She looks stuffy in the photographs, but Toni Novello is one of the most genuine people and funniest women I’ve ever worked with — sometimes without intention. When veterans of the old Senate Labor Committee chairman’s staff get together, we still laugh over Toni’s return from a weekend health care seminar raving about “Cahoon cooking.”
We were puzzled until somebody remembered the seminar she spoke at was in New Orleans. In her Puerto Rican view, Cajun was just pronounced a little differently.
Brilliance packaged in a human exterior.
Today in Science History tells us Toni was born on August 23, 19√∞. “Physician and public official, the first woman and the first Hispanic to serve as surgeon general of the United States.”
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 