Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
D.C. notables remember Albright
Memorial service honors first female U.S. secretary of state
WASHINGTON — A veritable who’s who of Washington’s political and foreign policy elite gathered Wednesday to pay their last respects to the late Madeleine Albright, a child of conflict-ravaged Europe who arrived in the U.S. as an 11-year-old girl and became America’s first female secretary of state.
The trailblazing diplomat and champion of her adopted country as the world’s “indispensable nation” was joyously remembered by President Joe Biden and former President Bill Clinton as a no-nonsense, valued adviser who did not suffer fools or tyrants and was most concerned about Russia’s war with Ukraine when she died last month of cancer at 84.
Biden said Albright’s name was synonymous with the idea that America is “a force for good in the world.”
“In the 20th and 21st century, freedom had no greater champion than Madeleine Korbel Albright,” he said. “Today we honor a truly proud American who made all of us prouder to be Americans.”
He said he had learned of Albright’s death while flying to Brussels for an emergency NATO summit on Ukraine and was struck by the memory of her key role in pressing for the expansion of the alliance in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union to protect Europe from a repeat of the carnage of World War II and the Cold War ideological battle between communism and democracy.
And Clinton, the man who appointed her first as his U.N. ambassador in 1993 and then as secretary of state in 1996, said his last conversation with Albright just weeks before her passing was dominated by the situation in Ukraine and her fears about the future of democracy at home and abroad.
He recalled that Albright didn’t want to talk about her declining health at a moment when the West is on edge following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Albright, Clinton recalled, assured him that she was getting the best care she could, but didn’t want to “waste time” talking about that.
“The only thing that really matters is what kind of world we’re going to leave to our grandchildren,” Clinton recalled Albright telling him. He added, “She made a decision with her last breath she would go out with her boots on.”
Biden and Clinton, along with former President Barack Obama and several of Albright’s successors as secretary of state, including Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, John Kerry and current officeholder Antony Blinken, were some 1,400 mourners who attended the funeral at Washington’s National Cathedral.
The service was punctuated at points by tears, laughter and applause during reminiscences from Biden, Bill and Hillary Clinton and Albright’s three daughters, Anne, Alice and Katharine, who remembered her as a doting “mom” and “Granny Maddy” to their own children even amid a hectic work schedule that often took her around the world.
That schedule didn’t let up when she left government service in 2001 and returned to teaching at Georgetown University, started a successful international consulting company, served on the boards of numerous women’s and human rights groups and became a best-selling author.
Hillary Clinton recalled stories that she had lobbied for Albright to serve as secretary of state, a role that Clinton would serve in herself during the Obama administration. “It’s been said that I urged my husband to nominate her as our first female secretary of state,” she said. “Unlike much that’s said, this story was true.”
Clinton remembered Albright as a fearless diplomat who broke barriers and then counseled, cajoled and inspired women to follow in her footsteps.
“The angels better be wearing their best pins and putting on their dancing shoes,” Clinton said. “Because if as Madeleine believed there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t support other women, they haven’t seen anyone like her yet.”
On the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and one month before her death, The New York Times printed what would be Albright’s last published writing. She wrote that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion would be a “historic error” that would cement his legacy as one of “infamy.” “Until the end, she was still in a hurry to do good,” Clinton said.
Albright was born in what was then Czechoslovakia, but her family fled twice, first from the Nazis and then from Soviet rule. They ended up in the United States, where she studied at Wellesley College and rose through the ranks of Democratic Party foreign policy circles to become ambassador to the United Nations. Bill Clinton selected her as secretary of state in 1996 for his second term.
In 2012, Obama awarded Albright the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, saying her life was an inspiration to all Americans.