(In keeping with our policy to promote first-hand diaries by candidates for statewide office to the front page, here is the latest from Matt Dunne: – promoted by Sue Prent)

On Mother’s day, along with celebrating Sarah’s amazing parenting, I always take some time to reflect on my mother’s contribution to my life. She blazed new trails while mentoring a generation of women.  

My mother lived during a transitional time, when barriers were broken, but traditions remained intact.  She was the first woman editor of the Michigan Daily newspaper and went on to be one of the first women to go through tenure track and get tenure at Dartmouth.  

During that time at Dartmouth, she and the education department she chaired became a resource and sanctuary for the women students who were also finding their way at the most male of the Ivy League schools.  To place in context, in late 1970s the winner of the Winter Carnival fraternity song contest was “Our Co-Hogs Will Sleep Alone.” This wouldn’t have been quite so disturbing had the judge of the contest not been the Dean of Freshmen.

As she helped transform an institution and a generation of women who have gone on to a much more accepting world, she also ensured that we had family dinner every night, engaged fully in my brother and my education, and ensured some kind of order in the face of my father’s chaotic attempts at farming and supporting a wide range of young people many of whom ended up living at our house.  More extraordinary in retrospect was that she carried on with all of these tasks – trailblazer, mentor and mother – even after my father passed away at when I was 13 and Josh was 10.

I miss my mother in deep and complex ways. She sacrificed a lot attempting to bridge the roles of women before and after her time, a tension we as a society continue to negotiate without easy answers. She never got to meet my children or see how the farm has progressed — I like to think she would approve. But there isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t meet another person, usually a woman and mother, who stops me to explain what a difference Faith Dunne made in her life and career.  

Having lost her much too early, I am consistently reminded of the contribution she made, how we must continue the progress she advanced, and how lucky I was to have her as the biggest influence in my life.