Grandma got ran over by a House Vote: This is not a story about Obamacare…

My remarkable grandmother Afton Bradford Bradshaw
I spent a good bulk of my childhood campaigning for my grandmother. Every two years a new campaign brochure would have to be produced, including a family photo capturing my awkward years. These precious memories were not only saved in a family photo album that could be hid at any given moment, they were also broadly distributed among thousands of constituents. By five years old, I was required to canvas for my grandmother and take brochures door to door. On the one occasion I practiced my civil liberties and refused my grandmother for a previously scheduled and much preferred play date she immediately taught me how politics worked… When I arrived at my friend’s house for our play date they were nowhere to be found. I sat on the front porch entirely befuddled for almost a half hour (which is essentially the equivalent of a month in the mind of a five year old) just as I was about to leave in defeat… my grandmother’s car pulled up… I immediately feared she had come to find me and scold me for not canvassing. Instead I watched as all three of my friends emerged from the car with arms full of soda pop and candy. I went from feeling ashamed to irate in 2.3 seconds! Not only had my grandmother bogarted my play dates, she has given them a bounty of sugar! In all my life I was lucky to sneak a Snackwell cookie from her kitchen drawer on rare occasion. Never had I received genuine sugar through my grandmother’s own volition! I demanded to know why my grandmother had done such a thing! My friends explained that she had come to their house earlier and asked them to help distribute brochures and had then rewarded them for so doing by taking them to the corner gas station to pick out whatever treat they like! I was flabbergasted!
Though my grandmother was and is heralded as one of the most ethical and level headed politicians Utah had ever seen, she was nothing short of a strategist when it came to her own family. She was always yammering on and on about the value of education, she would often compare it to a “jewel in your pocket” which seemed an obscure and useless metaphor to me at the time. I thought it was a waste to keep jewels in your pocket when they were meant for adorning crowns. A princess trajectory seemed a far easier and more glamorous path. Plus, at the time, I was almost positive being a princess wouldn’t require my successful completion of the second grade. I hated school and refused to go. When my grandmother’s impassioned speeches were not enough to effectuate change she resorted to the next best political tool… bribery. She resorted to promising me a Nintendo game console in exchange for my attendance for the remainder of the school year. I obliged.
Though she continued to bribe me as I grew older, I was much more able to resist. Right before I was to begin my junior year of high school I went to visit her wearing one of my back to school outfits. She looked me up and down and calmly inquired how much I had spent on the outfit. I told her the amount I had spent to purchase the outfit to which she quickly offered to buy the outfit off of me. At first I was puzzled. Though my grandmother and I shared many things, including being wildly opinionated, we had never shared clothes? Why would my grandmother want my outfit? Seeing I was perplexed, she expounded. “Lindsay, I will buy your outfit off of you and give you an additional fifty dollars as long as you promise never to wear it again!”She was blunt. Sometimes too blunt. However, as I continued to get older my respect and admiration for her only continued to increase. The same year as the notorious outfit bailout, she also helped me sludge through my readings for AP history. She even went as far as to read Henry Kissinger’s Diplomacy with me. Every night I would call her and we would discuss my assigned reading for the day. I don’t think there are very many people in this world that can say they called their grandmothers in order to understand dense and complex political texts… It was pretty badass to have a grandma who could take on Kissinger!

My sister Emily and I at the Harvard Gates.
I started to appreciate how hard she had fought for both her own education and indirectly mine. She was one of 9 children during the Depression. Her father died when she was young. Her mother worked tirelessly and her family was lucky to barely scape by. She worked every summer and every minute she wasn’t in school or taking care of her younger siblings in order to earn the 25 dollars that was her tuition for her first semester of college. After her children were raised in the era of the “problem with no name” she went back to school in order to earn her masters. She ran for local office and was elected to the Utah House of Representatives. She served for 18 years. She advocated for increased funding to all state schools, especially her alma mater the University of Utah. To this day she is heralded as a “champion for higher education.” The University of Utah received the most funding from the state during her 9 terms. In a fiercely conservative state she was able to work across the aisle and effectuate positive changes. She was seen as fair and reasonable, Republicans and Democrats alike respected her.As my grandmother grew older she developed pulmonary fibrosis. The disease essentially slowly paralyzes your lungs over time. She eventually had to make the decision not to run for reelection and grow accustom to a much slower pace of life. As the disease progressed it became requisite for her to continually be on oxygen. It was a challenging transition to watch.At 78, my grandmother was chosen to receive an honorary doctorate degree from the very same university she had not only fought so hard to attend but had tirelessly advocated for. The evening before commencement she was asked to say some words at an awards banquet. She stood and gave a poetic, poignant speech about the moments in life that take your breath away. The next day I watched her walk across the stage in regalia with oxygen strapped to her back to receive her doctorate degree. I count watching her cross the stage that day as one of the most lovely and transcendent moments of my life. I wept and realized I finally understood what the jewel had meant.

My graduation from Harvard.

Emily's Graduation from NYU.
I think about my grandmother a lot in November. She was born in November and loved Thanksgiving. My grandmother took much pride in the fact that she was the great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great granddaughter of William Bradford and of Mayflower lineage. She passed away before she was able to read my personal statement for Harvard. She didn’t get to see that both my statement and passion for education started with her. She didn’t get to hear me complain about Cambridge’s subzero temperatures or my massive amounts of reading. She didn’t get to hear me tell her that some days the only thing that got me through grad school was knowing how much she would have loved it, knowing how much she would have relished every moment sitting in a Harvard classroom, and knowing how firmly she would have grasped that jewel. Though she wasn’t here to see it or hear about it, I know she knows. I know she knows I thought about her every day as I walked those treacherous red brick paths. I know she knows I thought about her family who walked those same paths hundreds of years before me. I know she knows I appreciate their every footstep. I know she knows, above all, I appreciate hers.