Thank you, Ms. Steinem.

I was saddened to learn that Gloria Steinem has died, but at 92, she'd had a good run. And a brilliantly accomplished run at that. 

I came of age during the second wave of feminism (1960's through the 1980's). I read Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, Germaine Greer's The Female Eunich, and Susan Brownmiller's Against Our Will.  On the fiction side, I gobbled up Erica Jong's Fear of Flying, and Marilyn French's The Women's Room. I bought a first edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves by the Boston Women's Health Collective. (This book was inspired by a workshop that was part of a female liberation conference held at my school, Emmanuel College, in the spring of 1969. Emmanuel College: a pokey little Catholic women's (then; co-ed now) that was something of a hotbed for social justice and radical thought. I took part in that conference, but can't recall which workshops I attended. Women's health wouldn't have been one of them.)

I didn't strike - I had a summer job and needed the money - but in August 1970, I joined the NOW-sponsored Women's Strike for Equality, Boston-edition, marching from the Boston Common to City Hall during my break between shifts at the Union Oyster House. I was wearing my white waitress dress and white waitress shoes. One sign I remember being carried: Don't Iron While the Strike Is Hot!

And I was an OG subscriber of Ms. Magazine, which was co-founded by Ms. Steinem. 

I liked and admired Gloria Steinem. And in July 2012, I got to tell her that.

My husband and I were in NYC. Jim was on a break from cancer treatment, and we were spending the week in his favorite city. On Saturday evening, we were heading out to dinner on the Upper East Side, when who would we spot but Gloria Steinem.

Actually, it was Jim who spotted her, as he had an amazing knack for recognizing celebrities out on the street.

When I told Jim that I had long admired Steinem, he told me I should let her know that. So he stopped her to say hello.

For someone who I'm sure was pestered all the time, she could not have been more charming and gracious. 

After I told her what an influence she and her work had been on my generation of women - the first to enter the non-traditional workforce in any great numbers - and thanked her for all she'd done, she asked us where we were from. Which launched into a wide-ranging 10-15 minute conversation about Boston, the Cape, Maine, dogs, travel, and I can't recall what else. It was the sort of rambling, whatever convo you might have with any old stranger you sat next to on a plane or in a restaurant or on the sidewalks of New York. Only this one was with Gloria Steinem, who seemed genuinely interested and engaged. (She could certainly have broken things off the minute I had offered her my words of praise, but she kept the converation going.)

After that 10-15 minutes, Gloria Steinem said, "I'd like to keep talking, but I'm meeting some friends for dinner. But let me give you a restaurant recommendation. Candle 79." (Candle 79 is a now-closed vegan restaurant on 79 Street). Well, as it turned out, we had eaten there the year before with some young vegan friends, and as the words, "Thank you! We actually ate there last year" were coming out of my mouth, Jim was saying, "Oh, Candle 79. We ate there and didn't like it." (He may have even said that we hated it. Which I hadn't, but he had. I had actually enjoyed my meal there (something mushroomy, I think) but he had some seitan dish - could it have been fake steak? -  recommended by our young vegan friends, which he hadn't liked in the least. And he was certainly not one to hold back on sharing his opinion with Gloria Steinem or anyone else.)

Gloria Steinem just smiled and strolled off to meet her friends. We strolled off to a distincly non-plant-based dinner elsewhere. 

And so went my up close and personal encounter with the great Gloria Steinem.

Thank you, Gloria, for all you were and all you did for women. And for stopping to gab with a couple of strangers on the sidewalks of New York. 

Rest in peace. Rest in power.

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Image Source: Wikimedia Commons