At age 94, Marguerite Bailey Young can’t remember the last time she was out until 1 in the morning.
But being a guest of Sen. Mark Warner, D–Virginia, at the U.S. Capitol — and being in the audience for President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night — was worth losing a few hours of sleep.
“Just being there and seeing what happens and how it all goes, it was quite an experience,” Young said Wednesday morning, after she’d had a chance to reflect on the event. “It was an experience that I never would have dreamed of. I tell you, at 94 years old, that was something.”
The retired teacher and school administrator is well known in Fredericksburg circles, and beyond, for her work mentoring students and advocating for equitable health care resources for the underserved.
She’s also a diabetic who is supposed to take two types of insulin per day and other medicine for heart problems and chronic kidney disease.
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Warner was looking for someone to illustrate the way the Inflation Reduction Act, passed last summer and mentioned by Biden in his address, had benefited seniors. It caps the cost of insulin at $35 a month, and Young looked back on a year’s worth of prescriptions to determine the legislation will save her about $2,000 per year.
“That’s important,” she said with emphasis, “especially if you are on fixed income. And back in the day, I wasn’t making a whole lot of money being a teacher or being in education in the state of Virginia.”
When Warner’s staff learned about Young’s experiences, she was invited to be his guest, and a whirlwind of activity followed.
Xavier Richardson, a senior vice president at Mary Washington Healthcare, helped her navigate some of the security and transportation issues involved and Sylvia Johnson, Young’s sister, helped with equally important matters, like figuring out what to wear and getting her hair done.
Young was well put together when she was interviewed by the senator’s office, after she, Johnson and Richardson got to the Capitol in the late afternoon, before security shut down the area.
Young wore a rose-colored tweed jacket with the lapels trimmed in black. Her grayish, shoulder-length hair was curled and her eyes twinkled, especially when she said: “I’m just 94 years old. That’s all. Shucks. That’s all.”
She had met Warner “back in the day,” before he was elected governor in 2002. Young didn’t think he would remember her, but on Tuesday, he recalled a campaign visit to Fredericksburg when her nephew, Ambrose Bailey, introduced him.
Bailey can “talk, talk, talk,” his aunt said, and Warner joked that he should have Bailey introduce him at all his campaign stops.
On Tuesday, the senator said Young is “a real-life example of how things in Washington can affect peoples’ lives, if they’re done right.” He hoped her story would encourage Congress to put a similar cap on insulin prices for all Americans, not just those on Medicare.
Young, her sister and Richardson had dinner with Warner and his staff in a conference room before the president’s address. She ordered pot roast that she said was so tender, if fell off the bone, and glazed vegetables. She has a taste for lemon, and wasn’t able to get lemonade or lemon cake as ordered, but the restaurant substituted lemon cheesecake instead.
She didn’t have a chance to eat it all, so “I brought a lot of that home,” she said, laughing.
She turned serious, though, and into typical Marguerite Young mode, Richardson said, when the conversation turned to prescription costs, especially for those who can’t afford ever-rising prices. In a video shot by the senator’s staff, Young got fired up, almost as if she were speaking from the pulpit.
She pointed her finger in emphasis and laid a hand on the table as she recounted the difficult choices people have to make. Years ago, when she helped develop a wellness coalition at Shiloh Baptist Church (Old Site), she heard personal stories about the crippling costs.
“I know many people who had to choose between food and medicine,” she said. “I know people who would get the pharmacy to divide their prescriptions into a third or a half, not get the whole prescription, because they couldn’t afford that.”
Richardson said Wednesday that when he was asked to find a person to share her story, he was reluctant to ask a woman in her 90s to endure such a long day. But he quickly realized Young was “the perfect person,” not just because of the help she got from the insulin cap, but for all the ways she’s advocated for others.
Decades before studies documented that women of color have worse outcomes while giving birth than their white counterparts, Young was asking medical groups to address the issue, Richardson said.
And, as one of many students Young mentored, he was thrilled to see the “fuss and fanfare around her at the Capitol.”
Although she wasn’t shown on TV during the address, “she stole the show backstage with the senator’s staff,” Richardson said. “It was a phenomenal experience.”
He drove Young and Johnson to Warner’s office in Tyson’s Corner, then a member of the senator’s staff took them to the Capitol. Only Young was allowed in the chamber because of limited seating, and Richardson had requested a wheelchair to save her some steps.
She sat in the balcony, to the left of Jill Biden’s section, and had a little trouble hearing everything. Part of that may be because she’s 94, she said, but she added that others around her had the same complaint.
Young stood and applauded several times during the speech. Afterward, the audience had to wait until Biden made his rounds, shaking hands and hugging people.
The Fredericksburg woman was paying attention to every aspect of what was going on.
“It was at least 27 minutes before they allowed us to leave there,” she said.
By the time the senator’s staff member drove them back to Tyson’s Corner, Richardson said he was feeling a bit fatigued. But not 94-year-old Marguerite Young.
“She was about five steps ahead of us,” he said, “and I was like, look at you. It was amazing to see her walk out of there.”
Marguerite Bailey Young said that her sister used to tease that Young “was involved in every…