Remembering Trailblazers Who Disrupted Cultural Norms: 2023 Deaths

ACROSS AMERICA — We paused in 2023 to remember the lives of trailblazing women who tore down gender walls in politics, the judiciary and elsewhere. Their deaths symbolized the passing of the torch to other women whose dreams and aspirations are easier to reach because of them.

They include Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who served longer in the U.S. Senate than any other woman; Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman justice on the U.S. Supreme Court; and Rosalynn Carter, an activist first lady who pursued important causes of her own while working alongside her husband in what he described as an equal partnership.

We also said goodbye to former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the diplomat whose name became synonymous with the secret bombings of Cambodia during the Vietnam War, and “All In the Family” producer Norman Lear, who took on the war and other polarizing social issues with biting humor in his 1970s TV sitcoms.

Kissinger, who died Nov. 29 at age 100, served under two presidents in the 1970s and was still involved in global affairs into the final months of his life. Kissinger’s shadow loomed large in the foreign policy arena, where he earned both acclaim and detractors around the globe.

He was a controversial choice for the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize, an honor he shared with his diplomatic counterpart in North Vietnam for negotiating an end to the war. Originally a hard-liner, he was one of the principal architects of the covert U.S. bombings of Cambodia that killed an estimated half-million civilians. » Read more on Patch.

Lear, who died Dec. 5, also produced sitcoms such as “The Jeffersons,” “Maude” “One Day At a Time,” and “Mary Hartman” that took on social taboos rarely discussed in television programming and helped define a generation.

“All in the Family,” Lear’s breakthrough program, premiered in 1971, but focused on the issues that divided Americans in the 1960s through the debates that pitted conservative Archie Bunker and his liberal son-in-law, Mike. The Sunday night program, Lear once observed, gave everyone, regardless of where their views fell on the political spectrum, something to talk about around the water cooler on Monday mornings. » Read more on Patch.

These and other influential people who died in 2023 were notable architects of cultural change in the late 20th century and beyond.

When she and President Jimmy Carter moved into the White House after his 1976 election, the world hadn’t seen a first lady like Rosalynn Carter since Eleanor Roosevelt redefined the role 25 years earlier. Carter, who died Nov. 19, had her own bold agenda, to build awareness around mental health, caregiving, and human rights. She was regarded as a “steel magnolia” — graceful and charming, but also driven and tough.

She sat in on meetings with the president’s closest advisers and was an equal partner in some of her husband’s greatest accomplishments, he said at her death. One prominent example is the historic peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, which was brokered by President Carter after his wife suggested he invite Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to Camp David. » Read more on Patch.

Carter’s successor, President Ronald Reagan, fulfilled a promise in his first presidential campaign and nominated Sandra Day O’Connor, who died on Dec. 1, to join the nation’s highest court as its first female justice.

“Gracious, wise, civil and principled, Sandra Day O’Connor, the daughter of the American West, was a pioneer in her own right, breaking down the barriers in the political world and the nation's conscience," President Joe Biden said in a eulogy at the late justice’s funeral. "To her, the Supreme Court was the bedrock, of America."

O’Connor was an unwavering voice of moderate conservatism whose influence could best be seen, and her legal thinking most closely scrutinized, in the court’s rulings on abortion, perhaps the most contentious and divisive issue the justices faced. O’Connor balked at letting states outlaw most abortions, refusing in 1989 to join four other justices who were ready to reverse the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, helping in 1992 to forge a five-justice majority that reaffirmed the core holding of the ruling. » Read more on Patch.

With her election in 1992, former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, became the first woman to serve in the U.S. Senate and was its longest-serving member when she died Sept. 29 at age 90.

Feinstein was a trailblazer who found common ground with Republicans on issues ranging from gun control to environmental protection during her three-decade career. Among her greatest accomplishments was the 1994 assault weapons ban on the manufacture, sale and importation of military-style assault weapons. The ban expired in 2014 and has not been renewed. » Read more on Patch.

We also said goodbye to the “Queen of Rock ’n’ Roll,” Tina Turner, who died May 24. The daughter of a Tennessee sharecropper, her towering voice and swaggering, high-energy style made her a pop star behemoth after she left her abusive former husband, Ike Turner.

She fled from him with only a few cents in her pocket and a desire to keep only her name, achieving a level of stardom that eclipsed anything they had achieved together. As her career soared, she broke down racial divides with what those who knew her described as grace, resilience and pride. » Read more on Patch.

• From The Associated Press: The Big List: Influential People Who Died In 2023

Former U.S. Sen. James Abourezk, a South Dakota Democrat who grew up on the Rosebud Indian Reservation and became the first Arab American in the Senate, died Aug. 18. A “Prairie Populist,” he fought passionately for those he felt were downtrodden — farmers, consumers and Native Americans — during single terms in both the House and the Senate in the 1970s.

He helped author the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act and the Indian Child Welfare Act — landmark pieces of legislation meant to cut down on the alarming rate at which Native American children were taken from their homes and placed with white families. » Read more from The Associated Press

Former New York Sen. James Buckley, an early agitator for then-President Richard Nixon’s resignation and winner of a landmark lawsuit challenging campaign spending limits, died Aug. 18 at 100.

Two years after major changes were made to the U.S. campaign finance law, the Supreme Court threw out mandatory limits on candidate spending as a First Amendment violation but ruled that Congress could set limits.

Motivated by what he called “a duty to my country, my constituents and to my beliefs,” he was the second Republican to formally ask President Richard Nixon to resign to pull the nation “out of the Watergate swamp.” He said he did so “with sorrow” as a lifelong Republican who worked actively for Nixon. » Read more from The Associated Press

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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