24 MARCH 10, 2022 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
How Forest Hills’ own Geraldine Ferraro
BY THE OLD TIMER
EDITORIAL@QNS.COM
@QNS
OUR NEIGHBORHOOD: THE WAY IT WAS
History was made when Americans
elected former Vice President
Joe Biden and California
Senator Kamala Harris over President
Donald Trump and Vice President
Mike Pence, denying the Republican
incumbents a second term in offi ce.
In being elected vice president, Harris
fi nally shattered the glass ceiling
in the executive branch that had existed
for more than 200 years. On Jan.
20, 2021,she became not only the fi rst
woman ever to hold the offi ce, but also
the fi rst Black woman and fi rst person
of South Asian descent to do so.
Harris’ victory came on the centennial
year of the ratifi cation of the 19th
Amendment in 1920, which fi nally
granted women across the country
the right to vote, although women of
color continued to be disenfranchised
for decades. It also occurred some 36
years aft er Queens’ own Geraldine
Ferraro blazed a trail for women
across this country with her run for
vice president.
In 1984, Ferraro, who lived in Forest
Hills and served as its member
of Congress at the time, became the
fi rst-ever woman to be nominated to
a major party’s presidential ticket,
as the running mate of that year’s
presidential nominee, former Vice
President Walter Mondale. The
Democratic ticket faced an uphill
climb against the popular Republican
incumbents, President Ronald Reagan
and Vice President George H.W.
Bush, who were seeking a second
term in offi ce.
The Mondale-Ferraro ticket was
drubbed in November 1984; the Reagan
Bush ticket easily won a second
term in a massive landslide victory,
in which Mondale-Ferraro won only
Minnesota (Mondale’s home state) and
the District of Columbia.
While the outcome was not what
Democrats hoped for that year, Ferraro’s
vice presidential campaign set
the stage for women across America,
of all political stripes, to fi nally gain
recognition, respect and attention on
the national political scene.
IN PUBLIC SERVICE
Ferraro was born on Aug. 26, 1935
in upstate Newburgh, and relocated
to the Bronx at the age of eight following
her father’s death. She went
on to attend Marymount College, and
relocated with her mother to Queens
in 1954.
Soon aft er graduating college, in
1956, she worked as a teacher at P.S. 85
in Astoria. But she became interested
in pursuing a legal career, and began
attending classes at Fordham Law
School, where she graduated with her
law degree in 1960.
That same year, she married real
estate businessman John Zaccaro; Geraldine
kept her maiden name as a tribute
to her mother. The young couple
moved into a home on Deepdene Road
in Forest Hills Gardens, where they
raised their three children, Donna,
John and Laura.
In the years that followed, Ferraro
became involved in local politics and
Ridgewood Times archives/Reuters
became an active member of the legal
community. In 1970, she became the
president of the Queens County
Women’s Bar Association, which represents
female attorneys and jurists
across the borough.
Three years later, she joined the
Queens district attorney’s offi ce aft er
her cousin, Nicholas Ferraro, was
elected to the post. Geraldine Ferraro
Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro with Postmaster General William
Bolger in 1979, delivering ballots from Ridgewood and Glendale
residents seeking a change to their ZIP code. Ridgewood Times archives
link
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