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Duty Calls
Patron Saint of the Polls
by Stephanie Piper
Come the first Tuesday in November, I think of my Great Aunt Hattie. If she were a saint, it would be her feast day.
Aunt Hattie took her politics seriously. Civic duty was sacred to her, right up there with correct grammar, proper punctuation and white gloves on Sundays.
My great aunt grew up on a farm in Canada and went to a teacher’s college in upstate New York. Armed with her degree, she headed for Manhattan in the last year of the 19th century. She married a New York City police detective, became an American citizen, and settled in to a career of teaching immigrant children on the Lower East Side.
Childless, she turned her fierce energy to her nieces and nephews, my mother and her siblings. When their father died, it was Aunt Hattie who paid for piano lessons and sent them to college. It was Aunt Hattie who bought them books and baseball tickets and evening dresses. It was to Aunt Hattie that they answered for anything less than summa cum laude, and God help them if they didn’t know the name of every candidate for City Council, Borough President, or dog catcher. “The shame of it!” she would thunder. “If you ignore your duty as a citizen, you will get the government you deserve!”
By the time I knew her, she was ancient and wildly eccentric. Long retired from teaching, she lived in a creaky old house on Long Island, surrounded by books and threadbare antiques. Our quarterly visits there followed a set ritual. We had lunch in the dark dining room, veal stew served on Limoges plates. Dessert was two pieces each from a huge box of Fannie Farmer chocolates. Then, spectacles in place, Aunt Hattie would examine our most recent spelling tests or term papers. Needless to say, only “A” work was presented.
After that, the children were free to roam the nearby woods or swing on the porch swing. The grownups pushed back their chairs, re-filled their glasses, and talked politics.
Voices were raised. Fists were slammed on the table. Hoots of disapproval floated out the French doors. Once, driving home, I asked my mother if they were fighting in there. She told me it was called a spirited discussion.
On Election Day in 1960, my mother drove Aunt Hattie to the polls. At 89, crippled with arthritis and nearly blind, my indomitable great aunt was going to vote. She was going to perform her civic duty, and she was going to perform it in person.
She hobbled into the elementary school on her blackthorn cane and announced that, due to her failing eyesight, she would require assistance in the voting booth. Representatives of both parties accompanied her into the curtained cubicle. When asked to name her candidate, Aunt Hattie didn’t hesitate.
“For whom shall I cast my vote, young man?” She demanded in the stentorian tones that once subdued classrooms of rowdy students. “For the only candidate any intelligent American will choose! John (stamp of cane) Fitzgerald (stamp) Kennedy! (final stamp).”
So much for the secret ballot.
I think of her when I read the statistics on voter apathy. Recent numbers suggest that 40 percent of Americans will stay home on Election Day.
I wish anyone who believes it doesn’t matter could spend five minutes with Aunt Hattie. “The shame of it,” she would trumpet. “If you ignore your duty as a citizen, you will get the government you deserve.”
Duty, wrote Robert E. Lee, is “the sublimest word.” Now, perhaps more than ever before, it matters.
October 28, 2004 • Vol 14, No. 44
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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