2 free thinkers
Harris’ parents met as doctoral students at the University of California, Berkeley at the dawn of the 1960s. Her father, a Jamaican named Donald Harris, studied economics. Her mother, Gopalan, studied nutrition and endocrinology.
For two freethinking young people drawn to activism, they landed on campus as protests exploded around civil rights, the Vietnam War and voting rights. Their paths crossed in those movements, and they fell in love and married.
Gopalan Harris defied generations of tradition by not returning to India after getting her doctorate, tossing aside expectations of an arranged marriage. She gave birth to Kamala and then Maya two years later. And even with young children, Harris’ parents continued their advocacy.
In her autobiography, “The Truths We Hold,” she writes of her parents being sprayed with hoses by police, confronted by Hells Angels and once, with the future senator in a stroller, forced to run to safety when violence broke out.
A few years into the marriage, Harris’ parents divorced. The mother’s influence on her girls grew even greater, and friends of Harris say they see it reflected throughout her life.
Andrea Dew Steele remembers it being apparent from the moment they sat down to craft the very first flyer for Harris’ first campaign for public office.
“She always talked about her mother,” Dew Steele said. “When she was alive she was a force, and since she’s passed away she’s still a force.”
Joe Gray, who was Gopalan Harris’ boss at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,
where she was a cancer researcher, struggles to describe how the woman who was just 5-foot-1 managed to fill a room with her commanding presence. He is struck by how much Harris reminds him of her.
“I just get the TV persona, but a lot of Shyamala’s directness and sense of social justice, those seem to come through,” he said. “I sense the same spirit.” maintained a sense of joy, how their laughs would echo.
One time, Simon said, Gopalan Harris sent her away from a fundraiser because she was wearing tennis shoes, gently reminding her, “We always show up excellent.”
Years later, she heard echoes of the same message when Harris offered some words of advice for her friend, “Girl, clean your glasses.”
“It’s her saying, ‘I believe in you and I want people to see what I see in you,’” Simon said.
The influence of Harris’ mother far outweighed that of her father. He and her mother separated when she was 5 and, though the senator trumpeted her father as a superhero in her children’s book, there are signs of iciness in their relationship. The senator said they have “off-and-on” contact.
The singularity of her mother’s role in her life made her death even harder for Harris. The senator says she still thinks of her constantly.