Essay 4847

From USA Today…

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Indianapolis’ 1st black congresswoman dies

By Mary Beth Schneider, The Indianapolis Star

INDIANAPOLIS — U.S. Rep. Julia Carson, the first black and first woman to represent Indianapolis in Congress, died at home Saturday morning following a battle with lung cancer. She was 69.

Carson’s death comes just weeks after she announced the cancer, which she had beaten before, was back with “terminal vengeance.”

Two days later, she said she would not seek re-election to a seventh term in 2008, saying her time away from Congress would be “a time to weep and a time to laugh,” and she added, “a time to heal.”

But Carson, who was first elected to Congress in 1996, never healed.

“Who knows the future, who knows God’s will,” she said in the statement announcing her decision not to run again. “I want very much to return to Washington and continue representing the good people of Indianapolis with my vote. I can only request your prayers that I might gain the strength to continue my service.”

Gov. Mitch Daniels’ office said tentative plans were underway to have Carson’s body lie in state at the rotunda in the Indiana State House. Daniels ordered that flags be lowered today until sunset on the day of her burial. Calling was tentatively scheduled for Friday, with the funeral service on Saturday.

Former U.S. Rep. Andy Jacobs, who was Carson’s friend and mentor, said he was called about 9:45 this morning and notified she had died at her home about a half-hour earlier.

“I loved her and she loved me,” Jacobs said, his voice cracking. “She was my sister.”

He last saw his friend Friday, he said, and was able to kiss her goodbye.

About a week ago, Jacobs said, “when she still recognized me, she started silently signalling with her right hand, waving it toward her. I bent down — closer, closer, closer — till I was next to her face. And for the first time ever, she reached up and kissing me warmly on the cheek. I knew exactly what she meant. She was kissing me goodbye.”

Now, he said, people will realize the contributions she has made that she never boasted about before, and what he called “a really prodigious career of that huge brain in that cranium.”

“She was a pretty modest person,” he said. “She didn’t say much about her enormous accomplishments.”

Among those accomplishments, he said, were welfare reforms as Center Township trustee, before she succeeded him in Congress.

“Her welfare reforms did not break one child’s heart,” he said.

Instead, he said, she teamed up with former U.S. Attorney Virginia Dill McCarty and “when she found a welfare cheat, she didn’t just take off the rolls. She sued them to get money back for the taxpayer.”

Daniels called Carson “a lioness.”

“There was determination, and resolve, and genuine conviction in Julia, but never meanness. And she was such fun. It was rare to leave her presence without a smile. And after the sadness fades a bit, we’ll still have that. I know I’ll think of her often, and always with a smile.”

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