perpetually prepared

In the middle of a speech during the Red Cross's national convention last weekend, word came that tornadoes had ripped through several towns in South Dakota.

Within moments, donation buckets were being passed through the banquet tables. When the buckets returned, the Red Cross had $9,000 for disaster relief.

While this anecdote speaks to the depth of Red Cross altruism, it may tell more about the woman who had the presence of mind to interrupt her speech for a bit of impromptu fundraising.

In the words of her husband, former U.S. Senator Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.), American Red Cross President Elizabeth H. Dole is "never unprepared."

Dole is today's Class Day speaker for the Kennedy School of Government (KSG), chosen because she leads one of the world's largest nonprofit organizations and thus serves as a model for a new wave of KSG graduates aiming for careers in community service.

She is also a former debutante, a member of three different presidential cabinets, one of American's most famous political wives and could be a presidential contender in her own right.

Those who know her and work with her say such accomplishments come from an impeccable presence of mind and uncanny poise in any situation.

And so today, as her speech puts the final touches on years of education for KSG students, Dole might be called the first serious female presidential candidate in American history, but she could sound more like a boy scout in revealing the secret of her success: be prepared.

From Debutante to Duke

Dole was born Elizabeth M. Hanford in Salisbury, N.C., in August 1936, daughter of one of the small town's most prominent families. During her childhood, she made the rounds of a well-born Southern woman: piano and riding lessons and debutante balls.

But those who knew Dole as she grew up twenty years before the heyday of feminism that molded First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton say there was something different about her. There was a grit beneath the glitter of her debutante life.

"She was very focused, from early life on. She would set her mind on something and accomplish it," says William E. King, who went to high school with Dole and now is custodian of her college memories as Duke University Archivist. "You expected her accomplishments and you weren't surprised by them."

Dole's grit won her acceptance to Duke's Women's College, and there, as in high school, she won fame that made her more than simply first among females.

As Women's Student Government President, Dole was the force behind the partial adoption of a campus honor code. King says she was probably the only female political science major in her class.

Her achievements at Duke culminated in 1958 with two senior awards which emphasized the two sides of Dole's unusual success. She was elected May Queen, a title awarded for beauty and popularity and signifying the traditional pinnacle of women's achievement at Duke.

But then she was named 1958's Student Leader of the Year, snagging an honor usually reserved for men and signifying a success in the wider co-educational world that would continue to grow after college.

From Harvard to Washington

After Duke, Dole headed to Harvard Law School (HLS), where as one of only two dozen women she met hostility from the very beginning of her time in Cambridge.

On her first day at the Law School, Dole recalled in a commencement speech at Smith College earlier this spring, "A male student came up to me and demanded to know what I was doing there."

"He said, 'Elizabeth...don't you realize that there are men who would give their right arm to be in this law school--men who would use their legal education,'" Dole said.

After three years at HLS, Dole once again was forced to face prejudice. She secured a job as a White House consumer lawyer after finding that no Washington law firms were hiring women.

This was the first of many government jobs for Dole, who started her political life as a Lyndon Johnson Democrat and soon became a stalwart in Reagan Republican cabinets.

Instead of crossing the aisle to switch party affiliations, Dole walked down the aisle, leaving what many saw as a marriage to her political ambition for a wedding to a divorced Senator from Kansas in 1975.

She spent the 1970s distinguishing herself as a consumer-affairs lawyer, and as her husband's political star rose in Congress, Dole used her legal experience to vault into the executive branch as President Ronald Reagan's Transportation Secretary.

President George Bush tapped her to be his secretary of labor, and there Dole had again to be prepared as she was thrown in the middle of a man's world of coal-mine strikes and labor negotiations.

Her life in government seemed to end in 1992, when the Clinton administration took over and Dole accepted the presidency of one of the world's largest charitable organizations.

The Red Cross

Since taking the helm of the Red Cross, with 30,000 full-time staff and over a million volunteers nationwide, Dole has concentrated on improving blood-donation services and disaster relief.

The move to a non-profit group was seen as somewhat out of character for a woman widely perceived as one of the most ambitious in Washington. However, just as those who knew her in college say Dole's overachieving was completely genuine, those who work with her at the Red Cross see no underlying political motivation.

"She exudes this very genuine nature. She exudes that which she asks of [Red Cross] volunteers," says Navin Narayan '99, who last week became the youngest head of a Red Cross committee--the Committee on Youth Involvement--in the organization's history.

Narayan says Dole's cabinet experience prepared her to run a large organization like the Red Cross, and he adds that she quickly learned to lead her non-profit to greater effectiveness and unity.

"She's brought a sense of collectivity to the Red Cross which has made people feel like it's a family again," Narayan says.

This "family" feel was reinforced at last weekend's national Red Cross convention. As the keynote speaker, Dole left the podium with a microphone to circulate among the banquet tables, dazzling those in attendance by rattling off statistics and anecdotes about individual chapter delegations as she passed them.

"That's very typical," Narayan says. "The podium is probably her worst enemy. It's the crowd that she wants to belong to."

He says Dole's impeccable memory and preparation at events like this one allow her to have confidence in spontaneity--like her recital of a story about one girl saving a nurse from drowning that Bob Dole says "had tears streaming down everyone's cheeks." They also allow her audience and her organization to feel a special bond to a leader who cares enough to learn about them as individuals, Narayan said.

The Road to Washington

While serving in a number of prominent Washington positions. Dole did not really appear in the national spotlight until 1996. when she took six months off as Red Cross President and helped run her husband's third campaign for the presidency.

Much was made in the campaign of the contrasts between Dole and her husband--she, glib and spontaneous, he, earthy and halting.

Many said she would have been a better candidate for the television age, especially after an Oprah-Winfrey-like speech to the Republican National Convention where, in typical Dole style, she circulated in the audience chatting with her husband's friends and supporters.

According to Bob Dole, that evening in San Diego symbolized what makes his wife a savvy political animal. She had mapped out her "spontaneous" steps months in advance. When her microphone shorted out just minutes before showtime, she had a backup ready.

"It's about being prepared," Bob Dole said in an interview yesterday. "What I should have done in San Diego was stand up and say 'I refuse the nomination, and I nominate my wife Elizabeth.'"

The Road Ahead

Dole returned to the Red Cross as promised after the campaign, and has said repeatedly that she has "no plans" to run for any other office.

Still, recent polls have characterized her in the top ten most popular American women and called her the woman most likely to become the first female president.

"There's still tremendous support for her running," says Jean A. Inman, chair of the Massachusetts Republican Party.

Even her husband says Elizabeth might actually be the Dole headed for the White House. He says he has already had a few "Elizabeth 2000" hats sewn up.

It's going to happen one of these days, a woman in the White House," he says. "She's got the qualities and the temperament to do a good job."

And so, although Elizabeth Dole's spokespeople would not reveal the topic of today's address, it would not be surprising if she sets off into the crowd, armed with information about who the graduates are and where they are going--even after she spent the early part of this week surveying tornado damage in South Dakota.

Dole, after all, is usually prepared for anything.