Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Maine: Staying for the Finish with Elsie Larson

Episode Date: October 13, 2021

In this episode, Sharon is joined by Elsie Larson, creator of A Beautiful Mess, to share the story of Senator Margaret Chase Smith, a Maine woman who refused to take no for an answer. Margaret Chase Smith was the first woman in U.S history to hold a seat in both houses of Congress. With nearly 40 years in office, Senator Smith's career is marked with incredible achievements, such as being responsible for the U.S moon landing and being the first woman to run for U.S president. Known for her political courage, honesty and integrity, she is a hero of democracy. Join Sharon and Elsie as they uncover the remarkable story of Margaret Chase Smith and why she gave Maine - as well as the rest of America - so many reasons to be proud. For more information on this episode including all resources and links discussed go to https://www.sharonmcmahon.com/podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Dairy Farmers of Ontario. From our families to your table. Everybody milk. Visit milk.org to learn more. Oh my goodness, hello. So happy you're here today. I am chatting with my friend Elsie Larson. If you have been around the interwebs for a while, you might recognize her blog name, A Beautiful Mess. I have been following Elsie and her sister for over a decade. Her creativity is absolutely awe-inspiring. Must check them out. But today we are talking about a woman from Maine who made history in

some of the best possible ways. You've got to stick around and hear the story of Margaret Chase Smith. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. Yay! I am chatting today with my friend Elsie Larson, who I bet a lot of you already follow Elsie, and she has an incredible account called A Beautiful Mess. She has been a pioneer in this space for such a long time. Your home decor and your creative holidays. Thank you, Sharon. Yeah. We are definitely like the Oregon trail of bloggers. Yeah. Been doing it for like 15 years. Yeah. We still love it so much. Your creativity is truly just unparalleled. My brain does not work that way, but I admire other people

whose brains do work that way. Ah, thank you. Well, I've learned so much from you and really, I hate to be cheesy. It's been life-changing. I've taken a couple of your classes and I love your podcast. I love your Instagram. And I just feel like it just feels so good to learn. So I know so many people feel that way when they follow you. So thank you for making a podcast. It's wonderful. It's a gift. Thank you so much. It does feel good to learn. And I have some stuff to learn about today. So yay. Let's dive into a story that I wanted to share with you about a trailblazing woman, Margaret Chase Smith. Do you know who she is?

Is she familiar to you? No. Okay, good. Everything is going to be new and exciting. She was born in 1897. So before women could vote, women's place was in the home. You know what I'm talking about. This is one of the things that I found really interesting about her is she started teaching in a one room school after she finished high school. So she's like 18 years old and she began coaching women's basketball. And I was like, hold on women's basketball in 1917. What even was that? Have you ever heard of women's basketball in 1917? No. Do you have a picture or their outfits? Yes. That was the first thing I went to was like, what are the address? Yes. It was like a big shawl collar with like a tie around the neck. And then dresses at the time were long,

but these dresses were like knee length, but you wore them over below the knee bloomers so that you wouldn't show off anything inappropriate. And when I started going on this rabbit hole of women's basketball at the turn of the century, I was like, this is crazy. This show is not about basketball, by the way. I just found this very interesting. They played in secret. Men were not allowed to attend. They locked the doors. And they had this idea, this very Victorian sensibility that women, of course, had a lot of nervous conditions and we always needed to be extra careful. So the idea behind women's basketball was you get a little exercise, which is good for you, but not too much exercise because that would aggravate your nervous condition. We all know that women can't handle anything strenuous. We all know

that of course, right? Nothing's strenuous. Oh my God. So they had different rules than men's basketball in women's basketball. They divided the court into three zones and you were not allowed to leave your zone and you were only allowed to run if the ball was in the air. Otherwise there was no running. What a funny rule, but that was hard to keep up with. But again, this is not about basketball. This is about Margaret Chase Smith. She coached basketball and I just found that so interesting. Okay. So when she was done coaching basketball, she had a variety of other jobs and she eventually married this man named Clyde Smith, who was about 20 years older than her. After they got married, he ran for Congress and she moved to Washington DC with her husband who got elected and was his

secretary and like took all the notes, went to all the meetings, organized all of his papers, prepared his remarks. She also became the treasurer of the congressional club, a club for ladies whose husbands were in Congress. They had their own building and they had their own gatherings. And they of course would get together to talk about how they could collaborate to enhance the careers of their significant others. So she tried to, you know, make a name for herself in Washington, DC. And of course times have changed now, but that was what a woman could do at the time after they had been married. Not that long in 1940, her husband had a heart attack. It was not looking good. He said to her, I want you to run for my congressional seat.

Okay. So question was that typical at the time or not as much? Definitely not typical for women to run for Congress. No. Women had only even been allowed to vote for like 20 years. There are other times where a surviving spouse has run for the seat left vacant by their spouse who passed away, but this was still very unusual for a woman to run for Congress. And it certainly never happened in Maine before. So not typical at all. So she says, okay, I'm going to run for his seat. And she did. And she won his seat in the House of Representatives. And everybody was like, okay, all right. Well, she seems to have a good head on her shoulders. okay, all right, well, she seems to have a good head on her shoulders. She had won in a special election. When somebody dies or retires from Congress, some states require a special election

to fill their seat. Other states allow somebody to be appointed, but in Maine, they required a special election. So she won the special election and then very quickly had to win the general election as well. So she had to turn around and run for election again within a year. Wow. Two times in a row. Very quickly. And she won that seat again. So she then became the representative to the house representatives from her portion of Maine. She was pretty popular. She was a very moderate representative. She did not have, as one can imagine, she didn't have a lot of extreme views that would not have been acceptable for a woman at that time in a position of power to have these vocally extreme views. But one of the things that was very noteworthy about her

that she actually really wanted to be known for was that she wore a red rose on her lapel literally every day. That was her calling card. And she really pushed hard for the red rose to become the official flower of the United States, which it did well after she retired. It is today. It is today. Oh, I didn't know that. Wow. And that was totally due to her insistence that the red rose become the official flower of the United States. But that is not even close to all of the cool stuff that she did. One of the people who was opposed to her initially running for Congress said, this little lady is simply overreaching herself. And another one said she has stepped out of her class. And another person said,

why send a woman to Washington when you can get a man? And she- Were those all men saying those things or were those women also? The last one, why send a woman to Washington when you can get a man, that was from a woman who was the wife of a male candidate. That's right. Talk about women not supporting women. Yes. So she was just very much like, listen, I can do as good a job as anyone else.

And she did not get sucked into this idea of like, I need to argue with all of you. You guys can go ahead and say what you want to say. I'm just going to be here doing a good job. That was her position. I'm just going to be here doing a good job. So she got reelected to the house of representatives a number of times over and over, you know, people in the House have to run for reelection every other year, which puts them in this constant state of running for reelection. But that's the way it's set up in the Constitution. You have to do it. And so then in 1948, after she had been elected to the House of Representatives a number of times in a row, a Senate seat from Maine opened up and she

decided, I want to run for that seat in the Senate. Being in the Senate comes with much longer terms. You're in the Senate for six years instead of two years. And she organized this grassroots campaign, which was almost like a small army of women who did door knocking and held signs and had tea parties at their houses and gave speeches at the library. And she won with 71% of the vote. And there were so wonderful. Isn't that amazing? And there were three male competitors who were also running for the same Senate seat. And she got 71% and the other three had to split the other 29%. That was how well organized her campaign was. That was like a really significant and noteworthy thing. And so then she became the first woman in U.S. history to hold office in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Ah, wonderful. First woman to do both of those things. table are dishing up something new get access to prime time dining reservations by adding your visa infinite privilege card to your open table account from there you'll unlock first come first serve

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Buy from DysonCanada.ca. With ANC on, performance may vary based on environmental conditions and usage. Accessories sold separately. A&W is now serving Pret Organic Coffee. And you can get a $1 small coffee, a $2 small latte, or like me, a $1 small coffee and a $2 small latte. Available now until November 24th in Ontario only. Woo-hoo! She also was on the committee that was the Senate Aeronautics and Space Sciences Committee.

That was the committee that authorized NASA. She was actually very into the space exploration. Roses, space, basketball. That's right. Very interesting woman. Yes. And successful and focused. And focused. But going back in time just a little bit, after she took office as being a senator,

one of the causes that she wanted to work on was this idea that all of the women who had served in the armed forces, all of the women who had been nurses in the army, et cetera, and Navy during World War II, they were all there in a volunteer capacity. They did not have any kind of permanent status. They were not eligible for any kind of a pension. Most of them did not even get paid at anywhere near the same rate as the men who were serving overseas or serving in the military. And so she really felt strongly that women needed to receive similar benefits to men when they were serving in the armed forces. And so she authored this bill that was called the Women in Armed

Services Integration Act. Because up until that time, women were only allowed to serve in the armed services during times of war. And even then it was like in a separate unit, they weren't like fully integrated as part of the army or part of whatever branch of the military they were working with her bill, the women in armed services integration act was shot down by a bunch of people were like, no, you know what? We don't need this. Women can be their own little group. They don't need to be integrated. And she did not take no for an answer. She was like, listen, who do I have to talk to around here? So she did not just take the vote of the committee and say, okay, well, it didn't go over the way I intended. She actually then took her

bill, went and talked to somebody else who had more position of authority, said, here is why we need to get this done. That person picked up the phone and was like, listen, guys, I really think this is a better idea. Ultimately, she got her bill passed. Truman ultimately signed it into law and women were then entitled to the same benefits in the armed services as men were totally based on her actions. I love it. So, and it wasn't like she was in the military. She just felt like this is something that's important. Women are serving our country in an important role and they are entitled to benefits. She was in the Senate during the 1950s, during McCarthy era, when Joseph McCarthy, who was a senator, in the United States State Department who are members of the Communist Party. And everybody was like, what? That is terrible. Like, we do not want communists in our government.

And Margaret Chase Smith was like, that is terrible. We do not want communists in our government. And Margaret Chase Smith was like, that is terrible. We do not want communists in our government. Absolutely not. But then she quickly became disillusioned with McCarthy when he failed to produce any evidence of said 205 people, people who were members of the communist party. She was more than willing to hear the evidence and be like, if that's true, that's terrible. I don't like that. But then when he ultimately presented no information, she had had enough and she wrote a speech called a declaration of conscience. It was a 15 minute speech.

You can still find the transcript of it, but I want to read you just a little bit of what she said in her speech, a declaration of conscience. She didn't get up and say, listen, Joe McCarthy, you're bad news. She didn't call him out, but it was very clear. Well, this is the reason that she wanted to even give the speech. She said she shared his concerns about communist subversion, but she grew skeptical when he repeatedly ignored her requests for evidence to back up his accusations. And she said, it was then that I began to wonder about the validity and fairness of Joseph McCarthy's charges.

So on June 1st, 1950, she gets up on the Senate floor and she began delivering her declaration of conscience. And she said that McCarthy had debased Senate deliberations through the selfish political exploitation of fear, selfish political exploitation of fear, bigotry, ignorance, and intolerance. And she said in her speech, the American people are sick and tired of being afraid to speak their minds, lest they be politically smeared as communists or fascists by their opponents. Yes. Wow. Yes. She went on to say freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America. It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others. Whoa. And these were her four main tenets that Americans have the right to criticize, the right to hold, even higher on the list than that top 100 American speeches. You know, we think about the, I have a dream speech and ask not what your country can do

for you as what you can do for your country. And hers is right up there among the greatest of American speeches. And of course, do you think McCarthy was like, well, that was great. Thank you for your thoughts. No, he began immediately in the media calling her Snow White. And then these other people who were supporting her speech, Snow White and the six dwarves over here, like he immediately was very unkind and unflattering. And it goes back to this idea. We talk all the time about like, where is the civility? Why don't we have any civility? When people say that to me, I'm like, and when did we have civility? Like it's been a while. Yeah. When, what are we returning to?

Back in the Snow White and the Six Dwarves situation, like that was civil. I'm not condoning that kind of rhetoric. I'm just saying that it's not new. That's all I'm not condoning that kind of rhetoric. Definitely not, yeah. No, I'm just saying that it's not new. That's all I'm saying. Some people absolutely loved what she had to say. There was one newspaper article that said, the cool breeze of honesty from Maine. Like they were just like, raise the heavens that somebody has finally said it. One other newspaper said,

by one act of political courage, Smith has justified a lifetime in politics. Wow. Which I just loved that. So as I mentioned, she was a huge fan of space and a huge fan of space exploration. And so as one of the founding members of the Senate Aeronautical and Space Sciences Committee that, as I mentioned, oversaw the creation of NASA. And during her time in the Senate and on this committee, she oversaw a lot of the funding and the authorization of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space programs. And the head of NASA said, if it were not for Margaret Chase Smith, we would never have placed a man on the moon. And I was like, I love it.

That like this one woman who just was born in a small town in Maine in 1897 before women could even vote, coaching girls basketball, wearing dresses, can't even run around too much. If it weren't for her, we would never have put a man on the moon. And I just, I love that she was unafraid to speak her mind about what she felt was important. She had a record for casting the largest number of consecutive votes. What that means is she was there for everything that was being voted on. And she was never absent until she had to have hip surgery that she had to recover from, but she was present for 2,941 consecutive votes in the Senate. So she had the perfect attendance award. She was a perfect, gold star, perfect attendance. So in 1964, months and months and months after denying rumors for such a long time, she finally said,

you know what? I am going to run for president. And she threw her name in the ring. This was what she said. I have few illusions and no money, but I'm staying for the finish. And when people keep telling you, you can't do something, you kind of like to try. Oh, wow. I love that. Oh my gosh. So she was the first woman in U S history to have her name put forward as a potential presidential candidate by a major political party in 1964. And of course, we all know that she didn't become president, but man, you have to love the courage to put yourself out there, right? Especially this was the era that JFK had just been killed. Like this was a very tumultuous time in U S history. And she put herself out there ultimately did not get her party's nomination, but I just love that. She was like, I'm staying to the finish. I have no money,

but I'm going to try. And I just, I think that's so great. but I'm going to try. And I just, I think that's so great. If she could know how long that was really going to take to, you have to start somewhere. Um, so that makes me really proud. Yes. Yes. This notion of relentless incrementalism, you know, we want sweeping, massive overnight revolutionary change. And in reality, most change comes from relentless incrementalism. That's really inspiring. I love that she just was willing to play the long game. She gave an interview once where somebody was like, why do you think a woman would make a good Senator? Cause of course there weren't very many senators as the longer she was in the senate the more there became there were like four and then there were six and when there

were six it was like there are six women senators now like it was a big deal the six of them were on the cover of all kinds of magazines but somebody asked her why do you think women would make a good senator this is her response women administer the the home. They set the rules. They enforce them. They mete out justice for violations. Thus, like Congress, they legislate. Like the executive, they administer. Like the courts, they interpret the rules. It is an ideal experience for politics. You know, she had to speak in a manner that people at the time understood, you know, at the time it was a woman's places in the home. And she was making the case for the fact that a woman's places in the home actually makes them great for doing this

job in Congress. So she eventually became an elderly woman and lost her Senate seat, by the way, was the longest serving woman in the Senate until that record was broken in the 90s by a different female Senator, Barbara Mikulski. But she was in the Senate until 1973 for 24 years. She was a Senator and she was a representative for nine years before that. Wow. I love it. And so in 1989, George H.W. Bush, the first George Bush awarded her the presidential medal of freedom, which is the highest civilian honor an American can receive. And he said at the ceremony in which he was giving out the awards, he had a lot of

things to say about her, but one of them was her talent, intellect, and distinguished service to this country resulted in her becoming the first woman to have her name placed in nomination for president by a major political party. And we honor Senator Smith today for her commitment to truth and honesty in government and in America and to strengthening America at home and abroad. She looked beyond the politics of the time to see the future of America and made us all better for it. and made us all better for it. Who wouldn't love to have a president say that about you someday? What an honor to feel like your commitment to truth and honesty and just like what a person of character that she was looked up to in that way. So in 1992, the National Association of Secretaries of State, which is obviously made up of all secretaries of state across the United States, established an award

called the Margaret Chase Smith American Democracy Award. And they, of course, gave her the first award. And since then, other award recipients have been people like Rosa Parks and the Little Rock Nine and Bryan Stevenson, Sandra Day O'Connor. And they continue to give out the Margaret Chase Smith American Democracy Award. board. And she died in 1995 on Memorial day, which I thought was, you know, obviously it's sad when anyone dies, but what a fitting, a fitting time to go. And she, again, she was born in 1897 and died in 1995. So she lived a very long and productive life. Wow. What a great story. Isn't she?

She's incredible. She really is incredible. When I look at pictures of her, she just has this very kind face and she does look very period appropriate with like the short curly gray hair and the strand of pearls and the rose on her lapel. And, you know, she, she looks professional, not like a grandma housewife, but professional, but still very period appropriate. And I just love that they named a democracy award after her. that they named a democracy award after her. Isn't that sweet? That's incredible. There is a congressional research facility named the Margaret Chase Smith Congressional Research Facility in Maine. And there are all, I have multiple

of your apps. So tell everybody about your apps. Thank you. Okay. So our apps are called a color story film, which is a video app template, which is like an Instagram story template app. And then a design kit, which you can add like fonts and you can write with your finger, like do cursive and things like that. So yeah, those are apps. I have no idea what goes into making an app, but I definitely know it is not a, like I typed a word document kind of situation. It's a lot of, it's a lot of work. situation. It's a lot of, it's a lot of work. Yeah. We have an amazing team and it is, it's, it's a whole different industry, um, but so much fun to work in and I'm glad we get to make apps for creators and tell everybody where to find you on social media and on the interwebs. Yeah. So on Instagram, we are a beautiful mess and our blog is a beautiful mess.com.

Um, so yeah, you can follow us there. We also have a podcast, which is called a beautiful mess. Yes. Uh, well, thank you for being a trailblazer yourself. Thank you, Sharon. You too. I am your number one fan girl. Oh, loving everything. Can't wait to take another class. Aw, that's so nice. I'm so happy to chat with you today. Thank you so much. Aw, thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or a

review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. I cannot wait to have another mind-blown moment with you next episode. Thanks again for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast.