‘Someday a woman will be president!’
Awoman from Squirrel Hill left a voicemail message saying she’d just sent Margaret dolls to all five women seeking the Democratic nomination for president.
Margaret dolls?
I called Ann Moliver Ruben back for an explanation. Turns out I knew Margaret well, albeit in only two dimensions, as a boy: Margaret was the bespectacled girl who drove “Dennis the Menace” to distraction on the comic pages and in a 1960s sitcom.
“She became my hero,” said Ms. Ruben, 94, who retired a while back from a long and formidable career as a psychologist. “I just loved Margaret because she put up with [Dennis] and paid him no mind. She went about her business, playing the piano. She was well adjusted, well put together, and I saw myself that way.”
After I drove out to Riverside Towers the next day, I tapped the elevator button for her floor, and found a pink Margaret T-shirt on her door. When it opened, Ms. Ruben was wearing the shirt, too.
“Someday a woman will be PRESIDENT!” Margaret declares on the front. “The Someday is Now!” it says on the back.
She invited me in, poured me a
cup of coffee and told me the story of the Margaret dolls. It could be you know some of this already because she had a Margaret moment in the national press a quarter-century ago. But hold that thought while we go back to this woman’s roots.
Ann Moliver grew up poor in the Hill District, the youngest of three girls, speaking only Yiddish until she got to kindergarten. She has a vivid memory of a girlhood promise to her father, Max Moliver, that she’d never give up on her dreams.
After she married Gershon Ruben in 1943, she mothered three sons and began taking classes at the University of Pittsburgh. She earned a bachelor’s degree in 1961, taught grade school in the city and then earned a master’s degree in education in 1965. She’d get a Ph.D in 1969, and the Rubens moved to Miami Lakes, Fla., in 1972.
Fast forward to the early 1990s. By then she’d long since established herself as a marriage counselor, helping hundreds of couples and feeling very good about her dear Gershon. She loved seeing the delight he still got from reading the “Dennis the Menace” strip on their patio. “I thought, isn’t it wonderful that there’s a cartoon that makes him laugh. You know it’s a given that people who are happy live longer and they’re a pleasure to be with.”
One day, Gershon, by then a retired insurance agent, showed her a panel from the strip where Margaret throws her hands in the air and says, “Someday a woman will be president!” That gave Ms. Ruben an idea.
With permission to reproduce Margaret from King Features Syndicate, she founded a company called Women Are Wonderful. In July 1995, a Walmart in Miramar, Fla., took and sold about 150 of Margaret T-shirts — then pulled them from the shelves.
When she asked why, she was told a customer had complained they were too political. It wasn’t even an election year. Ms. Ruben started calling reporters and by the time People magazine told her T-shirt story that fall, Walmart had done a 180. It promised to sell 30,000 T-shirts nationwide.
In 1995, no women were making a serious bid for the presidency. Only 54 women were in Congress, compared to 127 today. Now five of those women — Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — are vying for the Democratic nomination.
Ms. Ruben’s niece and longtime fan, Ann Pinsker, gathered all their addresses and mailed them to her. Ms. Ruben, who lost her beloved Gershon more than a decade ago, had her boyfriend, George Markowitz, drive her to UPS in Oakland last week. There she sent the dolls off to the five congressional offices.
I confessed to Ms. Ruben that, as a boy watching “Dennis the Menace,” I found Margaret annoying, as the writers intended I should. She forgave me instantly, and insisted I take two Margaret dolls from her closet and give them to my daughters.
I did as I was told. It felt like absolution.