Weis, Jessica, 1901-1963

<p>Jessica "Judy" McCullough Weis (July 8, 1901 – May 1, 1963) was a two-term Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from Rochester, New York.</p>

<p>Weis was born in Chicago, the daughter of Charles H. McCullough Jr. and Jessie Martin McCullough. Her father was president of the Lackawanna Steel Company in Lackawanna, New York. She was educated at the Franklin School in Buffalo, at Miss Wright's School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania and at Madame Rieffel's French School in New York City. In 1921 she married Charles William Weis Jr. of Rochester, who became president of the Stecher Traung Lithographic Company. They had three children.</p>

<p>As a young woman, Weis worked as a volunteer for the Red Cross, the Junior League, and other charitable organizations. In 1923 she founded the Chatterbox Club,[1] a women's social club. Weis first became active in politics during the 1936 election campaign of Alf Landon, when she organized statewide road caravans to support his election. She held various posts in the local, state, and national Republican Party. She was vice chairman of the Monroe County Republican Committee from 1937 until 1952. She was also a member of the Republican National Committee from 1944 until 1963.</p>

<p>A gregarious socialite from a well-to-do family, Jessica McCullough Weis originally became involved in upstate New York Republican organizations because she was concerned with the scope of New Deal reforms in the 1930s. “I really went into politics because I got tired of sitting around the sitting room objecting to the ways things were being run,” Weis recalled. “I decided I ought to do something about it or stop objecting to it.” Working her way through the local GOP hierarchy, she eventually became a national committeewoman and spokesperson on the party’s lecture circuit. Speaking before numerous audiences and working closely with party activists came naturally to her. “Politics, after all, is a matter of human relationships,” she once said. Weis eventually represented her Rochester district in the U.S. House of Representatives, where she defended local agricultural interests and championed women’s equality in the workplace.</p>

<p>Jessica (Judy) McCullough was born on July 8, 1901, in Chicago, Illinois, daughter of Charles H. McCullough Jr. and Jessie Martin McCullough. Her father was president of the Lackawanna Steel Company in Buffalo, New York. Born into privilege, Judy McCullough attended elite finishing schools in Pennsylvania and New York. In September 1921, McCullough married Charles W. Weis Jr. who went on to become president of a lithography company in Rochester, New York. They settled there and raised three children: Charles, Jessica, and Joan. Judy Weis joined the Rochester Junior League and participated in other local charities, often joking that a “deep-seated hatred of housework” drove her to politics.</p>

<p>Weis became active in the New York Republican Party during the 1930s when she “got upset about those who worried about the New Deal and didn’t do anything about it.” She first served on the local GOP finance committee and, during the 1936 presidential election, organized motorcar caravans throughout the state to support the GOP nominee, Kansas Governor Alf Landon. In 1937 Weis was appointed vice chair of the Monroe County Republican Committee, where she served for the next 15 years. In 1940 Weis was elected president of the National Federation of Republican Women and was chosen by the state’s “Committee of 48” to notify Wendell Willkie of his nomination for the presidency. In the early 1940s she traveled on the GOP’s national speaking circuit, addressing groups on a range of topics from women’s issues to the need for an internationalist foreign policy. When former New York Congresswoman Ruth Baker Pratt resigned as New York’s committeewoman to the national GOP in January 1943, Weis was named to succeed her. From 1940 through 1956 she also was a delegate at-large to GOP conventions. In 1948 Weis seconded the nomination of New York Governor Thomas Dewey for the presidency and then became the first woman to work as associate manager of a national campaign when she joined the Dewey-for-President team.</p>