A Beacon

I admit I love to read the obituaries of interesting people, don't you? I think the stories of people I have never heard of, who did amazing things are fascinating. To whit, back in June I was so taken with one I even cut it out so I would run into it every so often and remember Anne Martindell. The headline was "Diplomat bloomed late but in full." The subheadline was "'I didn't do anything real until I was 50,' ambassador said" Well, if that didn't catch my eye what would? What followed was the odyssey of a fascinating woman who kept on growing from the age of 50 and ascended incredible heights. I, too, feel as if life is far from on the downswing, but it is marvelous to have a foremother like Ms. Martindell to remind me that the best is yet to be. Read about her and smile. An edited version of her obituary is below.

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Anne C. Martindell, Late Bloomer, Lawmaker and Diplomat, Is Dead at 93
Published: June 15, 2008

Anne C. Martindell, who entered politics in her 50s, found true love as ambassador to New Zealand in her 60s, earned a college degree in her 80s and published a memoir titled “Never Too Late” in her 90s, died on Wednesday in Princeton, N.J. She was 93.
Her birth, her breeding and her iron-willed father seemed to have condemned Ms. Martindell to a life she later dismissed as utterly conventional — “I didn’t do anything real until I was 50,” she once told a reporter — but feminism and the 1960s changed all that.
Racing to make up for lost time, she carved out a career in New Jersey politics, serving as a state senator in the 1970s, and held posts in President Jimmy Carter’s administration, including that of ambassador to New Zealand. She also resumed her education at Smith College more than six decades after her freshman year, and in her 90s wrote her memoirs, published last month by Boxed Books. The book’s theme, neatly expressed by its author in two words, is carpe diem.

After attending private schools in Manhattan and Princeton, and boarding school near Baltimore, she entered Smith College in 1932. By parental decree, she dropped out of Smith, then married. The marriage produced three children and ended in divorce after 13 years. In 1948, she married Jackson Martindell, the publisher of Who’s Who and had another child.

In the early 1960s, a friend persuaded her to teach an experimental reading class at a primary school in Princeton. A few years later, dismayed by the United States’ involvement in Vietnam, she began raising money for the 1968 presidential campaign of Senator Eugene J. McCarthy. After Mr. McCarthy failed to win the nomination, she agreed to become the vice chairwoman of the New Jersey Democratic Party and worked to bring disaffected liberals back into the fold.
“I was appalled at how women were treated in politics — good for making coffee and licking stamps, period,” she said.
In 1972, Ms. Martindell was the state chairwoman for Senator George McGovern’s presidential campaign, and she led the New Jersey delegation to the Democratic National Convention, the only woman heading a state delegation. In 1973, Ms. Martindell won a seat in the New Jersey Senate; her first act in the Senate was to prepare a resolution calling for the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon.
In her four years as senator, Ms. Martindell focused on women’s rights, education and the environment. She helped create the New Jersey Division on Women, one of the first state-level offices in the country that addressed exclusively issues affecting women, including job discrimination and domestic violence.
Her early endorsement of Jimmy Carter and her campaign work for him led to an appointment as director of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance of the United States Agency for International Development. In 1979, she was named ambassador to New Zealand and Western Samoa.
During her three years as ambassador, Ms. Martindell fell in love with New Zealand — and with one New Zealander in particular, Sir Mountford Tosswill Woollaston, a landscape painter better known as Toss, whom she later called “the love of my life.” He died in 1998.
Her devotion to New Zealand outlasted her tenure as ambassador. In 1986, disturbed at deteriorating relations between the United States and New Zealand, which had banned American nuclear submarines from entering its waters, she founded the United States-New Zealand Council. The council is still in operation.
In 1999, she returned to Smith, pursuing a major in American studies. She received her B.A. in 2002. On graduation day, Ms. Martindell, then 87, also received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. At that time, she was the oldest graduate in Smith’s history.

She briefly considered going to graduate school.

“That would be a good ticket to a job, I suppose,” she said.