Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 30, 1995 TAG: 9505300123
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: SKOWHEGAN, MAINE LENGTH: Medium
Smith died at her home of complications from a stroke that had put her in a coma eight days earlier, said a spokeswoman from the Margaret Chase Smith Library in Skowhegan.
``The Lady from Maine,'' known by her trademark red rose, emerged as one of the most powerful and respected figures in Congress in her three decades there. She was a ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee from 1967 to 1973, and she ran for president in 1964, the first woman nominated by a major party.
Her knack of mirroring the views of the common people - and expressing them clearly and succinctly - endeared her to voters of both parties. Until her defeat in 1972 by Democrat William D. Hathaway, voters returned her to Washington with solid majorities.
She got into politics as secretary to her husband, Clyde H. Smith, and won election to his House seat after he died. She served four terms in the House, 1941-49, and four in the Senate, 1949-73.
she was the first woman elected to the Senate without having been appointed to fill a vacancy and the first Republican woman senator.
She staked out a position in the middle of the American political spectrum. In widely hailed speeches two decades apart, she warned of the threat of extremism from both the left and the right.
Her 1950 ``declaration of conscience'' was a repudiation of the ``smear tactics'' of Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R-Wis. Though she didn't mention the anti-communism crusader by name, she told the Senate it was time to stop ``character assassination'' behind the cloak of congressional immunity.
``The nation sorely needs a Republican victory,'' she declared, ``but I don't want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the four horsemen of calumny - fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear.''
Twenty years later, as the nation was being jolted by often violent student protests against the Vietnam War, Smith delivered a Senate speech updating her declaration.
Extremists, fomenting divisions in American society, are forcing ``the great center of our people'' to make a ``narrow choice between anarchy and repression,'' she said.
``And make no mistake about it,'' she said, ``if that narrow choice has to be made, the American people, even if with reluctance and misgiving, will choose repression.''
As the women's liberation movement gained momentum at the close of the 1960s, Smith refused to be labeled a feminist.
``Women are people,'' she said. ``They should expect office only on the basis of personal qualifications.''
Born in Skowhegan, a central Maine mill town, she was the eldest of six children of a barber. Her formal education ended with graduation in 1916 from Skowhegan High School.
After high school, she got a job as a teacher in a country school but was lured away from teaching when the telephone company offered her $12 a week as assistant to the manager.
In 1930, while working as the office manager at a woolen mill, she married Smith, a businessman 23 years her senior. She became his executive secretary after his election to Congress. They had no children.
by CNB