Elizabeth Dole

Elizabeth Dole

Elizabeth Dole shows greatness because of her success as a great role model for young women everywhere. She has amazed family and friends since she was very young girl with her outstanding achievements. Even though she has done much hard work and deserves much of the credit for her achievements, she still gives her family all of the recognition. She believes she would have never made it this far if her family had not taught her values and beliefs. These values and beliefs have helped her to get through all of the hard times in life when she wanted to give up. Life for a young girl, who (Kozar 19) always lived in the country, made it very hard for Elizabeth to climb up the career ladder. However, she had the values and beliefs that were instilled in her while growing up, to keep pushing and be where she is today. She is definitely a hard worker and proves today that hard workers excel in life and inspire others to do the same.

Elizabeth Dole had many successes in life to become who she is today. To have many successes, she started showing leadership like behavior from a very young age. When she was only two years old she announced to her family that she would like be known as Liddy, because of her long name, Mary Elizabeth Alexander Hanford. She continued to be well organized and show efficient behavior through school by making wonderful grades. Elizabeth’s qualities did not at all go to waste as a child. She was the president of the neighborhood bird watching club, and was involved in the student body government in school. She ran for student body president in high school, but didn’t win. She was very upset, but knew boys were more likely to win in those days. She got over her disappointment and was later voted most likely to succeed by her graduating class. Elizabeth graduated in the top ten (Kozar 22) of her class. Her amazing grades got her into one of the best universities in the state. Elizabeth graduated from Duke University in 1958 with Phi Beta Kappa honors and a bachelor’s degree in political science. (Kozar 18)

After graduating from Duke University, it was for most women time to settle down and to start a family, but not for Elizabeth. She wanted to go out and see the world. She went to Cambridge, Massachusetts to work in the Harvard Law School Library as a secretary. Over the summer she went to England to study English history and government at Oxford University. She missed life in the U.S. and so she went back to Harvard to study education and government, so she could be a history teacher at a high school. Elizabeth loved the history class, but decided she didn’t want to teach government, but live it. So, she left for Washington, D.C. to begin her political career, by working as a secretary for a senator from North Carolina (Lucas 10). Working as a secretary for a senator was not enough for the intelligent young woman. She again tried to reach as far as she possibly could. She went to Margaret Chase Smith, one of only two women working in the Senate at the time, for advice on how she could make this dream possible. Mrs. Smith told Elizabeth if she was interested in government to get a degree in law. Elizabeth went back to Harvard again, but this time for a degree in law. There were 550 students in Elizabeth’s class, but only 24 were women (Lucas 11). Harvard was definitely a hard school, but Elizabeth was elected president of the international law club and received her diploma in 1965 (Lucas 11).

She moved back to Washington and passed the bar exam, meaning that she was allowed to practice law (Lucas 12). Elizabeth felt she wasn’t ready for practicing law, so she got a job in the government with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Her job was to help plan a conference on the educational problems of deaf people. Many people said she was very good at her job, but it ended soon. When the job was over, she began to go to night court to observe and to get a better understanding of law. Her first ever case was during night court. While she was watching a court session one evening, the judge asked her who she was and if she was a member of the bar. She said yes, and the judge told her he had a case for her. The next thing she knew she was defending a Greek man for annoying a lion at the zoo She won the case by explaining there was no way to know if the lion was really annoyed, because he didn’t show up in court to testify. She offered that the man would never go to that zoo again and she won (Lucas 12). She then began to defend people who had broken the law, but had no money for legal advice (Lucas 13) she learned much about another side of Washington and life in general, that way.

In April 1968, she got a job in an office at the White House. She dealt with consumer issues (Dole 40). Consumers are people who buy things. She believed some businesses weren’t honest about their products and consumers needed to be protected. Her job was to help