A Granny Walks Her Talk

I caught up with Granny D in midafternoon Friday on the phone, right after she was done with her 10-mile walk.

“I hear it’s hot there,” I said.

“Oh, not too bad,” she replied.

“Well, I guess when you’ve walked through the Mojave Desert, no place else seems all that hot.”

“That’s true,” Granny said.

Her latest walk had begun in downtown Detroit around 9:30 in the morning. A lot of people tagged along . . . Carl Levin, a U.S. senator from Michigan, for one. Granny D often draws a crowd.

I asked, “How was the scenery?”

“A little dismal,” said Granny, a plain-speaking woman.

Now she was back in her hotel room in beautiful suburban Dearborn, resting up to be the opening speaker at the Reform Party’s national political convention.

She, Doris Haddock, 89, a retired secretary of a New Hampshire shoe company.

I asked, “Ready for your speech?”

“Oh, God, I’m terrified,” she said.

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The idea of anything terrifying Granny D--as her 11 great- grandchildren call her--is pretty funny, because she is pretty fearless.

That became clear when Haddock first announced that she was going to walk from Pasadena to Washington, D.C.

Her family was mortified.

And this disappointed Granny D, who said, “I think there was some guessing about how many days I would last on the road. It’s always hard when one is not taken seriously about something very serious.”

Her motivation was this:

On Tuesday mornings in her hometown of Dublin, N.H., a group of women regularly met to talk about current events. Dublin is just down the road from the political hot spot of Manchester, where presidential primary candidates bloom or wilt.

Well, one day the subject turned to campaign financing. And how candidates raised so much money.

It was “obscene,” Haddock would later declare while walking through Texas, that the governor there, George W. Bush, could get donors to pony up $36.3 million for his White House bid.

“We don’t know anything about his ideals or what he stands for,” Granny D said in Fort Worth on the Fourth of July. “Apparently he stands for being able to raise a lot of money.”

Pro-Bush factions began grousing to Granny about some of the sources of Al Gore’s campaign funds.

She explained patiently that she wasn’t accusing Bush or anyone of anything illegal. She was protesting corporations “buying America’s public officials wholesale” by funding campaigns.

Haddock walked and talked.

She had remembered a woman named Mildred Norman, who, in 1948, walked in the Rose Parade and just kept walking, across the U.S. seven times over the next 10 years, calling herself the “Peace Pilgrim.”

A cross-country walk for campaign finance reform struck her as a good idea.

Despite her arthritis, despite her emphysema, Granny D got going. She decided to do 10 miles a day. She would fly to Pasadena, walk in the parade, then just keep walking.

A couple from Upland heard of her plan. Ralph and Maria Langley offered to help.

“On Christmas morning,” remembers Ralph, a retired carpet salesman, “I got the greatest present ever. I heard this little old lady’s voice on the phone, saying, ‘I can’t talk long, because this is long distance.’ It was Doris, telling me she was flying out that weekend.

“I said, ‘I’m going to take care of her.’ ”

They mapped out a route. Jim Haddock drove ahead to Arizona, scouting places where his mother could stay. Police chiefs and houses of worship were notified Granny D was on her way. The Langleys drove alongside in their Cadillac on the first leg of Doris’ trip.

And one more for the road:

Ken Hechler, 84, secretary of state of West Virginia, heard about Granny D and asked to tag along. He’s a former U.S. congressman and a Harry Truman speech writer. He accompanied Haddock all the way to Twentynine Palms.

“Which is quite a walk for an old man,” she says.

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Ten miles per day, lizards by the road, sun and military jets in the sky, this 5-foot woman walked back roads in a floppy hat. She slept in cars, houses of strangers, outdoors, Forrest Gumping her way across America.

Word of her pilgrimage spread. As weeks turned into months, townspeople were waiting. Truckers honked. In April she hit the 1,000-mile mark in El Paso. The mayor of Austin presented a key to the city.

And then the Reform Party--aggressive on campaign financing--offered to fly Haddock up to Michigan to address its convention, then fly her back to Texas.

By next week, she’ll be in Clinton country--in Hope, Ark., on Aug. 3, Little Rock after that.

“If it’s true what people are telling me,” Granny D says, “I have made an impression.”

She should be in Washington, D.C., by the beginning of 2000. She probably should live there.

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Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com