Family Forum / Marriage / Marriage / September 2005

Former NOW President Molly Yard Dies at 93

By JOE MANDAK,

Associated Press Writer

Wed Sep 21, 5:40 PM ET

PITTSBURGH - Molly Yard, the longtime liberal activist who led the
National Organization for Women during the fight over the nomination
of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, has died. She was 93.

Yard died Wednesday in the Fair Oaks Nursing Home in Pittsburgh, said
her son, James Garrett, an assistant U.S. attorney.

Yard was elected president of NOW in 1987 after working for nearly a
decade on its national staff. She stepped down in late 1991, after
suffering a stroke earlier that year.

She made NOW more visible and worked against Bork, whom she said might
provide a fifth vote to override the high court's 1973 ruling
legalizing abortion. The Senate rejected Bork after a bitter political
battle in 1987.

"People's lives are hanging in the balance on this one," Yard said at
the time. "Women, and all the minority groups, the elderly and the
disabled, millions of Americans, everything they've worked for today
is in jeopardy if this man gets on the court."

NOW's membership grew by 110,000 during Yard's tenure as president.
"We're fighting for women's individual rights," she said in an 1989
interview. "I feel we are in a battle."

Earlier, she worked for various Democratic candidates, including John
F. Kennedy in 1960 and George McGovern in 1972. She became active in
NOW in Pittsburgh in 1974 and joined its national staff in 1978.

At that time, NOW was campaigning for the Equal Rights Amendment, and
Yard raised more than $1 million for that drive in less than six
months while lobbying in Washington.

The daughter of Methodist missionaries, Yard was born in Shanghai,
China, and said later that her father's Chinese friends gave him a
brass wash basin to express their sorrow that Yard wasn't a boy.

"I grew up with that whole devaluation of myself because I was female.
It's outrageous, and it stays with you all your life," Yard said.

Garrett recalled his mother as a strong and always competitive woman.
He described a family vacation in the Rocky Mountains when he was
about 8, and watching a train running parallel to the road "at about
80 miles per hour or so."

"Mother was driving the car at the time. I'll never forget, I have a
vivid memory of her racing the train," Garrett said. "That was
mother."

Yard was preceded in death by a daughter and her husband, Sylvester
Garrett. She is survived by two sons and five grandchildren.