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63 N early half a century before Beto O'Rourke visited every county in the state, Sissy Farenthold was up in the sky in a Douglas DC-3 borrowed from her cousin, hoping to connect with Texas voters. The year was 1972, and she whistle-stopped in urban and remote spots in her quest to be Texas' first female governor. Her platform as an outspoken, outsider candidate challenged the status quo while raising awareness for reforms focused on women and children's rights, ending poverty, and the plight of minorities. Despite her loss in the runoff, her statewide campaign captured the attention, then delegates at the Democratic conven- tion that summer. Soon Farenthold was in contention for the vice presidential slot. Gloria Steinem gave her nomination speech, and among the field of seven, the woman from Texas came in number two. Presidential candidate George McGovern disastrously selected Thomas Eagleton as his '72 running mate; Eagleton was soon forced off the ticket due to controversy surrounding his treatment for depression, and he was replaced by Sargent Shriver. One wonders, had the party gone with Farenthold, what that historic campaign would have looked like. A Progressive at Home Five decades later, the issues Far- enthold first championed remain contentiously relevant. On a summer afternoon, the 92-year-old political maverick welcomed us into her mod- ernist River Oaks high-rise. The view encompasses the surrounding leafy cityscape, a neighborhood of pedigree and entitlement — often out of step with her own views — in an adopted hometown where she has practiced law and taught law students. The day of our interview, intensity shone through this slim woman with close-cropped, no-nonsense hair and piercing hazel eyes. She wore a well-cut long dress, in dark blue, accented by a scarf, even on this sweltering day. While many with such a privileged background would have done nothing about our troubled equal rights and social injustice, she did everything, living a life acutely attuned to the un- derdogs — immigrants, poor women, Mexican-Americans, blacks. Because of her involvement in these still prescient issues at home, her humanitarian engagements, her work on international public policy, and her visits to war-ravaged areas around the globe, many have proposed Farenthold as a suitable candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. She was honored at the Rothko Chapel Gala, side by side with Lynn Wyatt, in 2017, and currently endows a lecture series through the Rothko Chapel on peace, social justice, and human rights. Farenthold is from a dynasty of Texas legal crusaders. At The University of Texas School of Law — where her grandfather's name, Benjamin D. Tarlton Sr., graces the law library and from where both she and her father, Benjamin D. Tarlton Jr. (attorney to LBJ and foe to the Ku Klux Klan), graduated — a rich archive is devoted solely to studying her life and impact. Ironically, her papers are held at UT's Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, named for her gubernatorial opponent. The website law.utexas.edu/ farenthold, presented by the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, is devoted exclusively to the history and good deeds of Frances Tarlton "Sissy" Farenthold and bears the subhead "A Noble Citizen." During our visits, which spanned last summer into early fall — one in the midst of the heated Kavanaugh hearings, another during one of her many birthday celebrations — Farenthold al- ways walked down the condominium hallway to greet me at the elevator before ushering me into her apartment. Her erect bearing, and simple, regal attire — usually a caftan or long, unadorned dress — belied her years. Her home in this vintage high-rise is unexpected and unique. Highly carved antique wooden furniture, including some gilded French pieces, and Baroque candelabra from the Mexican Colo- nial era are bold moments within walls painted a dark eggplant shade, almost a cocoon effect. The somber mood reminds me of the Rothko Chapel. There is a cache of art, primarily by the controversial talent Michael Tracy. Tracy — the famously brilliant yet prickly artist whose River Pierce Foundation in San Ygnacio, Texas, deserves to be on every cultural pilgrimage route — is one of her dearest friends. "He's been trying to get me to part with my 17th- century candlesticks for years," she says during a tour of her home. Crosses, altars dripping with wax, and a series of abstract, ges- tural paintings of a purple hue are talismans testifying to a long- standing respect and camaraderie between the activist and the artist. The later series of Tracy's works have pride of place in the living room, which is dusky, dramatic, and at the same time, primordial. His rich purple painting cycle re- sembles ecclesiastical vestments. On the opposite side of the apart- ment, light rakes through the west- facing windows, flooding the dining room — a buoyant counterpoint to the living room's aubergine depths. A galley kitchen stands ready, adjoining the dining room. On one occasion, a caretaker dispenses mineral water and juices. On our third visit, interior design writer and editor Robert Leleux — au- thor of The Memoirs of a Beauti- ful Boy and a beloved Farenthold friend — offers pimento-cheese sandwiches, crudités, and birthday cake, a spread that lined an antique clerestory table that appeared to come from a monastery. Leleux's culinary preparations were for Farenthold's at-home birthday fête, one of a series of gatherings marking the trailblazer's 92nd. An intimate group of eight broke bread, including fellow activists Olive Hershey, who is currently working on a biography of artist Gertrude Barnstone, and Simone Swan, founding director of the Menil Foundation and head of The Adobe Alliance. On a previous occasion, Farenthold and daughter Emilie Far- enthold (an attorney with a PhD in public health who has devoted herself to juveniles with mental health issues in the prison system) led us down the hall to a wall lined with a salon-style arrangement of family photographs. We paused at one from the mid-century, showing a beautiful woman who looked conventional in the role of matriarch, surrounded by her husband and brood of kids. It was Sissy Farenthold with her late husband, George Farenthold. The couple divorced in 1985; he passed away in 2000. They had five children; Farenthold also raised a stepson. Three of the children survive today; one died as a toddler, her stepson was murdered, and one has been missing since 1989. None of these details come up in our conversations — Farenthold has always been able to