Media

Remembering Molly

Molly Ivins in front of the Texas state capitol in 1991.
Getty Images
Molly Ivins in front of the Texas state capitol in 1991.

Fine writers and close friends gathered Tuesday afternoon to celebrate the passions and the prescience of Molly Ivins, the larger-than-life Texan who spent every day of her life fighting for what she believed in, until cancer killed her last January, at the age of 62.

The crowd at the Society for Ethical Culture included former New York Times colleagues—Joe Lelyveld, Marcia Chambers, Linda Amster, Paul Goldberger, Mary Breasted, Mike Leahy, Clyde Haberman and Stephanie Lane; pundits like Katrina vanden Heuvel and Eric Alterman; 60's activists like Curtis Gans, and fellow white water adventurers like Carol Bellamy, Ellen Fleysher and Victor and Sarah Kovner.

The festivities began with a slide show (set to songs by the Rock Bottom Remainders) showing the writer-activist at every age, posing with everyone from Bill Clinton to Bill Moyers. The shot of her sporting a Fox News hat got the biggest laugh from the three hundred fans who had gathered to remember her.

Maya Angelou recalled how startled she was when she first met Molly and realized she was six feet tall.

“I knew she was white,” said Ms. Angelou. “I didn’t know she was so much white!” Nevertheless, Molly immediately dubbed the two of them “twins separated at birth.”

Ms. Angelou said there was only one source of frustration: every time she tried to introduce anyone to the magnificent Molly Ivins, she discovered that they were already old friends.

New Yorker writer Calvin Trillin remembered columns that could make you “laugh out loud”: “if a certain Congressman’s IQ dropped any further he’d have to be watered twice a day,” or the one about the Texas gubernatorial candidate who was “so afraid of getting AIDS while visiting San Francisco that when he was in the shower he wore shower caps on her feet.”

Mr. Trillin said her loyalty had “no bounds and no statute of limitations ... Reporters visiting Texas on a political story got from Molly not resentment about intrusion on her turf but a jolly welcome.”

Sitting in the audience, Joe Lelyveld echoed that memory: “She was just so incredibly generous,” said the former executive editor of the Times. “When I was writing a column for the Times magazine, she sent me a letter with the names of fifty people I should meet in Texas.”

Molly was my good friend for more than 30 years. When I moved to Paris a few years ago, Molly happened to be living there for a month. It was right after 9/11, and she insisted on meeting me on the street, outside my new apartment, to help me get five huge suitcases and a bicycle up the stairs. After coffee at a nearby cafe, she issued me one sleeping pill and sent me to bed for six hours. Then I met her on the Ile de la Cité for a magnificent Paris dinner. No one had had a warmer welcome since Americans troops reached the City of Light in 1944. Next Page >

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Comments
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K. A. Laity (not verified) says:

Thanks for covering the remembrance. It is a fitting farewell to someone who needs to be kept in our thoughts, not just for the woman she was, but for the role model she will always be.

Jane Troy (not verified) says:

I was at the memorial and it was, as you report, and as Molly was, funny and touching and wise. I find it hard to face that she is gone. I attend a lot of demonstrations and make my own signs. My latest one says "'Stop it, now!'-Molly Ivins", from her last column, and people always comment on it. I like carrying her with me.

liberal nut (not verified) says:

I miss Molly Ivins more than I can say. The world should rightfully mourn her and celebrate her and memorialize her. She was one of the great free spirits, a great free thinker and last but not least, a great lover of freedoms large and small. As we were all raised up by her presence we are all diminished by her absence.

Nora from Austin (not verified) says:

this column made me miss Molly a lot. i have the a worn copy of the texas observer that was dedicated to her immediately following her death. I carry it around with me, but i have not read every article. I don't want to finish it.

ps, anyone every see pics or hear stories of when her hair was purple a few years ago? I did that.

Robin Whiteside (not verified) says:

I met her in college 25 years ago when she came to speak. Over the years, I never missed an article that had her name on it. I listened to her books on tape whenever on a cross country trip. Was this woman ever wrong about anything? God, I miss her. Who is there to take her place?

Stevie Maley (not verified) says:

To know Molly was to love Molly. I'm sure even those Texas et al politicians she harpooned so hilariously were charmed by Molly's innate humor and warmth. I'm so fortunate to have enjoyed Molly's company in the privileged context of "family" for the last six years. My husband Marty was Molly's former brother-in-law and a soul mate. Marty is also somewhat of a raconteur and many are the nights when they would swap stories (and drink beer)until dawn. She was a wonderful and generous aunt to Sara and Marty's and Andy and Karla's children. I cherished the Christmases she spent with us and occasional family gatherings and events in between.

Molly was as earthy and unpretentious as her folksy humor would suggest. She was always the first to tie on an apron and do the dishes or stir a pot. My most treasured memory is of Molly, plopped down on the floor and telling animated stories to a gaggle of open-mouthed, wide-eyed children. That for me was Molly at her best. And God, I miss her too.

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