Gertrude Shankman, born six years before women had the right to vote, thought she would see the first female president elected Tuesday.
“Yes, I voted,” the 102-year-old told the Star before the presidential election. “I can’t wait to find out if I’m right.”
She was wrong.
Shankman, born in 1914, grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and married at the age of 19.
A mother to two, she spent her years as a homemaker and working in her husband’s shoe store. When he retired, she worked as a legal secretary, teaching herself shorthand and how to type.
“Where do you think I got my politics?” she said, laughing. She spent most of her life on the East Coast, moving into Handmaker Jewish Services for the Aging in Tucson about 10 years ago.
She grew up in the years when voting was new for women, but it was always part of her life. She remembers her father giving her placards endorsing candidates to hand out to customers in the family’s store.
As an adult in Florida, she volunteered with the League of Women Voters, offering rides to get women to the polls. It didn’t matter whom they voted for, she just wanted them to vote.
She had high hopes for this election.
“Well, having lived so long with women’s suffrage ... and now that we’re voting, there we are with a woman,” Shankman said in the days before the election.
Like so many, Shankman feels the sting of Hillary Clinton’s defeat. And yet she still has hope.
“My reaction is that I have confidence in people,” she said after the election.
This is not the first time she has disliked a president, and it is not the first time she has seen the country wade through murky waters.
“We mustn’t let it get to us,” she continued. “We must have faith. We must do better. We must convince people to vote. Have faith. We will survive or succeed.”
There’s a bit of sass in that last statement.
“At my age, you need attitude,” she quipped.
