Geraldine Ferraro and her Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama comments have set off quite a media frenzy. But I don’t want to talk about Geraldine Ferraro’s role in the 2008 elections. I want to talk about Ferraro’s role in history, specifically women’s history, especially during women’s history month. Geraldine Ferraro was the first woman nominated by a major political power as its candidate for Vice President of the United States.

Ferraro, who would become the first woman to be nominated as the Vice President by a major political party in the United States, was born in 1935 in Newburgh, New York. When Ferraro was 8, her father, an immigrant from Italy, died and she and her family moved to the Bronx before settling in Queens where her mother worked in the garment industry. The gifted Ferraro won a scholarship to Mary Mount, became a public school teacher, and went to Fordham’s law school at night. Ferraro ran successfully for Congress from New York City’s 9th District in 1978 and served as a women’s and human rights advocate, worked for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, sponsored the Women’s Economic Equity Act (ending pension discrimination against women), and fought for increased job training and opportunities for displaced homemakers.

In 1984, was nominated to run as Vice President of the United States on the Democratic Party ticket, with former Vice President Walter Mondale, exactly 64 years (to the day) after women had won the right to vote in the United States. Mondale and Ferraro lost to Reagan and Bush. But In 1993 Ferraro was appointed US representative to the UN Human Rights Commission.

In 2002, Ferraro was told she had three years to live “” five at the most, and was diagnosed with Myeloma, a blood cancer. And yet, today, Ferraro is alive and well, and an active advocate for cancer research and funding. Ferraro also wrote, among other things, a biography My Story, and a A History of the American Suffragist Movement

Inspired? Then and support funding of cancer research!