Mary Williams, Jane Fonda’s “Lost Daughter”, Finds Hope
The night that she allowed my sister to be beaten like that was what ended it for me, but I couldn’t go anywhere, I was still a child. But it just so happened that my uncle who was also a Panther had a relationship with Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden politically. They had similar political views and Jane told my uncle about this summer camp that they had, that they wanted to have children from all economic levels, from rich to poor, black and white, everything, to come and get to know each other in this camp and my uncle nominated me and some siblings to go to this camp and that was the first time I had ever left Oakland and saw that the world can be different from what I was experiencing.
There were places where people didn’t curse you or hit you or there was violence or there was sexual harassment all the time. And it was in this beautiful little summer camp in the mountains of Santa Barbara run by Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden and not just run by them but they were actually physically present at the camp and they talked to us and they played with us and they were really integral to that and that’s where Jane and I met and we bonded over the course of a couple of summers.
Marlise: So Mary, we all have crossroads in life that completely shift our life trajectory. I see that years later you traveled to Antarctica which is the coldest most isolated part of the world, was this a part of your soul searching journey that brought you answers?
