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Granny D - A Thought (& a Life) To Ponde

From: TLombardi | murocony@verizon.net

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ng up to it is our victory......If we represent love in the world, you see, we have already won" .....Doris 'Granny D' Haddock from her 93rd birthday speech.

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" We cannot have world peace without peace in our own lives. We cannot attack our planet by the way we live, and then go off to a peace rally and hope to set right all the imbalance we have caused. Peace is first a private matter. It cannot grow except from there"...

Doris 'Granny D' Haddock

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Fact Sheet: Doris Haddock

Born Doris Rollins: Jan. 24, 1910 in Laconia, New Hampshire USA

Widow, two grown children. Thirteen great grandchildren (soon 15).

Attended Emerson College in Boston for 3 years. Left upon marriage to James Haddock, an Amherst graduate. Emerson awarded her an honorary degree in 2000.

With her husband, Jim, she helped stop the planned atmospheric testing of hydrogen bombs in Alaska in 1960, saving a fishing village at Point Hope.

After the defeat of Senator McCain and Senator Feingold's first attempt to remove unregulated "soft" money from campaigns in 1995, she became interested in campaign reform and led a petition movement.

In 1998 she decided to walk across the U.S. to demonstrate her concern for the issue of campaign reform.

She walked around her hometown of Dublin, New Hampshire for most of 1998 to get in shape for the walk.

On Jan. 1, 1999, she began her walk in Pasadena, California. She walked 10 miles per day for 14 months, arriving in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 29, 2000. She was hospitalized once, in Arizona, with dehydration and pneumonia. She walked 3,200 miles.

Her route: Pasadena to Twentynine Palms CA, Parker AZ, Wickenburg, Phoenix, Tucson, Tombstone, Lordsburg NM, Las Cruces, El Paso TX, Midland, Dallas, Texarkana AK, Little Rock, Memphis TN, Louisville KY, Cincinnati OH, Parkersburg WV, Morgantown, Cumberland MD, Washington, D.C. Her hardest miles were climbing the Appalachian Range during blizzard conditions.

She made speeches along her walk, and made an effort to draw reform groups together. When she arrived in Washington, she was met by 2,200 people, representing a wide variety of reform groups. Several dozen Members of Congress walked the final miles with her.

Pro-reform Capitol Hill staffers and elected officials credit her with demonstrating that Americans care about campaign finance reform. She connected the issue with patriotic values in a way that provided wider popular support for reform. She was instrumental in moving the issue forward. When presidential candidate Al Gore adopted a campaign finance reform plank, his speech credited John McCain, Bill Bradley, and Doris Haddock.

During the 2001 McCain-Feingold debate, she walked continuously around the Capitol building for seven days. During the final three days of debate, she walked 24 hours a day, stopping only for catnaps and food. This was done in subfreezing winds and rain. She met with 35 senators during this vigil, representing to them the feelings of the people she met along the road.

She is five-feet tall. She wore out four sets of shoes on her long walk. When snows between Cumberland, Maryland and Washington threatened to delay her arrival in February of 2000, she cross-country skied 100 miles along the old C&O Canal tow path. She has emphysema and arthritis, both of which improved during the walk.

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