Amazing Grace - Transcript
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[Ken Gnadt, Mayor of Grand Island]
The Abbott family touched this young man that’s standing right here to my right...
[music - Almost cut my hair...]
...as he grew up two blocks from the Grace Abbot Park.
[John Sorensen]
I’m about twelve years old or something here... That’s me... No, it’s not.
[Mayor Ken Gnadt]
Each year from now forward March 20th will be known by our great state as the Abbott Sisters Day.
[music - It’s getting kinda long]
[John Sorensen]
I think perhaps because I had felt somewhat out of place this became a way to physically acknowledge it.
[Governor Michael Johanns]
I think this is quite a statement. I think this is the largest group we’ve ever had for a proclamation signing.
[Narrator]
March 20th. Abbott Sisters Day in Nebraska.
[Governor Michael Johanns]
There you are. It’s official.
[Narrator]
But who are the Abbott Sisters and why has this New Yorker spent ten years of his life telling their story?
John Sorensen is a filmmaker, actor and theater director who makes his home in Greenwich Village. But this is where he grew up – just two blocks away from Grace Abbott Park in Grand Island.
[John Sorensen]
When I was riding my bicycle around this morning past the park here, I was thinking to myself, you know if I had to pick a term to describe myself I feel like a native emigrant. It’s like... it’s like I was born here in the town but I have my emigration papers in my hand or something. I feel a great sympathy for emigrants everywhere because I know what it’s like to be someplace and not quite fit in.
[Narrator]
At age twenty-six Sorensen left Grand Island and found his true home in New York City. He thrived in the world of film and theater – writing and directing plays and acting on television. But there was something missing.
[John Sorensen]
You come away from a program going, yeah, why? What’s the point? And I was working on very good pieces. I mean, they were not tawdry things. For the most part they were classy shows. But there is still a part of you going, what good does that do anybody?
[Narrator]
Then Sorensen discovered the Abbott sisters of Grand Island. Grace and Edith Abbott were feminists at a time when the very word spelled radical. That made them different in the small town of Grand Island. They both had to leave home to find their life’s work. For Grace it wasn’t easy.
[John Sorensen]
I identify with Grace Abbott. What I find fascinating with her is that age age twenty-nine or so she’s still living at home in a little town. By around the age of forty she’s the most powerful woman in the U.S. government. That’s a lot of energy. But I think that’s energy like it’s... it’s like a cannon, it’s been tamped down-down-down and when it goes off, boom, it really goes.
[Narrator]
In 1907 Grace Abbott moved to Chicago where she defended the rights of immigrants. Later in Washington D.C. she led the fight to reform child labor laws and was the first woman to be nominated to a cabinet position.
Her sister Edith was a pioneering social worker. It was a difficult time to fight for the rights of women and children.
[John Sorensen]
We have to understand that when Grace Abbott was doing her primary work, say for the maternity and infancy act; it was not permitted in public to say the word ‘pregnant’. So how do you talk about the maternity and infancy act to help pregnant women if you can’t say pregnant or pregnancy?
But it was clear to me the achievements of Grace Abbott were far beyond what anybody had recognized. That she held a place in the children’s rights field comparable even say to Martin Luther King, Jr. in civil rights, or Susan B. Anthony in women’s rights. The fact that she was not known only made it that much more attractive to me because this is the story of history.
[Narrator]
Today is the 70th anniversary of Grace Abbott Park. Sorensen is playing a key role in the rededication.
[John Sorensen]
We’re on the bandstand at the Grace Abbott Park. And this bandstand was created through a donation left by Edith Abbot, Grace’s sister. And she also as a final gesture before she passed on commissioned a bronze memorial plaque to Grace, to be placed in her sister’s memory here in the park.
[Narrator]
Problem was the plaque was hidden away on the bandstand where no one could see it. With the help of a community grant Sorensen found a new home for Grace’s memorial.
[John Sorensen]
We found the setting where it is now, which is sweet to me because that’s where the teeter-totters used to be. I’m for sure as a kid growing up here I was on those probably more than anything with my mother and my brother, my father.
Maybe most important for me though is that it was put at a level where even a three or four year old can stand in front of it and touch it with their hands.
And I do feel this is why Grace Abbott is still alive as this park is still alive. She’s here to contribute, to help to be part of these children’s lives and our responsibility – our privilege and our responsibility is to make that link.
[music - Trumpet on Stage]
[John Sorensen]
That’s as straight as I’m likely to get it.
[Mayor Ken Gnadt]
The Abbott sisters are relatively new to me and our famous young man that lives in New York City is the one that’s bringing this back. And I say that if it wouldn’t be for John Sorensen it would be another hundred years before we’d be doing some of these things.
[Dr. Magda Peck, Nebraska Children and Families Foundation]
No one I’ve ever talked to throughout my professional career of nearly twenty years has ever known that Grace Abbott was essentially critical to where we are right now with mothers and children in this country. And if she were here, boy she’d have a thing or two to say.
I thought what would Grace say? I find the debates today going on in Washington very similar to the fight that Grace fought almost a century ago.
[Narrator]
On this hot August night, the people of Grand Island gather to remember the Abbott sisters and to feel a part of a larger community.
[music - We are family, I’ve got all my sisters and me]
[Narrator]
So why does he do it? Why does this New Yorker keep coming back to Nebraska to celebrate the Abbott sisters?
[John Sorensen]
I didn’t belong here growing up. I don’t belong here now. That’s me – that’s my problem you know. It’s not the town’s problem but this is for sure it’s an opportunity for me to at least shake hands so to speak with the town. And to thank the community at large and you know, we’ll try to forgive each other, okay?
[music - We are family, I’ve got all my sisters and me]
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