URBANNA — In 1988 I decided to try writing opinion. I loved lampooning society as I saw it, but I felt the need for more challenge and wanted to take on controversial issues. I soon discovered writing opinion was like jumping out of the sizzling frying pan and smack dab into the blazing fire.
If you don’t believe this, sit down and write an opinion about what you think of President Biden or Trump. Then send it to the Sentinel. I guarantee that half the county will be highly offended whichever position you take.
But why? Do we expect everyone in our democracy to have the same opinion? This only happens in totalitarian systems where the government allows only one opinion and if you try to speak out about what you think and it doesn’t conform to government thinking you are suddenly carted off in the night and never seen again or — you mysteriously fall out of the window of a very tall building.
So we all want the right of freedom of expression — yet after 40 years of writing I have only one thing to say: Good luck getting it.
I well remember what Middlesex County was like in 1988 when I first penned political opinion. There were very few letters to the editor then and even fewer letters that expressed political opinion.
I also noted there were no women writers. I can’t remember even one letter to the editor from a woman at that time except perhaps a gentle note of thanks or appreciation for workers in a community project.
I asked a native why there were so few letters to the editor in the Sentinel and his answer astounded me. He said people in this county were afraid to speak out on certain issues for fear they or someone in their family would be fired from a job. He also explained there were powerful people in the county and no one would dare offend them.
I knew very well that if someone started writing controversial opinion in my hometown in Ohio, the very same situation would arise. I also knew very few Ohio natives would feel safe freely opining because of relatives — what would Mother think — or worse, what would Grandfather think? Family can be great support but also a great suppressor.
I began writing opinion in the Sentinel with no illusions as to what I was getting into. I knew I was pioneering something new for women and that I had to succeed so future women would have an easier time writing political commentary.
I also knew I would pay a price socially and economically. I joked with my publisher that after a few opinions I would be unemployable in Middlesex as no one would hire a woman who freely spoke her mind.
It wasn’t just Middlesex County that was bereft of women writing opinion in 1988. There were women writing advice columns to the lovelorn, recipes or household hints, but I could not find any Virginia woman writing opinion under her own byline.
Yet Joan Beck from the Chicago Tribune and other Northern women had syndicated columns picked up in the Richmond Times Dispatch and other dailies and I am sure Virginia women writers were on editorial boards in major newspapers by then. But they were not signing their names.
I had some local support. Then-editor Tom Hardin and publisher Fred Gaskins approved my plan. Hardin named the new column, “One Woman’s Opinion.” The late Judge Bareford also told me of his support. The late W.D. Edwards, also a powerful voice in our county, called to tell me of his backing. Native late Virgil Gill called me many times to encourage me. No woman ever pioneered anything new without the support of a few far-sighted men.
Most important of all was my husband’s support. How many men in 1988 could have withstood their wives writing opinion every week in the local newspaper? Many a time he disagreed with One Woman, but he always supported her column.
I wanted total freedom of writing on any topic, but I was asked to stay off gender and race issues. I smiled sweetly and peppered the Sentinel for 40 years with race and gender issues.
In the first 20 years I would get attack letters in response to my opinion the following week. Some were not the most respectful letters, which infuriated my husband. I had to beg him not to write a letter blasting some poor soul whom he felt had “insulted” his wife in last week’s issue. Pure comedy.
I wrote some columns on ideas for civil public discourse. We don’t need to insult people because they have a different opinion from us, but rather simply state our opinion and the reasons why we have come to such a conclusion. And always be respectful of our fellow man.
© 2024
