Mary Louise (Epperson) SMITH

SMITH, EPPERSON, JAGER

Posted By: Sarah Thorson Little (email)
Date: 5/8/2008 at 09:59:32

[daughter of Frank Epperson and Louise Jager Epperson]

Mary Louise Smith (October 6, 1914–August 22, 1997)

Mary Louise Epperson was born October 6, 1914 in Eddyville, Iowa. She graduated in 1935 from the State University of Iowa (now the University of Iowa) with a B.A. in social work administration and worked as a case worker in Iowa City for the Iowa Employment Relief Administration from 1935 to 1936.

In 1934, while studying at the University of Iowa, Epperson married medical student Elmer M. Smith. They had three children, Margaret [1939], Robert [1937], and James [1942]. The couple spent much time apart during their early years of marriage, due to Elmer Smith's medical work for the military. In 1945 the family moved to Eagle Grove, Iowa, where Mary Louise Smith became active in a host of community and civic activities, including the Community Chest and the Board of Education. In 1961, she was named to the Iowa Commission for the Blind.

It was in Eagle Grove, in the 1950s, that Smith first became actively involved with the Republican Party. Through the encouragement of Cathlene Blue, wife of Iowa's former Governor Robert Blue, Smith joined the local Republican Women's Club. She held the positions of precinct committeewoman and county vice-chairman, and in 1961 was membership chair and member of the Executive Committee of the Iowa Council of Republican Women. Smith credits her involvement in the ICRW with providing her political training.

In 1964, Smith won a hard-fought three-way battle for the position of Republican National Committeewoman from Iowa, replacing Anna Lomas, who stepped down that year. As a member of the Republican National Committee, Smith served on various party committees and was a delegate to the party's national conventions. In 1969, Smith became a member of the powerful RNC Executive Committee. That same year, she served as a member of the United States delegation to the Population Commission of UNESCO.

In 1974, President Gerald Ford named Mary Louise Smith to chair the Republican National Committee, the first woman to hold this appointment. She led her party through a particularly difficult time as the party was considered by many to be dying in the wake of Watergate. Smith continually advocated promoting the GOP as a party of inclusiveness.

Smith was an active supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and abortion rights. She was a co-founder of the Iowa Women's Political Caucus and, in 1977, was a delegate to the National Women's Conference in Houston. Also in 1977, she was named to the Iowa Women's Hall of Fame.

In 1980, in keeping with her alliance with the moderate wing of the party, Smith supported George Bush for the Republican presidential nomination. She was dismayed with the platform adopted at the 1980 convention when the Republican party retreated from its earlier support for the ERA. Still, she campaigned for Reagan in 1980 and again in 1984. In 1981 Reagan named her vice chair of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, an appointment he would later regret and fail to renew.

In 1984 Smith resigned from the RNC and became a National Vice Chair of the Republican Mainstream Committee, a group of moderates dedicated to reestablishing their Party's pro-choice and pro-ERA positions and returning it to its historical identification with civil rights. She continued to support the party by campaigning for George Bush in 1988 and in 1992. Bush appointed Smith to a four-year term on the board of directors of the National Peace Institute in 1990.

In the aftermath of the 1989 Webster Supreme Court decision, pro-choice Republicans formed the National Republican Coalition for Choice and Smith joined its National Advisory Board in 1991. She also became a national steering committee member of Pro-Choice America, a national political action committee to elect pro-choice Republicans, formed in 1990. In 1991 Pro-Choice America awarded her "Republican Woman of the Century." Smith served on the board of directors of Planned Parenthood of Mid-Iowa from 1986 through 1992, and in 1989 she also became a member of Planned Parenthood Federation of America's National Leadership Committee.

In addition to her continued support for such causes as women's education and women's political participation, Smith took up issues of aging, among others, with the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) of Greater Des Moines, and for ERA Iowa '92, as well as on numerous conferences and charitable bodies. She was the cofounder with Louise Noun of the Louise Noun - Mary Louise Smith Iowa Women's Archives, which opened in 1992 at the University of Iowa Libraries.

http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/iwa/findingaids/html/SmithMaryLouise.htm
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New York Times, Copyright
August 25, 1997

Mary L. Smith, Only Woman To Lead G.O.P., Dies at 82
By ERIC PACE

Mary Louise Smith, a representative of the Republican Party's moderate wing and the only woman ever to serve as chairman of the Republican National Committee, died on Friday at Iowa Methodist Medical Center in Des Moines. She was 82 and a longtime resident of Des Moines. The cause was lung cancer, said her son James E. Smith.

Mrs. Smith was chosen to be chairman of the Republican National Committee by Gerald Ford when he succeeded Richard M. Nixon as President in 1974.

She headed the party during the difficult period after Watergate and announced in November 1976 -- three weeks after President Ford was defeated for re-election by Jimmy Carter -- that she would step down in January 1977, instead of serving two more years.

When she made her decision known, she urged Republicans to avoid ''destructive division'' and ''a fatal lurch to either extreme of the political spectrum.''

Mrs. Smith evidently decided to step down when she did because she thought that the question of whether a moderate or a conservative was to succeed her should be resolved as soon as possible so that the party could begin getting ready for the 1978 Congressional and 1980 Presidential elections.

At the time, her party's conservative faction, associated with Ronald Reagan held the moderates responsible for President Ford's defeat. In January 1977, the Republican National Committee elected Bill Brock, a conservative former Senator from Tennessee, to succeed Mrs. Smith. After Mr. Reagan was elected President, he appointed Mrs. Smith to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. But in his second term, after she had been critical of Administration policies on civil rights, he refused to reappoint her.

Mrs. Smith, whose maiden name was Epperson, was born in the small Iowa town of Eddyville and received a bachelor's degree from the University of Iowa. She became active and prominent in Republican politics and served on the Republican National Committee from 1964 to 1984. She also became a feminist and became known for supporting civil rights and abortion rights.

Her husband, Dr. Elmer Milton Smith, whom she married in 1934, died in 1980.

In addition to her son James, of Des Moines, she is survived by another son, Dr. Robert C., of East Lansing, Mich.; a daughter, Maggie of Jamestown, Calif.; six grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.