Little Pink House_ A True Story of Defiance and Courage - Jeff Benedict [10]
Some faculty didn’t like the message Claire was sending. It simply wasn’t dignified for a college president to be on the front page, dancing barefoot in an eye-catching red dress. Claire knew her ways weren’t always politically correct. She characterized herself as “a feminine misfit in my own generation.”
But she was unafraid and unashamed of her beliefs and her ways. While president of Connecticut College, she contributed a chapter to a book on Italian Americans, in which she wrote about one of her private rituals. Shortly after getting married, Claire began setting her alarm for 4 a.m. While her husband slept, she’d get out of bed to freshen up, do her hair, and apply mascara and blush. Then she’d get back in bed. When her husband awoke, he’d find Claire looking desirable, closer to what she wanted him to see. She followed this routine for years. Lack of self-confidence, vanity, and a desire to keep romantic love alive with her husband were all reasons she cited for this practice. But her upbringing had a lot to do with it, too. “My grandmother had always told me,” Claire wrote, “to take precious care of my husband, to try to please him in what she mysteriously called ‘personal ways,’ and never do or say anything to break his heart.”
Claire stood out in New London, and she knew it. But she seemed to relish that. And people in the community loved the idea that she wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty trying to help solve some of the city’s financial and educational problems. On top of her college duties, she started spending time mingling with minority leaders, local churches, and other civic officials in an attempt to build bridges between the campus and the community.
Then, in early 1997, around the time that Jay Levin signed on to work for Peter Ellef, Claire had an epiphany that convinced her to take a more hands-on leadership approach in the city’s affairs. That spring, she taught a course about service and social reflection. One day, an African American student publicly challenged her during a lecture. Pointing out that Claire had done so much to help the college financially and otherwise, the student asked why she hadn’t used her standing to help the swelling number of minority students in the city that were on federal assistance and attending substandard schools.
At this same time, Claire read an opinion piece in the Day that lamented the city’s poor political leadership and cried out for a new leader to emerge. A Roman Catholic who was unafraid to acknowledge her belief in Christ, Claire felt like the newspaper piece spoke to her. “It seemed like the hand of God in my life,” she later said.
Jolted by her student and the Op-Ed piece, Claire embarked on a mission. She met one-on-one with more than two dozen of the city’s most respected businessmen, civic leaders, and clergy. She asked each of them what was needed to help turn the city’s economic fortunes around. The consensus answer that emerged was to take some of the city’s most successful, civic-minded residents and create an organization that could produce an economic-stimulus plan for the city. To Claire, this was the best way to ultimately improve the educational opportunities and social services for the city’s poor and underprivileged.
As an alumnus of Connecticut College, Jay Levin knew Claire well. And as word of her effort spread through the city, Levin talked with her privately. He told her an organization capable of mobilizing some of the city’s civic leaders outside the elected political process already existed—the NLDC. Claire had heard the NLDC mentioned in her talks with city officials. But realizing it had been dormant for years, she had dismissed its significance. “Jay said that he could bring it out of mothballs,” Gaudiani said.
Levin made it sound easy. Living members of the original organization would have to be contacted to get their blessing. Some paperwork had to be filed with the secretary of state, along with a registration fee to reactivate