The following is a transcript from the Pro America Report.
Welcome Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. And we have some great guests. In a few moments, we will talk with our friend Ted Malloch, and also we’ll catch up with Erick [Kaardal], excuse me. I had him on the show a while ago, Kaardal, he’s an attorney who helped the St. Thomas More Society of Public Interest law firm in some of the election integrity cases. So we’ll get an update on that.
First, what you need to know today. I want to expand on what I talked about yesterday, and that is the late, great Kitty Werthmann, who passed away this week. She passed away Thursday, and she was, Thursday, July 14, she was 96 years old. 96 years old. And she was amazing.
And she lived in Pierre, that’s how you pronounce it. Your kids that are practicing. Pierre P-I-E-R-R-E. Pierre, South Dakota. That’s where she lived after she came to America in her early twenties, I think it was, because she left Vienna, Austria after World War II, which I tell you, there’s many things to tell you about her, Kitty Werthmann ‘s life.
She became active in pro-life and conservative politics in the 1960s, into the 70s particularly starting in the 70s with the ERA, the effort to pass the ERA. She was instrumental. She became a great friend of Phyllis Schlafly’s, helped her with the pro-life plank in the Republican platform. And then just all these years, I’ve known her about 20 years and a little bit less. And so that was from her 70s into her 80s. She was active in the South Dakota legislature. She’d come out to Washington, D.C. and lobby folks here.
She wrote a little document about how to lobby, How I Lobby is what it’s called. And it’s just extraordinary. It’s typed pages. It was, I think, to see if there’s a date on it. Let me look at it closely. If there’s a date on it, it was from the ’80s I think and it’s all the practical tips. I guess It doesn’t say. It must have been the early 80s. Number one. I don’t beg. Number two. I don’t threaten. Number three, I don’t claim I’m always right. This is her list. And she goes on from there and talks about how you make an influence and how you influence people lobbying wise. Extraordinary.
But there’s a couple of things about her life that were amazing.
As a young girl, and she talks about this in some talks that are available on the internet. She was twelve years old in 1938, she says. She describes how there was a referendum, a vote of the people in Austria, and 98%, if I’m remembering it right, let me find yeah, 98% majority elected Hitler to take over Austria. They voted for him. That was March 13, 1938. And she’s told the story, and I’ve heard her talk about it.
She was in 6th grade and she said the day before it happened, in every school, public school there was a crucifix on the wall. The day after there was a picture of Hitler, and she said it was that dramatic, the swing. And she talked about how she was at Sundays, they started to not have church. They had National Youth Day, where they had the kids do games and have fun. She used to say they made it so much fun that you didn’t want to go to church with your parents when your parents said, don’t go to the Youth Day where they’re indoctrinating you. She said that the kids wanted to go because they were riding bicycles and motorbikes and playing sports and all. And so she talked about all this.
One of the times, she was very slight. She was probably like five three as an adult when she was a girl. She was also still pretty petite for her age, and they would put her in the front row a lot because she couldn’t see over other people.
So one time Hitler came to their school, I guess it was a big school, and there was an assembly, and she was in the first row, and she was 25 or 30 ft from Hitler. Imagine, you can imagine what it’s like to sit with her and talk to her about that and what it was like. I mean, to hear someone say that.
So she talked about how gradually Hitler, when he won, he took over. It wasn’t a dictatorship right away. It was a sort of slow thing.
And she talked about the threats that she saw around her in America. So after she lived through the war, she actually was helping the Americans in the recovery period, and she was granted citizenship or a pathway to America, in part, she said, because what she was helping them do, which was uncover corruption, she had done undercover, she had done as a sort of agent of America and the Americans, for whom she always described her gratitude.
When she comes to America, she marries a doctor, they move to South Dakota, and they build their life.
But one of the funny things about her, she spoke German, obviously fluently. I think she spoke a couple of other languages. At various times, she played key roles in the late Phyllis Schlafly’s efforts to go about doing things, like, for example, when Phyllis led a contingent to Geneva to support Reagan in some of the negotiations there. Kitty went with the leftists. She knew the Communists were having a rally, and she went there and dressed, as she said, dressed up poorly, and went to their rally and listened to them talk in German, and she could talk in German to them. She could hear everything, and she loved doing that.
She one time went to Tom Daschle who was her senator, and she went to an event that he had on the reservations for the Native Americans. And she went with a tape recorder, and she dressed like a hippie, and she tape recorded Tom Daschle saying, don’t worry. We’re going to get you free stuff. We’ll get you free sneakers, I think it was, and free other things. She recorded that, and then she released it to the press.
She was a character. She was a character. But she was wonderfully kind. She was very savvy.
I’ve watched her lobby U.S. Senators, US. Congressmen. The maybe future speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy. She met with. I was with her. She was amazing.
One thing she also loved was the American Constitution and the rule of law. And she thought and fought against efforts by people to amend the Constitution or get a new Constitution. She maintained, like Phyllis Schlafly, that we have a great constitution, and we have a great tradition, we have great ethics and the rule of law. We got to live up to it. You can get a new constitution. You still have the same broken people cheating and stealing and not paying attention to the document. Why change it? And she didn’t believe in that.
So she was an amazing lady, and in the years that I knew her, she was an old lady. Probably, she was 81 years old until, excuse me, until 96. So these years and she was wonderful with my children. They’ve known her for years. We have pictures. I was looking back at them when they were just about seven years ago, when they were with her eight years ago.
She just was wonderfully kind, wonderfully interested, and had a great smile.
One time we came to Washington, D.C. She came to D.C. To meet with a senator, and we went to a restaurant called Mozart’s, and Mozart’s was Viennese cuisine, but in the front of the building was an international food store, and Kitty had never been there, but she knew of it. She told me of it. And when we walked in, we had dinner, and we finished. We were leaving. She said, I got to go over here, and she wanted to get some I think it was some special kind of sugar, an almond sugar. I think that’s what it was. And so she said to the guy behind the counter, I’d like this almond sugar. And she had an accent. She had a Viennese accent. She said, I like the sugar. And he said, Do I know you? And she said, Well, I’ve never been here. And he said, but I feel like I know you. And she said, oh, I call frequently. And he said, Are you Kitty? And she said, oh, yes. And he said then he recited her address, because she would call from South Dakota and ask for food to be sent to her, and they would ship it to her. And so they had this great laugh and a great conversation.
She just was filled with joy.
And, not but, and she knew from her experience how it can slip away. It can be diminished. She started giving talks in the 2000 and 9, 10 11, 12 period, with great frequently on two topics. One, the encroaching socialism of Obamacare, and two, the threat that she saw with regard to some of the efforts to limit gun ownership. She believed the Second Amendment was not about hunting, not about skeet shooting, not about sports, but it was about stabilizing the nation.
And she had seen it. She had seen the nation. And so the two things that she was worried about was protect the Constitution because it has the right protections for us. And second, then don’t be fooled because the people of Austria voted for Hitler and then over a few years allowed Hitler to dominate and take control and be a dictator. And she said she worried about people that voted for Obama and then didn’t see the encroaching socialism.
And so here’s this lady 80s, maybe probably 85 at the time, maybe 105 pounds, 5 foot two, going across the country, speaking to groups about the threat that she foresaw Obama if he weren’t checked, if you didn’t check his power. And they attacked her, and the media attacked her, and everybody attacked her. And she just kept trudging along. And she said, let me tell you my story.
Let me tell you my history, and then I’ll tell you what you know you should be worried about.
And in the context of that, she felt like she was not only doing good, but that she was building the community in the kingdom. And she was a true believer. She was a great believer of faith, too, she had a great husband. He predeceased her by almost two decades. And her children, too, her children, she loved them very much.
And so she’ll be sorely missed. A great, great American lady, an American original. Kitty Werthmann. If you do a search. Kitty K-I-T-T-Y Werthmann W-E-R-T-H-M-A-N-N. You’ll see lots of her speeches, lots of her comments, lots of her being attacked by the left, Right Wing Watch and all that kind of stuff.
But if you get to see pictures of her, you’ll see a smiling little bitty of a lady whose size, her small size was outpaced by her voice and her influence and what she did. So I loved her very much. I’ll miss her, and I was grateful. Great privilege to be able to know her and work with her. Kitty Werthmann.
All right, everybody. We’ll take a break. When we come back, we’ve got a lot more. It’s Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. Back in a moment.
