Strong women of Capitol Hill

Southern Living, May 1996 by Roberts, Carolanne Griffith

It begins over small cups of Louisiana coffee, thick with flavor. Former U.S. Congresswoman Lindy Boggs accepts hers from daughter Cokie Roberts, the political commentator.

We sit in the earth tone calm of Cokie's home in Bethesda, Maryland, a place at once Southern and splendid with its white-columned, weeping willow welcome. The mood is easy, with the daughter's deep, commanding tones mingling with the softer, more strongly accented ones of the mother. Their sentences curl into tangles of laughter, which warms the ear-and the heart.

"Mama, you tell the story of this house," urges Cokie, a journalist for both ABC News and National Public Radio.

"Suddenly we had three children in a little place in Chevy Chase," Lindy starts, referring to her days as the young wife of Louisiana Congressman Hale Boggs. "We'd go house hunting on weekends, and when we got to this house, the kids ran all over it. I found Cokie, who was about 8, sprawled out in the middle of the living room floor in her snowsuit. She said, 'I like it here; I want to live here.' "

"I was thrilled with the columns," Cokie cuts in. "It looked like Tara to me. I was a big Gone With the Wind freak."

So in 1952, the family-daughters Barbara and Cokie and son Tommy-moved to the house where politics dined daily at the dinner table. "What my parents decided when we were small was that if we were to have all the disadvantages of a political family, we should have the advantages. We were never shut away [from the activity]. When fancy people would come, we were invited too."

The names of those fancy people fill history books-Presidents Lyndon Johnson and John F. Kennedy (for whom Lindy chaired inaugural balls), and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn. In her book, Washington Behind the Purple Veil, Lindy details how "Mr. Sam" even presided over the burial of Cokie's childhood pet, Charlie Chicken.

"We were included in all the conversations," reports Cokie. "And if a good piece of legislation would be on the floor, we would take the day off from school and go to the Capitol and watch."

If Cokie learned intuitively, so, in her own way, did young Marie Corinne Morrison Claibornenicknamed Lindy-who grew up on Moreau Plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana. Unswerving political stances and spirited discourses were her legacy-at least one member of every generation of her family has been in public service since the 1600s. ,

Lindy, at her husband's side, breathed the issues, received the flow of dignitaries to her table, staged the CongressiOnal campaigns, and raised three accomplished children. She also opened the Bethesda home annually for an elaborate garden party, preparing the bounty of food herself in the Louisiana style.

Cokie, whose given name is Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs, split early years at parochial schools in New Orleans and Washington. She remembers, "People in Washington loved Louisiana food. Smothered chicken and greens, okra stew, red beans and rice-that was food. Actually, I cook it all too.

"The truth is that my children, Rebecca and Lee, are another generation removed and have never lived in New Orleans, but they feel the kinship very strongly-I think all of Mama's grandchildren do.

Still, when your mother and your grandmother pronounce the city "Nu AH-lee-uns" with a twist of tongue true only to real Louisianans, the family Southernness is secure. "Being Southern helped me in Washington, very much so," asserts Lindy, who was elected to fill her husband's seat when his plane was lost over Alaska in 1972. "As a sort of transitional woman politician, I think being a Southern woman had a great deal to do with my being able to accommodate the transition."

Her book details her entry into her husband's House, and the 17 ensuing years as she served nine Congresses. Her constituents were not disappointed as their representative plunged into the issues of civil rights and women's concerns. A true trailblazer, she chaired the Democratic National Convention that nominated Jimmy Carter to the Presidential race-the first woman in history to assume that honor. Cokie, while professing her Southern roots, admits, "I'm more in the tradition of Southern women. And the traits have helped me. In the same way Mama was transitional in politics, I've been transitional-or pioneering, really-in broadcasting. What happened with our generation was that we came in and knocked down barriers for those behind us."

Nowhere does Cokie's Southernness come into play more, she admits, than on her weekly TV appearance alongside George Will, Sam Donaldson, and David Brinkley on This Week With David Brinkley. "The thing required in this weekly gathering with men is that I have to be strong but feminine-and do it on the air," she observes. "Having some Southern grace and a little bit of Southern charm helps a lot. The business of getting in what you have to say is easier to do as a Southern woman."

Cokie and her husband, Steven Roberts, a senior writer with U.S. News & World Report, bought her childhood home nearly 20 years ago. Lindy divides her time between a Washington apartment and a charming-but controversialcourtyard home on New Orleans' famed Bourbon Street, known for its bawdy nightlife.