THE UNOFFICIAL name of the brake lights above the rear window on every car in the US is Libby lights. They are named after the Secretary of Transportation who made them mandatory during the Reagan administration. That was Elizabeth “Libby” Dole. Mrs. Dole descends in a straight line from weaver Jan and Dirkje van Aalstein of Meppel. In Texas, the town of Van Alstyne was named for the family.
She was married to Bob Dole of Kansas for nearly half a century until he died in 2021, aged 98. Libby, herself now 88, and he were a power couple. Bob was a senator and a man to be reckoned with; Elizabeth had already worked in the White House twice, as an aide to Presidents Johnson and Nixon. In almost every job for which she was asked, she was the first woman.
While Bob made an unsuccessful bid for the vice presidency and twice for the presidency, his wife first became Transportation Secretary, then Labor Secretary, before becoming President of the Red Cross. When Bob quit being a senator for Kansas after 27 years, Libby became a senator for North Carolina. But not before she had first attempted to be elected president of the United States herself.
If most of her achievements seem unfamiliar to you, it is because Elizabeth Dole was a woman of her time. Women with ambitions did not shout it from the roof. They applied for positions, or they were asked. Libby was asked all the time. Back when she graduated from Harvard Law, only four percent of the students were women, and of those four percent she was the best—after having been elected to just about every student leadership position.
Ms. Dole is considered an arch-feminist among her conservative Republican party friends. She still runs, with the support of Tom Hanks, a foundation that offers help to caregivers of war wounded. Her husband Bob had suffered severe injuries in Italy during World War II, and narrowly survived.
* Bob and Elizabeth Dole at the foot of the US Capitol in Washington. Bob’s right arm had largely shriveled since his war injuries, his hand barely more than a claw. He often slid a pen between two fingers so others would not grab that hand. Elizabeth helped him get dressed every day.
