Alice Roosevelt Longworth was only a few years older than my mother but outlived her by a decade, dying in 1980. From the time they met, in 1917, they were lifelong friends of sorts, though each was a bit wary of the other.

I always liked Barbara Howar and admired her spunk. I know that she considered me - and Alice Roosevelt Longworth - an exception to her negative feelings about Washington widows and single women, whom she basically found dispensable.

My mother seemed to undermine so much of what I did, subtly belittling my choices and my activities in light of her greater, more important ones.

When an actress is younger, she likes to lower her age, but when she is older, she likes to add to her years.

My mother isolated herself from all family and friends for some 20 years. And never met her grandchild, my son.

The organization that I joined when I went to work, the trade association called the Bureau of Advertising, became the first of many over the years in which I was the only woman.