Health & Fitness
Kristin Clark Taylor inspires students
While Olivia Pope fans were home watching "Scandal" on Feb. 27, I was taking myself on an “author” date to NOVA’s Manassas campus. The Office of Student Life sponsored a free community event with Kristin Clark Taylor – Scandal-inspiration Judy Smith's real life friend – speaking about her years working in the West Wing.
Taylor was the first African-American woman to serve as White House director of communications for President George H.W. Bush. She wrote a book about her experiences called “The First to Speak: A Woman of Color inside the White House” (Doubleday, 1993).
Taylor kept her comments brief so she could interact with the young adults in Colgan Theatre. She shared what it was like to find a job after leaving Michigan State with just an undergrad degree in classical literature. Luckily her byline in the Detroit Free Press caught the eye of the launch team at Gannett, who recruited her to help start the new national daily USA Today. From there she was offered the job as Vice President Bush’s communications strategist, press officer and writer.
Taylor was proud to bring her mother to the White House one day, and even kept a clump of dirt and grass from the Rose Garden that she cleaned off her high heel as a memento. When her mother died two months before Bush was elected president, her death further forged their friendship.
“Working in the White House was a living history lesson,” said Taylor, who said she always took a moment of reverence before entering the Oval Office. “I was aware of the hands that had polished the doorknobs I touched. The past is a living, breathing thing. We all need to connect with something larger than ourselves.”
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Oh, and those racy (and racing) scenes in “Scandal” in the West Wing? Taylor said it’s more like working in a private home; calm, even in crisis. So she has to laugh when she sees all those extras running in the background on the show. She said the décor of the HBO TV series Veep is truer to form – she was sure they were filming in her old office!
Taylor encouraged students to be “memory makers” of those we have loved and lost. As an example, she shared the moment she asked her father if he thought there would ever be a black president. He was in the basement of their family home, bent over a fishing tackle box. She watched his shoulders strengthen, and he said, yes – maybe not in his lifetime, or hers, but yes. When that day came, she said, it was in her lifetime, not his; and it was historic, whether you agreed with Barack Obama’s policies or not.
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“Prayer is for God to expand the territory of my heart,” said Taylor, who starts each day with an expression of gratitude and Bible reading to “put the rest of the day in perspective and gird myself” for what comes. She practices tai chi, and encouraged students to “power down” and create stillness so that they could allow space to be filled with whatever is waiting to come in.
Driving home from campus in the extreme winter chill, I turned off the car radio, and created a stillness that allowed peace to enter. I thought about the loved ones who are no longer here, the memories we made together and the times we cherished. I had held them in, protecting them. Now I realize I need to write them down, and share them, as Kristin Clark Taylor has inspired me to do.
Cindy Brookshire currently presides over Write by the Rails, the Prince William Chapter of the Virginia Writers Club and a member organization of the Prince William County Arts Council. To download nomination forms for the Prince William Poet Laureate program, due May 10, go to http://www.writebytherails.org/2014/02/call-for-nominations-open-for-prince.html. For more information about the Virginia Writers Club, go to http://www.virginiawritersclub.org/wbtr/.
