Jolene

Jolene Marie Rotinsulu is an Indonesian-American Paralympic Games committee member, disability rights activist, TV commercial model, actress, singer, and beauty pageant titleholder who won the title of Puteri Indonesia Lingkungan 2019. She represented Indonesia at the Miss International 2019 pageant at the Tokyo Dome City Hall in Tokyo, Japan where she finished as Top 8, continuing the ongoing 4th year placement streaks of Indonesia, consecutively since Felicia Hwang Yi Xin in 2016, Kevin Lilliana in 2017 and Vania Fitryanti in 2018.

Jolene Watanabe (1968 – 2019) was an American international tennis player. She competed in the Australian Open 6 times, from 1994 to 2000. Jolene also competed in the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open making the second round in each of these tournaments. She obtained a career high singles ranking of 72 in 1997 and included a win over Jennifer Capriati.

Jolene Anderson is an Australian actress and singer.

Jolene Unsoeld was a three-term congresswoman from Washington whose opponents campaigned against her as a "radical environmentalist." Appropriately, her 2020 political memoir is titled, "What Are You Going to DO ABout It?" which feels only more applicable as environmental politics have changed in the last several decades.

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She was born Jolene Bishoprick in 1931. Her family was transient due to her father's job in timber; she spent portions of her childhood in Oregon, Washington state, and China. She attended Oregon State College, where she met William "Willi" Unsoeld. William Unsoeld was an environmental activist and mountaineer who was one of the very first to ascend the West Ridge of Mount Everest. The two married, and continued their passions for mountaineering. Unsoeld herself would claim climbing records in Wyoming.

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For much of their marriage, the Unsoelds spent time abroad. Willi Unsoeld served as a Peace Corps director in Nepal and spent much of the 1960s working for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Jolene Unsoeld served as director of an English-language institute while her husband served in USAID. The family returned to the United States in 1967, and settled in Olympia, Washington in 1970.

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It was at the state level that Jolene Unsoeld first engaged with politics. She described herself as a "citizen meddler." Her first triumph was in lobbying a 1972 bill that created the state's public disclosure act. She acted as the self-appointed watchdog for the act, and published two editions of a book called "Who Gave? Who Got? How Much?," which revealed major interest groups’ contributions to politicians in the Washington legislature.

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Tragedy marked much of this early period in politics. In September 1976, Unsoeld's 22-year-old daughter Nanda Devi died while climbing a Himalayan mountain after which she had been named. In March 1979, Unsoeld's husband Willi was killed in an avalanche while climbing Mt. Rainier. Unsoeld later wrote that it was her work in politics that gave her some solace from her grief, finding both purpose and distraction in it.

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In 1984, Unsoeld entered electoral politics, winning a seat in the state legislature. She became a specialist in environmental issues. EMILY's List founder Ellen Malcolm dubbed her the "conscience of the Washington state legislature."

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In 1988, Unsoeld was among the earliest women supported by EMILY'S List when she entered the race for a southwest Washington congressional seat. The largely blue-collar district was split almost evenly between moderates worried about jobs and environmental reformers. Unsoeld squeaked by the primary, but her chief rival made an impression by painting her as too liberal for the district. Her Republican opponent that fall would use that same line of attack. Again, Unsoeld squeaked by with a 618-vote margin of victory (of some 218,000 cast); her victory was declared after recounts more than a month after the election.

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Unsoeld's committee assignments reflected her lifelong interests: merchant Marine nad Fishers, Education and Labor, and the Select Committee on Aging. It was the first of these that was her primary animator. Her goal was to improve environmental law while protecting fishing and logging industries important to her district.

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This proved a delicate balancing act, and Unsoeld often struggled between the two camps. She pushed for money at one point to try and retrain former lumber workers after environmental restrictions she had supported threatened their line of work. She also got caught in the crosshairs of oil and gas industry actors, when she sought bans on their drilling off the Washington coast.

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Socially, Unsoeld was a progressive. Her first legislative action in Congress was signing onto a gay rights bill. She was anti-NAFTA, viewing it as bad for labor. She worked hard on the Freedom of Information Act.

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Unsoeld's environmentalism made her an endangered incumbent in 1990. That election became the state's most expensive congressional race to date. Unsoeld was targeted by the religious right and the tmber industry. Among the election issues was the federal response to save the endangered spotted owl and its habitat, which directly threatened the logging industry. Unsoeld supported the bird, while her opponent, Gomer Robert Williams, supported the industry. Unsoeld also angered her liberal supporters in the election when she was seen to waver on gun control legislation. Again the election was close, but Unsoeld won.

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Riding the Clinton administration's coattails in 1992, Unsoeld won a third victory by her largest margins.

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In 1994, however, things were more difficult. In addition to her environmental activism, she had opposed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, the infamous "1994 Crime Bill." These things made her up for open attack.

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Unsoeld faced a bruising opne primary where a moderate Republican attacked her intensely, and then faced a far more conservative Republican in the general election. Linda Smith, a product of the Eagle Forum (the conservative organization found by Phyllis Schlafly), ended up winning on the coattails of the Newt Gingrich "Contract with America" Revolution. Smith got nasty, declaring that Unsoeld's own father was supporting Smith because she was too liberal.

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After leaving Congress, she spent some time teaching at the Harvard Institute of Politics.

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Unsoeld continued her activism from the private sector. She was appointed to the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission, but was rejected from re-appointment because she was too environmentalist. She was recognized by the Coalition for Open Government in 2008 for her lifelong efforts at government transparency.

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Unsoeld died in November 2021, just days before her 90th birthday.

Jolene Brand is an American actress, active mostly in the '50s and '60s. She is perhaps best known for her work on Ernie Kovacs' comedy shows.

Jolene is also the title of a song by the Weepies.

A famous bearer is actress Jolene Blalock, born 5 March 1975, San Diego, California.

"Jolene" is a Ray Lamontagne song.

The White Stripes (with Jack White singing) cover Dolly Parton's song "Jolene".

'Jolene' is a famous song by the fantastic Dolly Parton!