Molly Yard had two sides to her: one was of a competitive political activist with a brilliant ability to give stirring speeches, the other was of a warm hostess, famous for her memorable parties and delicious homemade dinners.
“Born feminist,” that’s how Molly Yard described herself. Her passion led to arrests on several occasions, but that never deterred her from her work or determination to fight for things she believed were right.
Her blue eyes gave out the passion on issues she cared about: Yard worked for President Lyndon Johnson on the War on Poverty, advocated for the legalized abortion and affirmative action and fought leaders of the Democratic Party to ensure equal numbers of men and women delegates at its national conventions.
Molly Yard was a demanding mentor, but not only of the people she mentored. “Molly was hard-driving and vigorous,” said Jeanne Clark, who was her press secretary at NOW in 1985 and was once arrested with Yard during a protest outside the Vatican embassy in Washington, D.C.”Most of her staff was much younger but she was always the first one up and the last to bed. She never rode cabs when she could walk…” Eleanor Roosevelt was her close friend and a role model, Yard called Eleanor Roosevelt her “second mother.”
Molly Yard was not a native of Pittsburgh, she was born in Shanghai, China, the third of four daughters, in a family of Methodist missionaries. She moved to Pittsburgh in 1953, worked on gubernatorial campaign of David L. Lawrence and later led the the Western Pennsylvania presidential campaigns for John F. Kennedy and George McGovern.
Yard was elected the president of the National Organization of Women (NOW) in 1987 after having been part of it while a resident of Squirrel Hill. She was part of the core group advocating for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. Yard raised more than a million in six months.
Molly Yard died in 2005 in Pittsburgh. She was 93.
