To Celebrate Old Maid's Day: A Match for Miss Gray?

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To Celebrate Old Maid’s Day: A Match for Miss Gray?
By Denise Noe


Old Maid’s Day falls on June 4. According to Holiday Insights this is the day to “put into the spotlight all of the fair maidens who have yet to find their Prince Charming.” This special day was founded in the aftermath of World War II. American men were returning home from the world-saving business of defeating the Nazis and the aggressive Empire of Japan and wedding bells were ringing throughout the land.

However, some astute observers realized that not all women were married or marrying. They set this day aside for these unclaimed blessings.

Contemporary America has many women who are unmarried but few who fit old-fashioned terms like “old maid” or “spinster” with their connotations of celibacy. We have single mothers and real life counterparts to the swinging female characters of Sex and the City. Perhaps our most famous single woman is Oprah Winfrey whose image is truly ubiquitous. She is hardly an “old maid” since she is known to have a boyfriend named Stedman Graham and the couple has been an “item” for many years.

However, this country does have at least one prominent single woman who appears to be an old maid in the full sense. She is Nellie Gray, President of the group March for Life that seeks to outlaw abortion. The group’s yearly march around the capital on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision is sometimes referred to as “Nellie’s March” for her pivotal role in organizing it. March for Life may be the most adamant of all the organizations seeking to ban abortions as it rejects not only the oft-made exceptions for rape and incest victims but the traditional exception to save the life of the mother believing that the pregnant woman and the unborn are entitled to equal care.

Strongly anti-feminist, she is frequently called “Miss” Nellie Gray in deference to her presumed distaste for the honorific “Ms.” Despite her anti-feminism, she appears to have lived her life according to the adage, “a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.”

Born in 1924, she has worked as a secretary and served in Women’s Army Corps during World War II. After leaving the military, she went to college under the G.I. Bill. She earned a Bachelor’s and a Master’s, then a law degree in 1959. For many years she was a civil servant in Washington, D.C.

Noticeably missing from any biographical material this writer has read on Gray is mention of any beaus. Whether this is because she has always lacked romantic interest or no man ever took an interest in her is never explained.

There is also never a mention of a close female friend and Gray, a devout Roman Catholic, ordered the arrest of members of the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians (PLAGAL) in 2002 when they tried to march under the PLAGAL banner. Thus, it seems she would prefer that the public think of her as heterosexual even though there is no evidence for any sexual orientation.

Perhaps the best way to celebrate Old Maid’s Day is to try to fix America’s best-known unclaimed blessing up with an eligible and appealing gentleman (not “stud”). This is a cause for which the most fiercely opposed groups may comfortably unite. Pro-lifers should certainly want one of their most dedicated leaders to know the joys of connubial bliss before she shrugs off this moral coil. Pro-choicers should support finding another interest for one of their most committed opponents.

Some may think it is too late for Nellie Gray to wed since she is in her eighth decade as of this 2006 writing. However, where there is life there is always hope. In Malaysia, a woman aged 104 recently married a 33-year-old man. The bride is impoverished so we may take the groom at his word that mutual respect and friendship had deepened into love.

Surely a Prince may be found for our Miss Gray.