Subtitle: Her Way
Author: Amy Schapiro
Subject: Biography/Political Science
Cloth ISBN 0-8135-3231-0
Pages: 296 pp. 18 b&w photos
Description: A biography of the pipe-smoking grandmother who took Congress by storm.
Foreword by Thomas H. Kean
Please click here to read an interview with author Amy Schapiro
Praise for Millicent Fenwick: Her Way
"The book is enriched by the fact that Ms. Fenwick's son, Hugh, granted Ms. Schapiro exclusive rights to his mother's personal papers. 'This included unlimited access to the Fenwick attic, in which I found correspondence from Millicent's father, grandmother, and, of course, her, the author said. 'The most valuable items were her personal journals, photographs, and correspondence with her husband.'"-New York Times (3/9/03)
"An engaging new biography by Amy Schapiro, Millicent Fenwick: Her Way charts the unlikely career of the ambassador's daughter who became a pearl-wearing, pipe-smoking politico."-Vogue (April 2003)
"Four-term Congress member Millicent Fenwick, the patrician descendant of Colonial landholders, hailed from wealthy Bernardsville, NJ. She had an unhappy family life and spent 14 years as a writer and editor at Vogue. Then the liberal Republican activist began a successful political career on the local school board, advancing through state offices until, in 1974 at the age of 64, she won election to Congress. Fenwick focused her efforts on civil rights for African Americans and women and protections for farm workers and prisoners; she also played a signal role in bringing the suppression of Soviet dissidents to public attention. Having lost a Senate race in 1982 after New Jersey was redistricted, Fenwick was appointed to a United Nations post by Ronald Reagan. Fenwick, who was the model for the Doonesbury character Lacey Davenport, is best remembered as an idiosyncratic, witty, pipe-smoking aristocrat of impeccable integrity. Schapiro, a social science analyst for the U.S. Department of Justice, adequately recounts Fenwick's past in abundant detail. Of interest chiefly to New Jersey libraries and collections devoted to the study of politics."-Library Journal
"A decade after Fenwick's death, her legacy is explored in a full-scale biography."-Washington City Paper
"Though she served as the model for the impeccably proper Lacey Davenport in Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury, Fenwick preferred to be known as the hardworking congresswoman she was. Her biography is long overdue."-New Jersey Monthly (March 2003)
Amy Schapiro has written the first biography of Millicent Fenwick, the popular and colorful New Jersey congresswoman. Affectionately remembered as the pipe-smoking grandmother who many believe served as the model for Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury character Lacey Davenport, Fenwick transcended that stereotype to become, in the words of Walter Cronkite, "the conscience of Congress."
Born in 1910 into comfortable circumstances, Fenwick faced tragedy at an early age when her mother was lost in the sinking of the Lusitania. Following an upper-class childhood and a failed marriage, she began a fourteen-year career at Vogue magazine.
In the 1960s, Fenwick became involved in the civil rights movement and took part in local and state politics in New Jersey. Blessed with striking good looks and a sharp wit, she cut a glamorous figure, rising quickly through the ranks of the state Republican party at a time when most of her peers were retiring. When this colorful, outspoken figure-one of only five New Jersey women ever elected to Congress-went to Washington in 1975 at age sixty-four, her victory was portrayed by the media as a "geriatric triumph."
Schapiro's extensive interviews with Fenwick's son, Hugh, who granted her exclusive rights to Fenwick's personal papers, oral histories, letters, and photographs, provide rare insight into the life and career of one of America's most memorable politicians.
Amy Schapiro is a native New Jerseyan who currently lives in the Washington, D.C., area and works at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Comments on Millicent Fenwick
"She was deeply principled in politics for all the right reasons, to fulfill a deep burning desire to achieve justice for all people. Her commitment to the underdogs of the world was matched only by her wit."-President George (H.W.) Bush, remarks to AT&T employees, Basking Ridge, N.J., September 18, 1992
"I had the pleasure of serving in the United States Congress with Millicent Fenwick, and I can state unequivocally that Ms. Schapiro's compelling portrayal has captured the essence of one of the most extraordinary people ever to grace Capitol Hill. Walter Cronkite was right-Millicent was the conscience of the Congress."-Congressman Tom Lantos (D-Calif.)
"This old-fashioned lady is also a thoroughly modern woman. . . . She is an elegant, literate, dead-honest legislator whose somewhat patrician manner gets on some people's nerves and amuses others. She has often defied the Republican Party line, championing consumer causes, women's rights and civil rights long before they were fashionable."- Morley Safer, 60 Minutes, June 21, 1981
Excerpt from the Foreword
"You couldn't invent Millicent Fenwick. . . . She was unique. The best writers of fiction might have struggled to make her believable, but they would have failed. She was an aristocrat of the kind Katharine Hepburn used to play in movies like The Philadelphia Story. Yet she had a particular affinity for the downtrodden, the poor, and the underprivileged. . . . Although she ran for national office for the first time in her mid-sixties, it only took two years for her to become one of the best-known and -loved members of the United States Congress."
