C8 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 13 , 2022
snickerdoodles. Before she tried
cheerleading she enjoyed
gymnastics, and she hopes to
one day run track. She tells me
this on a recent evening as she
sits next to a heart-shaped
pillow. She got it from Mended
Hearts, an organization that
supports heart patients, and it
helped her get out of bed after
her surgery.
The procedure left a
prominent scar in the center of
Jaela’s chest. Cierra worries her
daughter will become self-
conscious about it as she gets
older. But when I ask Jaela about
it that evening, she describes it
as her “best friend,” explaining
that it’s always going to be with
her.
“It’s kind of a reminder that I
really had heart surgery, which
can be scary for lots of people,”
she says. “It reminds me that I
really got through this.”
After her daughter’s surgery,
Cierra stopped painting bodies.
But on a recent afternoon, to
commemorate that a year had
passed since her daughter’s
pediatrician heard that faint
sound, she picked up her
paintbrush. With it, she wrote
words on her daughter’s skin,
They included “strong,” “beauty”
and “fearless.”
When she came to the scar,
she did the opposite of hide it.
She painted it a glittering gold.people toward unhealthy habits
and led people to put off medical
visits. Covid-19 has also directly
affected people’s hearts. A newly
published scientific study,
according to a recent
Washington Post article, found
that “coronavirus patients were
at ‘substantial’ risk of heart
disease one year after their
illness, increasing the odds of
clots, arrhythmias, heart failure
and related conditions.”
Seiji Ito, the cardiologist at
Children’s National Hospital who
treated Jaela, says her heart
condition is called anomalous
coronary artery. The condition,
in which the coronary artery is
in the wrong place, often goes
undetected. It is responsible for
athletes suddenly collapsing in
the middle of an activity and
sometimes dying.
“That can be the first and the
last presentation” of the
condition, Ito says.
He describes Jaela as having
“a great recovery” and says they
will continue to monitor her
progress.
“I’m hoping she can go back to
all of that activity that she used
to enjoy, including cheerleading,”
he says. “Part of the reason we
did surgery is we want her to
stay active and keep enjoying
what she likes to do.”
Jaela is now 13 and loves
baking. Her specialty ishad a 6 hour open heart surgery
and is in recovery.”
Feb 19: “Although it hurts me
to my core to see, Jaela is
resilient and pushing through.
Heart surgery is major and I'm
still in disbelief that this is now a
part of her story and mine as a
mom.”
On the same week that the
country will celebrate Valentine’s
Day with heart-shaped balloons
and cards, Jaela will mark a year
since she received major surgery
to repair her real heart. Cierra
calls it her “survivor-versary.”
The past year has seen mother
and daughter change. They went
from not giving much thought to
heart health to now trying to get
people to pay more attention to
it. They have been using Cierra’s
platform to share their story in
the hope it will encourage people
to make that appointment, listen
to their doctors and take better
care of themselves.
“Go get those checkups, even
when things are going okay,”
Cierra says. It’s not lost on her
that her daughter’s surgery
occurred during American Heart
Month. “I want to find a way to
get people more serious about
their hearts, especially this
month. It’s cute we wear red, but
what else can we do?”
The pandemic has
exacerbated concerns about
heart health. It has pushedbrushstrokes gained national
attention after she started
painting bathroom stalls in
schools. She had been an art
teacher and knew that’s where
students went when they were
being bullied or feeling down.
She covered those stalls with
self-esteem-boosting images and
affirmations.
That work led her to partner
with the Boris Lawrence Henson
Foundation, a nonprofit that
focuses on mental health. They
set a goal of painting bathrooms
in cities across the world. I first
told you about Cierra when the
pandemic put that travel on hold
and she started turning women’s
bodies into canvases. She used
body paint to tell their stories
and empower them.
That’s what Cierra does. She
makes vivid the strengths of
people. Her more than 62,000
followers on Instagram have
come to expect those colorful,
uplifting displays. But on Feb. 18
last year, they learned that
Cierra’s own strength was being
tested.
“I thought long and hard
about sharing this here,” she
wrote on that day. “But our
TRUTH, stories and testimonies
always help and encourage
others. Currently by my
daughters bedside in ICU. She
VARGAS FROM C1
THERESA VARGAS
A heart condition and surgery pushed a D.C. girl to do much more than survive
ALVIN BAILEY
Washington artist Cierra Lynn Taylor and daughter Jaela
Vonderpool pose in the heart warrior shirts that Taylor designed.longer approve the ERA.
“Because Congress lawfully
conditioned the States’ ratifica-
tion of the ERA upon a deadline,”
Engel wrote in a January 2020
memo, “and because the dead-
line expired, the proposed
amendment has necessarily
failed.”Fighting ‘inertia’
In his memo, Engel noted that
some say Congress has the power
to rescind the deadline or start
anew. U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier
(D-Calif.) has been trying for
ages to persuade her colleagues
to remove the deadline.
Speier considers the ERA to
have innumerable practical ap-
plications. It would ensure wom-
en earn equal pay and pregnancy
accommodations, and it would
give lawmakers the power to stop
what she calls “the pink tax” —
unnecessary upcharges on “fe-
male” versions of products. Ev-
erything including diapers and
deodorant costs more when it’s
marketed to girls or women. If
the Constitution included an
Equal Rights Amendment, com-
panies wouldn’t be allowed to
charge extra.
The congresswoman has in-
troduced legislation to repeal the
deadline at least a half-dozen
times, but it has never made it
out of the Senate.
“The problem we have is iner-
tia,” Speier said. “The problem
we have is that people already
think it’s in the Constitution and
are surprised to find out that it’s
not.”
Last month, Speier and Rep.
Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) in-
troduced yet another resolution
aimed at passing the ERA. Speier
didn’t know Hornung personally,
but she was pleased to learn that
Hornung plans to mobilize peo-
ple across the country. In March,
Hornung and Mickens will kick
off their national efforts with an
art show in Oakland, Calif. Most
of the ERA iconography dates
back to the 1970s, and Hornung
wanted to update it with work by
a younger and more diverse
group of artists. After the show,
Hornung plans to wrap an RV in
prints of the new work, then
drive the vehicle around the
country. She’ll host virtual train-
ing sessions in April to teach
advocates how to engage their
friends and lawmakers.
The same week Speier and
Maloney introduced their resolu-
tion, Davis and a group of old-
timers drove up to D.C. to cel-
ebrate in Lafayette Square.
Hornung didn’t go with them.
She was getting over covid, and
besides, she’d begun trying to
keep her promise to her family.
She now runs a print shop in
Richmond. She initially bought it
to earn some income and give
former stay-at-home moms a
chance at employment, but she
has discovered that the business
can bolster her activism, too. If
the push to ratify is going to go
national, Hornung will need to
print a lot of materials.
And so, on the day that Davis
and others rallied across from
the White House, Hornung was
at her shop printing up pocket
constitutions. Unlike the version
that hangs in the National Ar-
chives, Hornung’s edition has 28
amendments.“It was really incredible to
open the eyes of all of my
friends,” Mickens said. “It was
always, ‘I had no idea that this
wasn’t a part of our Constitution
already. I had no idea that it’s
taken this long to get to this
point.’ ”
While Mickens reached out to
classmates and professors, Hor-
nung planned other efforts. Ev-
ery time a state politician held a
town hall, she
o r someone else attended and
asked about the ERA. Some sup-
porters wrote letters, and Hor-
nung outfitted an old sprinter
van with deep freezers and ice
cream she’d bought at Costco,
then drove to college campuses
and handed out treats and infor-
mation about the measure.
When Hornung first started,
few Republican lawmakers sup-
ported the ERA. But she found
that most Virginians supported
the idea of equality. They just
needed to learn to champion it.
“What makes it possible for
people to work in a bipartisan
manner is when all of their
constituents are really behind a
topic,” Hornung said. “We just
made a great big ruckus at the
populist people level. By making
that big ruckus, then all of a
sudden the politicians were like,
‘Oh yeah, I support this. This is a
great idea. Let’s get it done.’ ”
When an ERA bill again
reached the legislature in 2020,
dozens of Republicans voted
against it. But Hornung and
others had persuaded enough
people. In late January, Virginia
became the 38th state to ratify.
One problem remained,
though. Earlier that month, the
U.S. Justice Department had con-
cluded that Virginia’s efforts
were too late. Then-Assistant
Attorney General Steven A. En-
gel ruled that states could nofor this.’ ”
First, she teamed up with
members of the Black sororities
Delta Sigma Theta and Alpha
Kappa Alpha. Next, she recruited
Liza Mickens, a young woman
whose great-great-grandmother,
Maggie Walker, was the first
Black woman to charter a bank.
Walker fought for suffrage in the
early 1900s, and when Hornung,
who is White, called to talk to
Mickens, they agreed no fight for
equality would be complete with-
out Black women at its forefront.
“That is her biggest thing,”
Mickens said. “Kati brought me
on to really make sure that the
story is complete and that we are
seeing representation. What I
admire the most about her is she
doesn’t see the table as full
unless everybody is there.”
Mickens was a senior at James
Madison University, so she began
by talking to her classmates in
the dorms and college cafeteria.ratify it. The Virginia Senate
approved pro-ERA bills in 2011,
2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016, but
they died in the House each time.
Opponents still fear the possi-
bility of nonsegregated bath-
rooms, and they argue that the
amendment might prohibit
states from restricting access to
abortion. Still, Hornung says the
ERA is a nonpartisan issue. She
describes herself as “from a con-
servative background,” and she
worked with avowed liberals and
antiabortion conservatives to
lobby lawmakers in late 2017 and
early 2018. The effort didn’t
work: A House committee re-
fused to take up the matter, and a
Senate panel defeated it 9 to 5.
Men cast all of the “no” votes.
“That’s when I shifted,” Hor-
nung said. “I was like, ‘Okay,
we’re not going to waste our time
talking to those guys anymore.
We’re going to start building a
huge crescendo of voices callingthat rally. It was so small, Hor-
nung said, that a state senator
walked by and laughed, but as
Kal and Zoe painted signs, Hor-
nung thought back on her own
life. She’d grown up in Fargo,
N.D., with three brothers, and as
a kid, she’d always felt she had to
fight to be seen as equal. Her
parents made her do the dishes
and the ironing, gendered chores
her brothers never had to do. She
moved to Virginia for college,
and she felt relatively equal to
her male classmates, but when
she entered the workforce as a
certified public accountant, she
found that disparities remained.
After she’d worked her way up to
manager, she learned that the
men she supervised earned thou-
sands of dollars more per year
than she did.
“I knew this world was not
perfect,” she said. “I just wasn’t
out in the streets fighting for
anything at the time. I was just
experiencing all the inequities
and trying to live my life.”
The rally didn’t radicalize Hor-
nung, but her kids enjoyed it, so
they attended another one, and
soon they were part of Davis’s
movement. Hornung figured
she’d follow along as Davis led,
but in 2018, Davis pulled Hor-
nung aside and told her that the
campaign needed new leader-
ship. Someone younger. Some-
one like Hornung.A full table
Hornung was in her mid-40s
when Davis asked her to lead the
push, but most advocates were
older. A Michigan woman was in
her late 80s, and others had
passed away in their mid-90s,
still fighting for the ERA’s pas-
sage. Davis herself was in her
mid-60s and had already spent
more than a decade trying to
persuade Virginia lawmakers toBut the ERA may be gaining
some momentum. A handful of
female lawmakers who have long
tried to add the amendment
introduced another resolution
on Jan. 27, the anniversary of
Virginia’s ratification. That same
day, President Biden called on
Congress to “enshrine the princi-
ple of gender equality in the
Constitution.”
Yet, Hornung has decided she
cannot wait on the powers that
be. She has told her family that
she needs a bit more time before
she can stay home for good. If the
Equal Rights Amendment is go-
ing to join the Constitution,
Hornung must first do across the
country what she did in Virginia.
She must persuade everyday peo-
ple to champion the amendment.
‘We haven’t fixed that yet’
In the beginning, Hornung
thought of herself as just a mom.
She was home-schooling her
children in rural Virginia, and
one day in 2017, after they’d
studied the Declaration of Inde-
pendence, her then-11-year-old
son, Kal, rushed into the kitchen.
“Mom,” he said. “You know,
Thomas Jefferson didn’t even
mean all men when he said, ‘All
men are created equal,’ and we
know he didn’t mean women.
Have they fixed that yet?”
Hornung knew that suffragists
had tried in 1923 to add an
amendment granting men and
women equal rights. She’d
learned in college that Congress
waited until 1972 to pass it, then
gave states a seven-year deadline
to ratify. Thirty-five states did,
but when the deadline came, the
effort fell three short.
Opponents, led by conserva-
tive Phyllis Schlafly, argued that
the amendment would take away
a woman’s right to privacy in
public restrooms and other facil-
ities. It also might force them to
register for the draft. Congress
pushed the deadline to 1982, but
no other state legislatures rati-
fied the amendment, and some
even rescinded their approvals.
When the second deadline
passed, many assumed the issue
was dead.
“Uh, no,” Hornung told her
son. “We haven’t fixed that yet.”
Kal looked up, slack-jawed.
“What are we going to do
about that?” he asked.
A whole generation grew up
barely thinking of the ERA, but
Hornung knew that some had
begun to take up the cause again
after Donald Trump was elected.
Illinois and Nevada were work-
ing to ratify it, and a nurse in
Richmond was holding pro-ERA
rallies across Virginia. Hornung
didn’t think of herself as the
rallying type, but she decided
she’d take Kal and his sister, Zoe.
If nothing else, they could count
it as a home-school lesson.
At the rally, Eileen Davis ex-
plained that the ERA was not
dead. The Constitution doesn’t
mention deadlines, and 202
years passed before the 27th
Amendment garnered enough
states’ approval to add it to the
Constitution. The deadline Con-
gress set for the ERA was only
listed in the preamble, not in the
text of the amendment.
Only 15 or 20 people attended
ACTIVIST FROM C1
After Va. victory, she’s taking equal rights e≠ort national
PHOTOS BY JULIA RENDLEMAN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
TOP: In January 2020, Virginia became the 38th state to approve
the Equal Rights Amendment, with help from activist Kati
Hornung. ABOVE: ERA bookmarks and stickers at Hornung’s print
shop, a business she has found can bolster her activism.