Ella T Grasso

Ella T. Grasso

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First Female Governor of Connecticut

11/15/07

Ella T. Grasso was the first woman in the nation to be elected governor in her own right.

Ella Rosa Giovanna Olivia Tambussi Grasso was a very intelligent, determined

and compassionate woman. She was born to immigrant parents James and Maria Olivia

Tambussi on May 10, 1919, in Windsor Locks, Connecticut. Ella started Mount Holyoke

College in 1936 and graduated magna cum laude with her Bachelors degree in 1940.

While she was an undergraduate she majored in economics and sociology, and she

minored in history and political science. Her junior year she earned a Phi Beta Kappa

key, then she was a part-time assistant and teacher for the Department of Economics

and Sociology. Later, in 1942, she received her Masters degree in economics and

sociology from Mount Holyoke.

After two years of teaching college statistics, Ella returned home to Windsor

Locks and married Thomas Grasso. She had known Thomas since childhood when their

families spent summers together at the Connecticut Shore. During the course of their

marriage they had two children, Susanne and James.

Shortly after they were married, in 1943, Ella began her political career by

working for the Connecticut State Employment Service in Hartford. She only kept that

job for six months until it was taken over by the Federal War Manpower Commission.

The newly consolidated agency appointed her assistant director of research for the War

Manpower Commission in Connecticut. She stayed on this job until the end of the war.

After the war she retired from work and became interested in community affairs,

but especially in the League of Women Voters. It was during this period that she

started out in politics. Apparently, a family friend was running for the post of town

chairman of the Windsor Locks Republican Town Committee and needed votes. It took

Ella two years to make up her mind about which political party she wanted to

hitch her wagon to, but once the decision was made it didn't take her long to start

climbing the political ladder. A little less than four years after she joined the

Democratic party, and having been a registered Republican for a short time, her fellow

Democrats in the House of Representatives named her assistant minority leader in the

House, making Grasso the first woman in the history of the Legislature to hold that post.

She was re-elected in 1954 and spent the next four years as a Democrat to the House of

Representatives of the Connecticut General Assembly.

Later, she served as Connecticut Secretary of State from 1958 until 1971, and co-

chaired the Resolutions Committee for the 1966 and 1968 Democratic National

Conventions. She was elected to the United States House of Representatives from

Connecticut's 6th district in 1970 and 1972. She also served on the Veterans' Affairs

Committee and the Education and Labor Committee while she was in congress.

In 1972, while she was up for re-election to U.S. Congress, she made many

promises.