The passing of Katherine Hepburn, that is. It’s not just a shoreline story either because Hepburn grew up in Hartford. Her parents were unconventional figures in their day:
Her father, for many years the chief urologist at Hartford Hospital, attracted notice as an early advocate of public education about venereal disease.
Hepburn’s mother had an even more controversial public career. She was an active, and highly visible, supporter of women’s suffrage and legalized birth control.
Despite Hepburn’s mother’s early 20th-century advocacy, birth control would become legal in Connecticut in the 1960s and only after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Griswold v. Connecticut. (Visit Planned Parenthood’s timeline to see Connecticut’s role in American birth control history.)
According to the article I’ve linked to, her motherwas virtually shunned on the streets of Hartford for her outspoken views, and today is considered a co-founder of Planned Parenthood.
In the early on-air announcements of Hepburn’s death, I heard an “in lieu of flowers” claiming that donations can be made to her favorite charities and Planned Parenthood was named among them, but damned if I can’t find that in print anywhere.
Hepburn’s relationship with Spencer Tracy was, in fact, a pivotal revelation for me. When Tracy died, I was eleven and his passing was big news locally, of course, because of Hepburn’s Connecticut ties. I must’ve picked up on the nature of their relationship and asked some pointed questions because I remember my mother very patiently explaining the details to me. It was the first time I’d heard of extramarital affairs and yet the look on my mother’s face told me that this particular example was complicated and anything but tawdry and ruinous. I realized even then that it had an element of honor that comes when life hands you less than ideal circumstances.
I don’t think I truly appreciated Hepburn’s unconventionalism until some of those same kinds of choices and unconventionisms would come into my own life. Before then, she was an interesting film figure from a generation that was older than my parents. Who knew common threads, well above generational differences, would emerge.
Incidentally, I find it amusing that she compared herself to the Flatiron Building, located in a NYC area that I wandered earlier this year. Like I said, common threads. Common — not exceptional — but they resonate with me.For additional content and my diary, please visit www.pursedlips.com.
