Granny D’s Mission | New England’s Gifts

When she was 88, Doris Haddock — affectionately known as Granny D — said she’d walk across the country to call attention to campaign-finance reform. What followed would inspire an entire community, and beyond.

When she was 88 and a great-grand-mother, Doris Haddock, who lived in Dublin, New Hampshire, said she’d walk across the country to call attention to campaign-finance reform, the effort to stem contributions that slip through not-quite-illegal channels from corporations and special-interest groups into the pockets of political candidates. To Doris, this so-called “soft money” was the root of all that was wrong with our democracy. Starting in California, she planned to walk 10 miles a day for one year and to enter the nation’s capital on her 90th birthday, on foot. Like many women her age, she had arthritis and emphysema, but that didn’t stop her. Her son (and next-door neighbor), Jim, said more than once, “She’ll die trying,” for he knew better than any of us her stubborn spirit.

To get ready, Doris walked Dublin’s winding, hilly roads for months, a pack on her back, logging nearly 1,000 miles. She slept on the ground to prepare for what she imagined might lie ahead. She began her trek on January 1, 1999, in Pasadena, California. On her shoulder, braced like a soldier’s rifle, she carried a big yellow flag that she had stitched and that said, simply, Campaign Finance Reform. Wearing T-shirts and khaki shorts in the heat, and heavy woollen pants and sweaters in the cold, Doris marched through 208 towns and 13 states. She finally strode right into our nation’s capital, just two months late.

When Doris arrived home, the bands played and Dublin threw a big party. Most of us who had bid her goodbye were amazed to find that, 3,200 miles later, she looked stronger, younger, more alive. Not only had she walked 3,200 miles, but she’d also delivered hundreds of speeches, nothing she’d ever done before. Granny D had walked through four pairs of shoes, worn out four sun hats, and exhausted dozens of walking companions. At her welcome-home party, she said, “I am thankful to New England for raising its children with businesslike severity so that we might be a little tough and more courageous and become, after long lives here, great connoisseurs and critics of beauty and community … Wherever I went across America, people wanted to shake my hand and wish me well, not because they thought I was something special, but because I was someone like them. Americans are not selfish. They are kind and full of great spirit.”

—“The Power of One,” by Edie Clark, November 2000.

Granny D passed away in her Dublin, New Hampshire home, surrounded by family, in 2010. She was 100 years old.