The Memory Project: My mother and Ella

         

Memory is a tricky thing. I often find myself having random thoughts from my life play through my mind and I decided to follow the path of these memories and see where they lead.

There is no wonder politics are on a lot of our minds lately. here is a random memory that popped into my head :

This morning I woke up and for some reason I saw a snapshot of a memory  flash across my mind. It was a winter night and i was standing at a door with my mother. She was knocking on a door holding some pamphlets in her gloved hand.

My mother had a charming way with people, and this night she was taking a voting census for the politician Ella T. Grasso (who I originally remembered as Eleanor grasso).

This wasn't the first night I had done this with my mother. I also remember afternoons stuffing envelopes and nights where my mother nervously  watched the nightly news for election results.

My one memory of Ella was meeting her after a successful election. We walked into the campaign headquarters and Ella came up to my mother and hugged her strongly. As children we have such different interpretations of who are parents are and watching Ella hug my Mom and thank her for all her help I realized how much her efforts helped Ella's campaign.

As we became older, my mother had less time to dedicate to Ella's campaign but she always voter for her, all the way until she became the Govenor of CT:

Here is a litle about Ella's career:

"A high point of her career was her decisive handling of a particularly devastating snow storm in February 1978. Known as "Winter Storm Larry" now known as "The Blizzard of 78" this storm dropped around 30 inches of snow across the state, crippling highways and making virtually all roads impassable. In a bold move, she "Closed the State" by proclamation, and forbade all use of public roads by businesses and citizens and closed all businesses, effectively closing all citizens in their homes. This relieved the rescue and cleanup authorities from the need to help the mounting number of stuck cars, and instead allowed clean-up and emergency services for shut-ins to proceed. The crisis ended on the third day, and she received accolades from all state sectors for her leadership and strength."

I remember that storm well but that's another memory!