A Look at the Baltimore Roots of the Two Most Powerful Women in Congress
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by Jamie Steihm
It so happens Baltimore's the hometown of the two highest-ranking women in Congress, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski. Both Democratic lawmakers grew up in the bustling Baltimore of the 1940s and '50s. Both say today their rise to political power was no fluke, but a result of a shared time, place and school. WYPR's Jamie Stiehm has the tale of two women in one city.
That was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, talking informally to reporters about a pending Senate economic stimulus package She learned the art of politics young, when her father, Tommy D’Alesandro, was mayor of Baltimore. But the Speaker also credits the nuns who colored her Catholic girlhood every single school day.
[Pelosi] “The Institute of Notre Dame. That was the Catholic school that we both went to, an all girls school. We were taught by the nuns who inspired us to reach our heights.”
The imposing five-story brick building in East Baltimore dates back to 1847. The School Sisters of Notre Dame inhabit generations of Baltimore memories. Senator Mikulski, a few classes ahead of Pelosi, remembers her school days vividly, including the mayor’s daughter known as “little Nancy.” Barbara Mikulski:
[Mikulski] “I often laugh and say...she came in a limousine, I came in a bus, but we all ended up on the same debating team.”
Mikulski says social status didn't matter when it came to molding minds in class and souls in chapel.
[Mikulski] “It really didn't matter whether you were the mayor’s daughter or a grocer’s daughter or maybe a new immigrant, we were all treated the same.”
The Senator took office in 1987, the same year Pelosi was first elected to the House as a California congresswoman representing San Francisco, where she raised her family of five children. Mikulski, a social worker and community activist, began her political career early on the Baltimore city council and later served in the House. Pelosi became Speaker late in 2006, the third-highest official in the U.S. government.
[Mikulski] “Nancy and I are both the first. She’s the first woman speaker and I'm the first Democratic woman elected in her own right. Though we were the first, we never wanted to be the only.”
These days, the Institute has aged gracefully, with slate staircases, creaky elevators and the Sisters’ formal parlor, complete with grandfather clock. The voices of 365 high school girls, clad in plaid uniforms, make the halls hum. Most striking are the original stained glass murals inside the front entrance on Aisquith Street. Libby Gerrity Keady, the development director, explains the symbolism:
[Keady] “The murals signify many of the virtues that the School Sisters of Notre Dame hold dear: charity, praise, duty, science, courage, kindness, faith, art, prayer, so this space is really a treasure.”
Sister Hilda Marie is the only nun who still lives here in the building. As she recalls, the Speaker’s mother, was head of the mother’s club in the school, with high expectations of her only daughter’s grades. In her late 70s, Sister Hilda Marie tends the grotto and runs the kitchen at lunchtime. She remembers little Nancy :
[Sister Hilda Marie] “Nancy would come down after school just to see her mother and her mother would scold her sometime if she wasn't doing her homework.”
Speaker Pelosi said the leadership skills she and Mikulski learned at Notre Dame were a perfect match for the flourishing ethnic enclaves where each grew up.
[Pelosi] “They taught us to be strong. She came from Highlandtown, the Polish section, I came from Little Italy, the Italian section of Baltimore, so a lot of spirit in our background as well as our faith and the confidence the nuns placed in us.”
The two women have watched each other’s career path over the years with pleasure. They take a not-so-secret pride in how they got there from here.
[Mikulski] “What Baltimore generated in both Speaker Pelosi and myself was a love of community. Baltimore is a city of neighborhoods: multi-ethnic, it’s very vibrant and people are actually very engaged in their community.”
Both women have come a long way from Catholic school girls in East Baltimore to becoming Maryland’s senior Senator and the Speaker of the House in Washington.