March 2016: Clare Boothe Luce

Clare Boothe Luce

Heroine: a woman having the qualities of a hero; a woman admired and emulated for her achievements and qualities; the central female figure in an event or period.

The first U.S. Woman Diplomat, Clare Boothe Luce was an American editor, playwright, social activist, politician and journalist.

The wife of Henry Robinson Luce, the influential publisher of

Time, Fortune, Life and Sports Illustrated

magazines, Clare Boothe Luce wrote the hit play

The Women

and

Europe in the Spring

, a best-selling nonfiction book about pre-World War II. She was on the editorial staff of

Vogue

magazine and later as an editor at

Vanity Fair

. She then went on to the U.S. House of Representatives from Connecticut, and became Ambassador to Italy.

During Clare’s second term in the House in 1944 she was instrumental in the creation of the Atomic Energy Commission and began warning against the growing threat of international Communism. She was well known for her anti-Communist views, as well as her advocacy of fiscal conservatism. In 1964, she supported Senator Barry Goldwater for president, and in 1981 President Ronald Reagan appointed her to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and awarded her the

Presidential Medal of Freedom

.

Clare Boothe Luce died in 1987 at the age of 84. Her name and work lives on in the form of the

Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute

, a non-profit organization that seeks to advance American women through conservative ideals by mentoring and training young women for effective leadership in their school, workplace, community, and home through programs, resources, and role models that provide a strong voice for modern American women who want fair treatment and equal opportunities, but are offended by the radical, liberal agenda they encounter in our nation’s

high schools, colleges, and popular culture.

A women of great accomplishment she appreciated the fact that many women face obstacles in their chosen professions and through the Clare Luce Boothe Program at the

Henry Luce Foundation

 her legacy “to encourage women to enter, study, graduate, and teach” in the sciences (including mathematics) and engineering continues.

“Your work to help young women prepare themselves for conservative leadership is important and impressive.”


-First Lady Laura Bush

“It was my pleasure to be a friend of Clare Boothe Luce and I know she would be proud and pleased with your accomplishments.”


-Eagle Forum President, Phyllis Schlaf

ly

Quotes by Clare Boothe Luce

“Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount.”

“In the final analysis there is no other solution to man’s progress but the day’s honest work, the day’s honest decision, the day’s generous influences, and the day’s good deed.”

“There is nothing harder than the softness of indifference.”

“Love is a verb.”