July 19--CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- At 77, Sally K. Richardson looks back with wonder on her journey to the pinnacle of health-care policymaking in Washington, D.C.
A Huntington native, she graduated from prestigious Vassar College with no viable credentials for employment. After a stint in secretarial school, she landed a job in Washington, never dreaming she would return years later at the behest of President Bill Clinton. Her work with Hillary Clinton's task force on health-care reform led to an appointment as director of Medicaid.
Her rise to nationally recognized health-care specialist started back home in state government. The way up included stops as deputy director of the state Health Department, state Democrat Party chief, head of the Health Care Cost Review Authority and head of the state Public Employees Insurance Agency.
Ostensibly retired, she keeps her experienced fingers in the health-care pie, working part time as director of the WVU Institute for Health Policy Research.
And to think, she once envisioned a career on Broadway.
"I grew up in Huntington. My mother was a schoolteacher. My father was an attorney. My father's father was the first sheriff of Mingo County. He died when I was about 2. I heard a lot about him. He was apparently quite a character.
"My sister, Betsy Ann, was probably the largest influence on my life. We had a fairly strict mother. She was not a comfortable mother. She believed in absolute obedience and corporal punishment. She was not the favorite person in my life. My sister took her place.
"Betsy Ann was three years older. She was lean and skinny. I was probably 10 pounds overweight. The problem was solved for me when I met a guy named Bob Biern in the third grade. He had a build like me. Almost the first thing he said to me was, 'I don't think you're so fat.' We became best friends and stayed friends our whole lives.
"Mother had a good friend in Huntington who had graduated from Vassar, Lucy Prichard. She had been mother's teacher at Marshall. Miss Lucy said Betsy should go to Vassar, and I just followed.
"Betsy Ann was interested in things like economics, subjects that had no interest to me at all. I majored in music and drama. I wanted to go on Broadway.
"Between my freshman and sophomore year, I got a letter from Vassar saying I had not made good enough grades. I wrote them and said if they would let me come back, I would show them that I could make it. The day I graduated, I won the award for the student who showed the most improvement from freshman to senior year. My mother was horrified, because it showed how bad I was.
"I didn't have any sellable skills, so I came back home and went to secretarial school and learned how to take shorthand and type. I had a roommate in college who had gotten married and lived in Washington. So I went to Washington and got a job working for the Pakistan Embassy as the social secretary. The secretary also manages the staff. Here I was in my early 20s, getting chauffeured to the store to buy groceries for the embassy. I had my own office. It was a great job.
"That was the year my father died. He developed a brain tumor. In those days, you couldn't do anything with brain tumors. He died six to eight months later.
"I came home. I couldn't live in Huntington with my mother, so I interviewed with Columbia Gas in Charleston. They were advertising for a community representative to go out and make speeches about the gas industry. I can tell you all about how you drill a gas well. I did employee presentations all the way from Texas, across the bottom of New Mexico and Arizona and into Louisiana.
"I married Rich [Don Richardson] in 1961. Rich worked at Union Carbide. The minute I got pregnant, I no longer had a job. Pregnant women didn't work. Paige was born, and two years later, Evan was born. I stayed home until they were in grade school.
"My whole family was Republican, and so was Rich's. We were good friends with John Hutchinson. When John became mayor, he asked Rich to be his city manager. We changed our politics to Democrat.
"When Jay Rockefeller ran for governor, I was the volunteer coordinator. Jay lost his first run. West Virginia Wesleyan asked him to come be president. He asked Rich to go with him to be vice president for finance and administration. Rich asked me if I would be director of admissions, which was in shambles. We increased enrollment from 1,100 to 1,800 in two years.
"When Jay came back to run for office, Rich managed his campaign, and he won. I put together the inauguration and inaugural ball and worked as an assistant.
"I connected with Leon Ginsberg, commissioner of welfare. My responsibility in the Governor's Office was welfare and health. Leon asked if I would be his deputy. I was there a couple of years.
"Then, George Pickett came to work as director of health. He knows more about health care than any man I've ever met. He was a total nonconformist. He didn't work well with the Legislature, so Jay asked if I would be his deputy. I worked for him until he went to the University of Alabama.
"Then I worked for Clark Hansbarger. When Jay decided to form the Health Care Cost Review Authority, I did that. That was a three-person board, and I was chair. When Arch Moore was elected governor, Moore didn't want a Democrat doing it. He replaced me. I started consulting on my own. I was totally committed to health-care problems.
"After Jay left for U.S. Senate, Lane Bailey came to see me and said Jay wanted me to run for state Democratic chair. I traveled to every county and met every county chair and got elected.
"When Gaston [Caperton] decided to run for governor, he replaced me with Lloyd Jackson -- a good choice. I had never been to a national convention. He agreed let me chair the delegation and then resign.
"He wondered if I would take on the job as head of PEIA. It was a mess. In those days, it was run by the Board of Public Works, and they were all politicians running for office every two to four years, so they never raised a premium.
"By the time I left, it was paying all its bills on time and doctors were taking PEIA patients. I think that's one of the reasons I was invited to Washington to be on Hillary Clinton's health-care task force.
"That led to the Medicaid position. I went to Washington in '93 on the task force and came home in '99. Rich flew every weekend to Washington.
"Working in health care, I met Bruce Vladeck. He was appointed head of what was then the Health Care Financing Administration, now the center for Medicare and Medicaid. We were both on the task force.
"He called and asked if I'd like to be director of Medicaid. That blew me away! But I figured, if he thought I could do the job, I probably could.
"The Medicaid bureau had been run by Rozann Abato, a bright, gorgeous woman. She was the deputy. She taught me everything I knew. She never let me make a mistake. If it hadn't been for Rozann, I would have fallen flat on my face.
"I worked harder than I'd ever worked, but I had a good boss and this great deputy who never let me fail, and I had a wonderful staff, and they all made it possible.
"I came home because Bill Clinton was through being president and my term was up.
"The Children's Health Insurance Program was done while I was there. A woman on the legislative staff for health-care financing, Debbie Chang, helped write that legislation. Bruce told me to let her do CHIP because she helped write it and knew it backwards and forwards. What I did was coordinate all that, and I did stay out of Debbie's way.
"When I came home, I was looking for something to do. I had two real job offers. One was to go to San Francisco and become director of health and implement health-care reform. We thought about it and went out there. Then Bob D'Alessandri at WVU offered me the job I have now with the Institute for Health Policy Research.
"In the first five or six years, we did three full-blown surveys across the state about the health-care needs of people and communities and helped shape the legislation.
"I retired last fiscal year and they let me stay on. They give me this office, and I work part time. Maybe in another year, I'll fully retire.
"We bought a little house in Lewisburg, an old farmhouse. We go there about every weekend.
"I've been about the luckiest person you ever heard of. Who would have thought, if you knew me as a grade-school kid in Huntington, that I would ever end up going to Vassar?"
Reach Sandy Wells at sandyw@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5173.
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