Earlier I wrote about the passing of our beloved former governor, Ann Richards. There were so many things that she did which went virtually unseen by the public but meant the most in the smallest of lives.

From the Austin-American Statesman comes a story by reporter Denise Gamino in which she had been assigned to cover the then-Governor’s midnight “raid” to two nursing homes in the Houston area.

The governor was mad as hell about the appalling conditions that too many Texas nursing home residents were forced to live in, and she wanted to do something about it. First, she wanted to see the squalor for herself. So she decided to push her way inside two nursing homes in the middle of the night with no warning — except for a few reporters who were invited to bear witness.

The story recounts how Richards visited an AIDS nursing home and found deplorable treatment of patients. People who had not been turned in their beds for days, people lying in their own waste, and patients who had not received the treatment required by law.

Finally, a shaken Richards emerged an hour and a half after she had gone in. It was 1:45 a.m.

“I’m sick, I’m really sick,” she said. “I will tell you the truth, that my eyes sting from the urine in the atmosphere. I feel physically queasy.”

And then the tears glistened in those blue eyes.

“I am sort of emotionally undone. I kept thinking about my own parents, and people ought to be able to end their lives better than this.”

The governor saw feces smeared on bathroom walls, feeding tube instructions scribbled on a piece of ripped cardboard, and residents left with no one to turn them in bed. She had spent the last 15 minutes of her nursing home raid with a 29-year-old quadriplegic woman, caressing the young woman’s cheek while listening to her explain why she could no longer move her arm. The woman had just spent five months in bed with no physical therapy, a serious violation of federal nursing home rules.

While Richards was in one room, the nursing home staff raced ahead of her to change soiled bed sheets in other bedrooms before the governor could see them. In their haste, they failed to wash their hands before handling the residents, some of whom were infected with the AIDS virus. The health inspectors accompanying Richards found 10 serious violations in the Montrose Care Center, which was home to poor residents who relied on Medicaid to pay for their care.

Not before or since Ann Richards has any governor taken the time to visit a nursing home or any other healthcare facility out of pure concern for someone other than themselves. That’s what made Ann Richards special. Her cause was not to pander to anyone. She was not trying to elicit votes from these patients, she went to draw attention to the awful conditions people faced in nursing homes.

Every politician, left, right, liberal, conservative, white, black, yellow or green should sit up and pay attention to these lessons. Whether it is politically correct to say so or not, our responsibility in this society is to see that every person is treated with the same rights and dignity we would expect for ourselves and our loved ones.

The summer of 1988 was the first time I realized that I was a Democrat to the core. Not because the party had ever done anything specifically for me or even for those around me, but because Ann Richards crystallized for me what it meant to be political. You see, when you are political, you are doing the work of and for the people so that collectively the needs of society are met. It was also on that night that I realized that, for me, Democrats most accurately reflect the teachings of Jesus which includes compassion for those less fortunate, forgiveness for one’s transgressions, and love for your fellow man.

It wasn’t Ann Richards’ famous quote about George Bush and his silver foot that made me realize I was a Democrat, it was her framing of what it meant to be an activist for what was right. For all the talk we hear from the conservatives in this country about “family values” and Christian faith, their actions are biased towards the wealthy and the self-centered. Ann Richards was the real deal, and she will always be remembered as someone who opened more doors than she slammed shut. Some will call her an oppportunist, others a bleeding heart liberal, but everything she did, she did it with style and flare.

I think Ann Richards will be remembered for generations to come because of who she was and what she meant to so many people. And while I will often think foundly of her, somehow the stars at night won’t seem quite as bright over Texas as they once were.