Behind the Scenes: An Unforgettable Woman

Donna Crane is Policy Director for NARAL Pro-Choice America
 
I have many amazing memories from the March for Women's Lives, but in the four years since, one in particular has taken on special significance for me. 
 
As a volunteer at the March, I was assigned to work the backstage VIP area. In general, this meant that I helped staff the speakers as their times to appear onstage approached, and generally tried to keep folks corralled. A number of amazing and fabulous women and men were there - Moby, Julianne Moore, Candice Bergen, etc. - but a friend introduced me to someone particularly special that day: Dana Reeve.

The wife of Christopher Reeve, and an accomplished woman in her own right, Dana, our mutual friend, and I ended up spending several hours together in that backstage area, enjoying the speakers and the celebratory atmosphere of the march, and getting to know one another.  She was young and beautiful, totally lacking pretense, kind, and funny.  Over the course of the day we talked about the state of Chris' health, their children, and her and Chris' work together on behalf of stem-cell research.  It was very clear to me that she saw through an intensely personal lens the danger of letting anti-abortion politics derail ethical and important research in the United States - and was determined to do all she could to stop that from happening.  I was amazed by her quiet strength and dignity, and took that as a lesson.
 
As the world knows, five months later, Christopher Reeve died of complications from his earlier horse-accident injuries.  But then fate dealt a second blow: less than two years after the march, Dana Reeve passed away at a tragically young age, from cancer.
 
I can't say I knew her well by any stretch of the imagination, but I'll never forget having spent that day with her at the March for Women's Lives.  She was utterly committed to women's health and rights, to science, and to progress - and I'm honored to have had the chance to meet her, however briefly, that day.