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got along,” Ajinsky said. “She was by no means a shooter, but she was passionate about the subject.” She was also smart, tenacious, and courageous, and possessed a virtue too often lacking in filmmakers who come to him for help. “She was prepared to do her homework, to do whatever it took to keep up with the editing. Whatever I needed, she was there,” he said. His admiration increased as he watched Alidra race almost single-handedly to pull together the various elements of production, jobs usually distributed among several people: writing narration, getting permissions, acquiring original videotape, dealing with the station, handling for postproduction, and pursuing publicity. “She was overextended, financially and physically. She was practically living out of her car,” he said. “But she got it done.”

When they finished editing the film, Cole submitted it to PBS Plus, which is responsible for supplying specials and series, from This Old House to Charlie Rose, to the nation’s public broadcasting stations. PBS Plus liked it, too, and offered Granny D Goes to Washington to PBS stations around the country.

But there was no time to celebrate. Now, the pressure was ratcheted up even higher. Alidra had only three months to finish all the postproduction, including tracking down original archival footage. With 40 percent of the documentary taken from archival footage, this was of major importance. Alidra had no idea how difficult and expensive getting ahold of the original clips would prove to be, or how stressful, with her money running out.

Then some angels appeared. Helen Appell, a former Zen priest at Green Gulch and a supporter of the arts, gave her $5,000. “As a fellow woman involved in the arts, I saw her sincerity of motivation, her dedication, and her fortitude. We all struggle with doubt, but she found a way to see herself through,” she said. “She has integrity.”

And when George Stoney viewed a completed version of the film, he was so impressed that, unsolicited, he secured a $2,000 grant from a family foundation to help Alidra pay for the film’s publicity. “What she had done was amazing. What pleased me most is that she presented an extraordinary woman with economy and without condescension. The temptation is to make us older people look cute, and that demeans us as individuals. Alidra did not do that,” said Stoney, who was ninety-two in 2009 and still teaching film at NYU.

Finally, on the evening of October 3, 2006, Alidra, dressed in a fitted black velour top and a skirt, drove to Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, for the PBS premiere of Granny D Goes to Washington. Before it began, the station staff had taken her to dinner and expressed curiosity and admiration. “They wanted to know how a neophyte had managed to bring a film like mine to completion,” she said. “There was genuine interest, admiration, and acknowledgment. It felt nice.” But the high point for Alidra came after the presentation. Doris’s son, Jim, stood up spontaneously and encouraged members of the audience to support the film by buying the DVD. He said Alidra had put her “blood, sweat, and tears—and her own money”—into making the film and they ought to buy a copy.

Doris, who sat onstage with Alidra, was happy, too. The documentary had, after all, shown the power one person has to effect change against great odds. “I mean, a little old lady living in a backward state in a backward village suddenly at the age of ninety, walking across the country for campaign finance reform, was a pretty ridiculous thing. And now I am getting thank-you letters, inspiring letters, from all over the world, from Norway down to Australia,” ninety-nine-year-old Doris told me.

The film ultimately aired on public broadcasting stations in forty-four states. The late Molly Ivins wrote of it: “You want to know where to get the strength, courage and optimism to keep fighting for change? Watch Granny D Goes to Washington. . . . The documentary of her work is inspiring.” A New York Times review pronounced it “a stirring tribute, and an effective object lesson.