Like everybody else who admired her from afar, I had an iconic view (of Bates). I knew what everyone else thought they knew, what was in her book.

What she accomplished -- the insistence that she, at great personal cost and sacrifice, be accorded the dignity that all humans seek -- will always be her true legacy, whatever happens in the future.

My research helped me understand she was a human being with all the problems and foibles the rest of us had. She had a lot to hide, she thought. She wanted to preserve a sense of her own dignity. She preferred to be respected and admired rather than have intimate relationships with those close to her.