Amy Schapiro has written the first biography of Millicent Fenwick, the popular and colorful New Jersey congresswoman. Affectionately remembered as the pipe-smoking grandmother who served as the model for Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury character Lacey Davenport, Fenwick defied such simplistic expectations to become, in the words of Walter Cronkite, “the conscience of Congress.”
Born in 1910 into comfortable circumstances, Fenwick faced tragedy at an early age when her mother was lost in the sinking of the Lusitania. Following an upper-class childhood and a failed marriage, she began a fourteen-year career at Vogue magazine.
In the 1960s, Fenwick became involved in the civil rights movement and took part in local and state politics in New Jersey. Blessed with striking good looks and a sharp wit, she cut a glamorous figure, rising quickly through the ranks of the state Republican Party at a time when most of her peers were retiring. When this colorful, outspoken figure—one of only five New Jersey women ever elected to Congress— went to Washington in 1974 at age sixty-four, her victory was portrayed by the media as a “geriatric triumph.”
Schapiro’s extensive interviews with Fenwick’s son, Hugh, who granted her exclusive rights to Fenwick’s personal papers, oral histories, letters, and photographs, provide rare insight into the life and career of one of America’s most memorable politicians.
Amy Schapiro has written more than a biography of our late Representative Millicent Fenwick. She has ingeniously smuggled in a sociology lesson about life in the upper crust of the Garden State, a social milieu that outsiders cannot fathom. . . . Her even-handed approach makes this one of the most admirable works of its kind that I have read in recent years.
In her new biography of Fenwick, Millicent Fenwick: My Wayùa project that began as a college thesisùWashington-area writer Amy Schapiro delves into Fenwick's life, providing a description far richer than the Lacey Davenport fatade. . . . It is refreshing to read a biography that is virutally free of authorial polemics.
A new biography, the first ever on Fenwick, sheds new light on the life of Fenwick.
Provides rare insight into the life and career of one of America's most memorable politicians.
Schapiro, a social science analyst for the U.S. Department of Justice, adequately recounts Fenwick's past in abundant detail.
The book is enriched by the fact that Ms. FenwickÆs son, Hugh, granted Ms. Schapiro exclusive rights to his motherÆs personal papers. æThis included unlimited access to the Fenwick attic, in which I found correspondence from MillicentÆs father, grandmother, and, of course, her, the author said. æThe most valuable items were her personal journals, photographs, and correspondence with her husband.Æ.
An engaging new biography by Amy Schapiro, Millicent Fenwick: Her Way charts the unlikely career of the ambassadorÆs daughter who became a pearl-wearing, pipe-smoking politico.
Four-term Congress member Millicent Fenwick, the patrician descendant of Colonial landholders, hailed from wealthy Bernardsville, NJ. She had an unhappy family life and spent 14 years as a writer and editor at Vogue. Then the liberal Republican activist began a successful political career on the local school board, advancing through state offices until, in 1974 at the age of 64, she won election to Congress. Fenwick focused her efforts on civil rights for African Americans and women and protections for farm workers and prisoners; she also played a signal role in bringing the suppression of Soviet dissidents to public attention. Having lost a Senate race in 1982 after New Jersey was redistricted, Fenwick was appointed to a United Nations post by Ronald Reagan. Fenwick, who was the model for the Doonesbury character Lacey Davenport, is best remembered as an idiosyncratic, witty, pipe-smoking aristocrat of impeccable integrity. Schapiro, a social science analyst for the U.S. Department of Justice, adequately recounts Fenwick's past in abundant detail. Of interest chiefly to New Jersey libraries and collections devoted to the study of politics.
A decade after FenwickÆs death, her legacy is explored in a full-scale biography.
Though she served as the model for the impeccably proper Lacey Davenport in Garry TrudeauÆs Doonesbury, Fenwick preferred to be known as the hardworking congresswoman she was. Her biography is long overdue.
She was deeply principled in politics for all the right reasons, to fulfill a deep burning desire to achieve justice for all people. Her commitment to the underdogs of the world was matched only by her wit.
I had the pleasure of serving in the United States Congress with Millicent Fenwick, and I can state unequivocally that Ms. Schapiro's compelling portrayal has captured the essence of one of the most extraordinary people ever to grace Capitol Hill. Walter Cronkite was rightùMillicent was the conscience of the Congress.
This old-fashioned lady is also a thoroughly modern woman. . . . She is an elegant, literate, dead-honest legislator whose somewhat patrician manner gets on some people's nerves and amuses others. She has often defied the Republican Party line, championing consumer causes, women's rights and civil rights long before they were fashionable.
