Mignon McCarthy
Mignon McCarthy and I were close back in the 1980s. For a while, she ran the Campaign for Economic Democracy (CED), the statewide organization in California that my then husband, Tom Hayden, and I started. The U.S. was facing a recession at the time and fundraising was hard. California is a big state. So, I launched the Jane Fonda Workout to fund it, and Mignon was a regular in my classes. We became friends. When she left CED, Mignon and I wrote a book together, “Women Coming of Age.” We both loved to walk and shared countless hours trekking through dense forests with our dogs. We were writing about getting old and we loved how the forests benefitted from old trees. She pointed out that even dead trees had a purpose. She was smart, curious, and had a great giggle.
But then I married Ted Turner and moved to Atlanta. Mignon and I didn’t see each other for over thirty years.
Then, several months ago at a memorial service for another colleague from the ‘80s, I was told Mignon had rapidly advancing Alzheimer’s and wanted to die. I got her address and drove there immediately. Turned out, she lived in the same apartment a block from the ocean that I’d found for her forty-some years ago (Santa Monica is rent controlled thanks to the organizing we did there in the 1970s).
