combine one part health activist, one part philanthropist, one part socialite, one part fashionista, and what do you get? a woman who wore couture while lobbying congress—mary lasker.
the challenge
the national institute of health and the mary lasker foundation wanted to publish a book called angel in mink about the life of mary lasker, so that generations present and future would understand the magnitude of her decades-long work trying to improve medical research in this country. the author, shirley haley, needed someone to help her with the research.
the challenge (part 2)
it was 2020-2021, which meant access to archives and libraries was stymied by covid. armed only with my personal laptop and working out of my childhood bedroom, i had to find a way to uncover every inch of this woman’s life without being able to leave my house.
my solution
if there’s one thing i am, it’s dogged. in the acknowledgments for angel in mink, i’m referred to as “stalwart.” i used every tool at my disposal to look into mary lasker’s life.
this meant scouring ancestry, archive.org, and newspaper archives for every utterance of her name i could find: mary lasker; mrs. mary lasker; mrs. albert lasker; mrs. lasker; etc. i read hundreds of articles and combed through countless irrelevant reports to find tiny details, like the color of a dress she wore to a ball, or to learn that she kicked off her shoes in the white house movie theater to watch gone with the wind with ladybird johnson. i also had the pleasure (and occasionally misfortune) of listening through hours of lyndon b. johnson’s telephone recordings to catch 15 second snippets of him begging mary to become the ambassador to finland, for some reason.
i even found ship manifests and immigration records that recorded every time she traveled to europe to buy picasso paintings and have dresses made by givenchy himself.
much research was also conducted by groveling—and i am indebted to the librarians, archivists, and historians who were working at archives and libraries through the pandemic and responded kindly to my many emails asking them to scan letters and photos that hadn’t yet been digitally archived.
additionally
i got to spend an afternoon with her dear friend, deeda blair, who was kind enough to let me interview her in person once it was safe to do so. she even let me pore through her personal photo albums for photos of mary.
emotional language. 