Start Date
12-6-2011 9:30 AM
Subject Areas
North America, modern, bodies
Abstract
Old age with its accompaniment of diminished faculties (hearing, sight, mobility) frames the last third of my biography of New York philanthropist, Margaret Olivia (Mrs. Russell) Sage. This paper focuses on her widowhood -- that stage of life that Carolyn Heilbrun called, “a kind of Old-Age Freedom.” For Sage this was a long-delayed opportunity for intentionality as she launched into spending the fortune inherited from her multimillionaire husband.[1] First she created the $10 million dollar Russell Sage Foundation (a powerhouse of Progressive reform), declaring, “I am almost eighty years old, and I feel I have just begun to live.” Next she launched an exhausting personal philanthropy, reviewing the 300 plus begging letters that arrived each day and making a decision on each one. Issues related to her physical and mental health frame this period of her life (ages 78 to 90). I describe how those around Sage “drew on and constructed various understandings of disability.” As hopeful fundraisers discussed her deafness, mobility, and diminished intellectual acuity, they constructed arguments for their own access to her and her money. They even suggested she was mentally impaired. “No-one sees her,” a Rutgers fundraiser was told when he sought entry to her summer home in 1916. At stake was $75 million which Sage had declared she would give away.
[1] Russell Sage (1815-1906), financial partner to Jay Gould.
Keywords
ageism; philanthropy; disability; Margaret Olivia (Mrs. Russell) Sage
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NO-ONE SEES HER’: THE FEMINIST BIOGRAPHER READS DISABILITY
Old age with its accompaniment of diminished faculties (hearing, sight, mobility) frames the last third of my biography of New York philanthropist, Margaret Olivia (Mrs. Russell) Sage. This paper focuses on her widowhood -- that stage of life that Carolyn Heilbrun called, “a kind of Old-Age Freedom.” For Sage this was a long-delayed opportunity for intentionality as she launched into spending the fortune inherited from her multimillionaire husband.[1] First she created the $10 million dollar Russell Sage Foundation (a powerhouse of Progressive reform), declaring, “I am almost eighty years old, and I feel I have just begun to live.” Next she launched an exhausting personal philanthropy, reviewing the 300 plus begging letters that arrived each day and making a decision on each one. Issues related to her physical and mental health frame this period of her life (ages 78 to 90). I describe how those around Sage “drew on and constructed various understandings of disability.” As hopeful fundraisers discussed her deafness, mobility, and diminished intellectual acuity, they constructed arguments for their own access to her and her money. They even suggested she was mentally impaired. “No-one sees her,” a Rutgers fundraiser was told when he sought entry to her summer home in 1916. At stake was $75 million which Sage had declared she would give away.
[1] Russell Sage (1815-1906), financial partner to Jay Gould.