Magazine Remembers Lives Lost In 2008

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MICHEL MARTIN, host:

And now our weekly look into the pages of the Washington Post Magazine where we go every week for interesting stories about the way we live now. You know that old saying, everybody has a story? Well, this week's Magazine shows how true that is with a collection of essays about 11 people in the Washington area who died over the course of 2008. Now, you probably didn't know any of them, but after hearing about them, you'll probably wish you did.

Joining me now are two of the contributing writers. Angela Valdez is here with me in our Washington, D.C. studio, and Phuong Ly is on the phone in Chicago. Welcome to you both. Happy New Year to you.

Ms. ANGELA VALDEZ (Writer, Washington Post Magazine): Hi, Michel.

Ms. PHUONG LY (Writer, Washington Post Magazine): Thank you for having me.

MARTIN: Angela, let me start with you. You wrote about a couple of people, but I want to ask you about Iris Bouchard. Who was she?

Ms. VALDEZ: Well, she was a Puerto Rican immigrant who came to D.C. and started, eventually, after working for the phone company, at a service placing domestic help with some of the finest families here.

MARTIN: And she turns out - she was a bit of a name-dropper. When you mentioned the finest families, she didn't hesitate to let people know that fact. But as you wrote in the piece, her kids didn't really believe her stories until she died.

Ms. VALDEZ: They would sometimes sort of think that their mom was exaggerating a little bit, and then when she died, they went through her belongings in her cluttered office and came across, you know, receipts from the Kennedys and, you know, some of the sort of biggest names in D.C.

MARTIN: What drew you to this story?

Ms. VALDEZ: I came across her obituary, and she just sounded like a sort of fabulous woman. You know, she had been a hat model, but also, you know, had this very successful business that she built from the start on her own without much help or support, really, from her husband, and did it all her - all herself.

MARTIN: And Phuong Ly, I want to bring you in. You wrote about another business woman, Susan Hager, who owned Hager Sharp. It was a PR firm. Tell me about her.

Ms. LY: Well, Susan was very dynamic in the business world in D.C. She helped found the National Association of Women Business Owners, but besides her corporate credentials, she was just a really great boss, so much of a good boss that one of her employees donated a kidney.

MARTIN: Yes, in fact, the piece opens in the voice of a woman who actually saves Susan Hager's life. Why did she do that?

Ms. LY: Well, she - Karen very simply said that she appreciated the type of boss that Susan was and she didn't really want to lose her. I have to admit that I was rather skeptical when I first started reporting the story because you naturally want to think, who would donate a kidney to their boss?

MARTIN: Well, see, no comment there. But why did she? Why did she wind up doing that?

Ms. LY: She - Susan was the type of person who was more than a boss, and I think her story is particularly relevant and inspiring during these times when there's very little loyalty between bosses and their employees and there's so much talk of corporate greed and irresponsibility and a lack of the social contract between employers and the employees. She was more of a person who was part of the employees' families more so than a boss, and so much so that she always loved to give parties, to commemorate every occasion that an employee had - whether it be a wedding or a birthday or just the anniversary of their hire date.

Amazingly, if you spent 10 years at the company, Susan sent you on an all-expenses paid trip, usually at a Four Seasons - staying at a Four Seasons Hotel to anywhere she thought that you might like.

MARTIN: How did you hear about her?

Ms. LY: I read her obituary in the paper, and there was very lengthy obituary about her in the Post. But most of it focused on the fact that she was such a remarkable advocate for women business owners and small business owners. She was the founder of the National Association of Women Business Owners. But there were just two lines at the very end of the story that said that when she needed a kidney transplant, no family member could provide a match, so someone at her public relations firm volunteered.

MARTIN: Now, that's good reporting, to find a little detail like that and to find a whole story out of it. And Angela, you also wrote about Franco Aguirre...

Ms. VALDEZ: Francisco Aguirre Baca.

MARTIN: Francisco Aguirre Baca. Now, tell me about him. Now this is complicated story, so do the best you can.

Ms. VALDEZ: Well, he left Nicaragua in 1947. He'd been sort of a precocious young general who was the chief adviser to Samosa, the longtime sort of on-again, off-again dictator there. But when they - there was newly elected - democratically elected somewhat president, he supported that man, Argueo(ph), and then Samosa posed, like, threw up a coup, and so Aguirre Baca had to flee the country, and he did so with the help of the American, like, intelligence servicemen he'd met there. And he came to America and had sort of a tremendously successful life, but he started out as a taxi driver when he got here, and you know, lived in the Chastleton Hotel with his brother and...

MARTIN: Kind of like your classic immigrant story. Starts out, you know, with one circumstance, comes here, was driving a taxi and then kind of reinvents himself. How did you find him?

Ms. VALDEZ: I also found him through the obituary, and you know, had to track down his family members who are all very interesting but flung to far corners of the world.

MARTIN: Now, Phuong, that wasn't the only piece you wrote about - Susan Hager wasn't the only piece you wrote about for the magazine as well. Refresh me - my memory on the other person you wrote about.

Ms. LY: I wrote about Dorris Rogers, who was a school help aid at Montgomery Blair(ph) High School...

MARTIN: Now, that was a great story. Tell me about her.

Ms. LY: Yeah. She didn't receive a lot of attention when she was alive. She just worked every day for 20 years in the school health room. Most of the students didn't like her because she wouldn't let them out of class if they weren't really sick. And most of her family members didn't know a lot about what she did. But she was invaluable to the school - in fact, saving the principal's life one day when he refused to - at first refused to go to the hospital because he had a nose bleed, but it turned out that he could have died from - died from bleeding to death.

MARTIN: How did you find out about her? Again, she just strikes me as one of those unsung heroes that somebody who's just right there in front of you who you may not appreciate until they're no longer there. How did you hear about her?

Ms. LY: She - after she died, her family put a paid notice in the newspaper. It was a very small notice, and it just mentioned that she was a school nurse for a long period of time. And oftentimes in schools these days, the nurses are at the center of what happens in terms of the drama of the schools, whether it be a student becoming pregnant or injuries on the football field or football field or just the ordinary incidents of the day.

MARTIN: I wanted to ask each of you because so often - we only have about a minute and a half left - but so often, as journalists, we're kind of drawn to the famous people, the people who were kind of at like the head of the line, and each of you, you sort of found these little diamonds - I don't know any other way to put it - kind of diamonds that were hiding in plain sight, as it were. What was it like? A lot of people feel that writing obituaries is depressing but it doesn't sound like it was. Angela?

Ms. VALDEZ: I was really impressed by the fact that the people's families, although they knew the broad outlines of their loved ones - you know, their parents' lives, they're both - in both of my cases, the parents had hidden a lot of their lives from their children, and I think it made me reflect on how little I actually know about my parents and my family and how much - how much of people's own stories they keep secret for, you know, to the grave, basically.

MARTIN: Phuong, what about you? Was it a good assignment and what did you think you learned from it?

Ms. LY: I thought it as a great assignment. Oftentimes we learn as much about the living in these stories as we do about the dead. In Susan Hager's case, for example, learning about her employees and the legacy that she left behind and how they inspired her - how she inspired them to help each other and to carry on the company after she dies.

MARTIN: Writers Phuong Ly and Angela Valdez both contributed to a series of obituaries in this week's Washington Post Magazine. If you want to read the pieces in their entirety and the others, we'll have a link on our Web site, which is the Tell Me More page at npr.org. Ladies, thank you so much for joining us.

Ms. VALDEZ: Thank you.

Ms. LY: Thank you.

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