book fest is newly on twitter and i'm sorry gram. so please feel free to tweet your thoughts. i would like to ask the two of you to speak as authors for a moment. you had very different challenges. marlene, you had almost no original source materials to work with and, i don't know, you had such -- and, john, you had such a plethora of it. i wonder if each of you could talk about the process, the challenges in writing these books, how long it took you and anything you were surprised to learn. marlene, why don't you start this time. >> i'll try to to do this quick. as i just told john, the first time i ever spoke publicly about bessie as someone important in my life was in 1993, and that was a long time ago. it wasn't until about 2005 when i had failed to find any real author or biographer to do this work that i realized it was going to fall on me. for bessie, she never gave an oral history. i could never find that she was ever asked to give one, although almost every counterpart at the tva and at the labor department and in her other facets had been, had given them. she may have declined, but i never found an indication that she gave one, and she didn't give one. she had no scrapbooks. and so what i had were her, essentially, a thursday came home with her from the labor department that her nephew who later became the executor of her estate had kept and a small collection of personal papers, many with addresses ripped off so that i couldn't tell who they were from or to. and often where the writer would use an initial for a name. but by scrutinizing handwriting and figure out the dates and the context, i put those together. the last thing that saved me were wonderful people eager to talk about bessie margolin and her legacy, all of whom felt a debt of gratitude to her. and then finally i had to look and was lucky to find bessie's needles in famous people's haystacks. so and william o. douglas' papers, it's not as if there was a high, i may bessie margolin file, but in these miscellaneous correspondence, i just kept looking and hoping it would be a marc levin, and i found that in the papers of earl warren, robert h. jackson, on it on. so needles in haystacks. >> it took me about five years to write the book.k.es got a full-time job and three little kids in addition, so i think that's certainlye defensible. i suffered at the opposite blessing, as it were. 162 boxes of materials in the library of congress, a thousand columns. merely respond to every letter she ever received as a colonista as long as it did not includenit profanity. so the was enormous materialre there, 60 or 70 interviews. at one point when i was mystified a book that was three times the length that it ended up. it did allow me a certain a luxury in being able to really find the stories that i thought were most indicative of her as a person and really illuminated her story.her as she lived until she was in her mid '80s. so it covered an enormous swath of not only journalism the contemporary american history and a lot of changes for womenot in the business. trying to boil it all down with one of the real challenges ins e writing it. >> let's take a question or two from the audience. we have a mic here that you can come to if you want to raise your hand.c of course, it's going to be all across the way. >> sorry if i missed this but i'm curious what led you to write about a female journalist. >> yeah, i had the pleasure to know mary when she was alive. we were not best friends but i went a couple of her social gatherings. there were a total hoot. people drink too much. it was a mix of senators and anchormen and copy boys and nuns and really eclectic mix. like lots of folks i got dragged into helping do volunteer, volunteer in quotation marks, work at a local orphanage where she helped out at saint and orphanage for over 50 years almost every recover 50 years of volunteering there.e and the more i got to know her it just struck me as a wonderful story of somebody who'd risen up from very humble beginnings but also just the strength of heromd personality. and every single person i interviewed was like, of course you're writing a biography about mary, you should do that, which helped convince me i was on the right track. >> actually when my question, if you all would like to keep thinking. one of my questions was about the orphanage.l it was an instant apart, a fundamental part in both of a these women's lives. bessie margolin grew up in an orphanage and was shaped and given leadership opportunities. she and her brother and sisterss were both there. and then mary's devotion to the kids at saint anne's orphanage,n even bringing the kids each year for a christmas party to hickorn hill at robert kennedy's home and elsewhere. can you talk about how you think that shaped each of the women? >> in bessie's case she was very fortunate that when misfortune struck at her mother died when the family was living in memphis, that the was and had been for nearly half a century or more a jewish orphanage in new orleans that except the children from throughout the south. and so bessie's life there was not in the keynesian sense a miserable life or even little orphan annie. this was an extraordinary institution where some very well established jews in new orleans really don't did on these children. they wanted them to become american jews, patriotic, self-sufficient american jews that would actually bring honor to the prosperous benefactors. so very little was spared for these children. bessie was given the finest education, one of the most prestigious schools to this days in new orleans, the isidoremo newman school was founded to educate the jewish orphans in his home, and bessie fortunately excelled in every academic subject, was on the debate team, was girls student council president, and he shaped are both in terms of giving her these opportunities but also instilled in her and in of the children who lived there a sense of social justice. they were raised in reform judaism which had as its backbone a nation essentially of repairing the world and have social justice. even the bessie did not end of the life practice what many would think are the rituals of traditional orthodox judaism, she very much identified culturally in her judaism and fulfilled that social justice mission. she also i think took to heart very closely what was going on in nuremberg to bring to justice the nazi war criminals. she, the first american-born daughter of russian jewish immigrants. >> and for mary helping out at saint anne's, it was the right thing to do. she cared about the kids come in some ways it almost became a surrogate family for her. she read to the kids. she made very large charitable donations as a percentage of her salary.nations she helped the staff there go on to get educations of their own. she just poured her heart into it. she dragged her entire circle of friends into helping out, and it was really meaningful for her. one of my favorite bits came when richard nixon decided that is going to crack down on his enemies, and it made the decision that he would seek the irs on number of people, including mary. buries returns were audited for three years in a row. in a sign of how badly richard nixon misunderstood his challenges, mary ended up getting a larger refund because she understood her charitable giving two of orphanage, you know? [laughter] what the clash of cultures, ask for than that? >> we have a question from the t audience.au >> it seems to me there's a common thread that's running between the two people that are being discussed, and at the same time i have read some of the writings from bessie from the standpoint of legal documents and they are not easy to blame the personal writing styles or anything else except competency. in mary mcgrory, she accurately into the competency thing and dug into the ability to know people, get the stories in some of the things that you've indicated. as authors yourselves, it seemss to me the core thing that helped these two people in high esteem, and yes, there were females, but the thing that held them in high esteem was her inability tothat write, their ability to communicate through the written word versus just the socialth graces that they had in different areas.he socia as authors, i dislike your thoughts on whether or not that was some of the core idea?th >> thank you. that's a very interesting question. bessie's best writing as a lawyer did not have a style other than excellence. everyone who worked with here. talked about how she would make them sweat over finding thehe right word and the simplest word. her oral communications, for example, at the supreme court as well. interestingly she was no great, smooth orator. she often edited her sentences as she spoke. but the justices listen to her because they knew and appreciated her meticulous preparation. and with each case are growing encyclopedic knowledge of the fair labor standards act andop every legislator bit of history that went with it. so i wouldn't say she had a style that's particularly recognizable, other than powerful and as a lawyer the needs of that case. but her speaking style was one that was quite comfortable, very conversational, which as an appellate lawyer is easily said that very hard to live up to. and intentionally to tease the attention of the justices. so she tried to engage them and make sure that she would get them to ask questions. so thank you. >> from my perspective, first, it's absolutely terrifying writing that somebody who has such a beautiful, flu and grateful -- graceful writer. the downside. her writing was wonderful. she absolutely sweated over it. she was not provided that which is dashed something off. she would write and rewrite and rework and really sweat over every word. i think that really shaped it. i think the other thing that's really important about herve writing and help her not only survived but really flourish, as an opinion writer, i read a thousand columns of hers. not one ended with on the other hand. not one ended with only time will tell. not one ended with we shall see. you knew what mary thought when she wrote.al there was no real reliance on anonymous background quotes. it was all very above board, all very clear, if you came away knowing exactly where she stood on an issue. her most famous collins about richard nixon and the impeachment, is lost after the t california governor's race, kennedy's funeral, september 11 were all public events, things that we could see with your owns eyes and that we recognized, but she still was able to take things that we saw with our own eyes and breathe more life and understand it today. i think that's the real skill as a writer. >> another question from the audience? >> friend of mine from when she worked at the attorney general's office. i have read your book now. i have not read george but in looking for. the one thing i know summit in reading about bessie what she didn't seem initially to really be into the whole feminist equal pay, so the things i'm just a woman and -- but she definitely developed into that and that's something i would like for you>> to speak more on. >> that's right. even the reading, following her ep life, she epitomizes the feminist movement. she was a woman who simply wanted to be the best lawyer she could be. that's the ultimate goal of every feminist, to be treated equally. it really did become an issue as to what she was until she was enforcing the equal pay act and people started asking her where she stood. even after she helped found now, she would tell the press i've never been a feminist but i'm becoming one now that i see the discrimination that women face in their pay. i have no choice but to become one. it is interesting. she always was one. ever someone do it such a flaird for worse mystery, i find it funny that you never really stopped to think as many people often fail to do as well, what does the word mean, the reluctance to proclaim themselves a feminist without understanding that it's the quality. whole -- series of women trail blazers that they don't tend to identify themselves necessarily as feminists. you know, i think there's some really goods reasons for it. you know, certainly in mary's case, if there was another woman being brought into the newsroom, for a good chunk of her career, she was probably concerned that there would be brought into replace. you know, the columnist anna quindlen preserved of a newsroom quickly figured out there was a quota for women in the newsroom and that was one. so if another woman showed up, pretty good chance that she was there to -- for an editor to position her to take your job, and fact that they were pitted against you have often. trail blazers is guyses, gals because that aloud them to peak on that landscape. you know, what, i think that they're so focused on having to do what they do at a higher level of performance in the men that they're around that kind of weighing in on a whole generation of landscape eve women access to their field. feels extraneous something that might further be held against you. you know, mary had was approached by bella in the early 70s, very pioneer feminist congresswoman from new york, and have said that she was forming national woman's coalition and eager to have mary join and mary said that's great. thing we need to do is go on on the war. we're worried because that would alienate some of the particularly republican women and mary said if they're not going out against the war what good is a group of women for so there are questions about how they saw them in their place but for me the bottom line wases you know it's easy to look back and say that women particularly in roles should have been more outspoken and should have kind of -- spoken out more heavily in favor of their gender. but i think anybody who gets there first and does it really well, you've got to respect them for that. >> funny story -- more questions i want to make sure are there more questions in the audience? i'm really curious about venturing and best city and mary as a mentor and protege, you wrote about being curmudgeon but she had a fun spot. bessy was your mentor speak about that. why "don't ask, don't tell" you start? >> within mary wasn't a mentor e classic sense. she wanted to see young writers do well. she did kind of provide safe haven to a whole generation of boston political writers who relocated to washington if you were a good boston irish special place in her heart had for you. but you know, that she expected particularly women in the newsroom, to do well. to work hard. that she would send nice notes speak out on their behalf . she was more of someone who could demonstrate what needed to be done than necessarily somebody who would take you under their wing, i think for a whole generation of women reporters who worked around her for worked her at the star. you know, sheftion she was more of a mother superior figure than nestle them under her wing. toll someone who didn't know her impurous in her demeanor and when board proved herself or o part of her appellate in litigation section that had they earned her respect. she did, however, really extend herself to training and development of lawyers. she not only positioned herself to be the in-house person who would bring up new attorneys on both appellate advocacy and brief writing and there are countless lawyers that i interviewed who each would say they learned everything they know about brief writing and appellate advocacy, oral advocacy from bessy but she to others who department know her one gentleman wrote it was years before she acknowledged him passing in the hall in labor department, and it was only when he was assigned a brief to write that they began a relationship, and she would address him by naming. i actually thinks it i actually think it was reticence on her part. i think was part of a low bid of she just was not a frivolous person. she wouldn't just extenders self without reason. but she was quite generous. my relationship with her was fal more personal and friendly. it was very little other than some wonderful introductions to other lawyers. and i was reminded in her papers that she actually wrote two of my borrowed reference letters. two letters to become admitted -- >> a train is rolling through. >> to the maryland and d.c. bars. bars. i think is a soft side to her. she's all a bit of herself in the as that little girl from new orleans. and i'm going to stop now to let the train passed. >> is there another audience question? okay, so we're going to wrap up in a couple of minutes that i'd like each of you to take the opportunity to tell your favorite story that you haven't referenced yet, like one minute each to think about that. john norris, why don't you leadoff? >> there's a lot to choose from with mary. one of my favorites was that she was at a washington gala, convention center thing. a young john kerry, then vietnam war protester back fresh from vietnam. she was eager to kind of hustle him across the room, and she was stopped by an administration official who kind of wore on and on an issue of trying to get out of the building. finally, she says, you with a sector of transportation. where are the elevators? you know, and mary's willingness to pop the balloon with a great and mighty in washington is something we all appreciated. >> of course, they all just escaped from wind at that point. but i'll relate that whenever early as supreme court arguments, it is became sort of an apocryphal moment for many of her protéges in the labor department, she became assigned per second and third argument, largely because -- [laughter] -- of the laryngitis to the last minute laryngitis of the lawyer from the solicitor general's office who was scheduled to argue. bessie had written of the brief and material shaped the brief. she got a call 10 a.m. the morning of the supreme court argument. she knew she was arguing oneas case, and so importantly she was wearing the appropriate attire, which otherwise could have been a death knell or her going forward that day, but was told that 10:00 that morning that two hours later she we arguing a second supreme court argument that day. .. lost the other. but what had it showed was that she forever used that as an argument to her lawyers always be prepared.