Roberts, Barbara, 1936-

<p>Barbara Kay Roberts (née Hughey; born December 21, 1936) is an American politician from the state of Oregon. A native of the state, she served as the 34th Governor of Oregon from 1991 to 1995. She was the first woman to serve as Oregon governor, and the only woman elected to that office until 2016. A Democrat, Roberts was also the first woman to serve as majority leader in the Oregon House of Representatives. She also won two terms as Oregon Secretary of State, and served in local and county government in Portland. Roberts was married to Oregon state Sen. Frank L. Roberts from 1974 until his death in 1993. From February 2011 until January 2013, she served on the council of Metro, the regional government in the Portland metropolitan area.</p>

<p>Roberts was born Barbara Kay Hughey on December 21, 1936, in Corvallis, Oregon, to Bob and Carmen Murray Hughey. Her father, a millworker, was a descendant of Oregon Trail pioneers. The Hugheys' second daughter Pat was born a few years later and then they moved to Los Angeles, California in 1940 where her father worked as a machinist. Following World War II, the Hugheys returned to Oregon, settling in Gold Creek in Yamhill County in 1945, and then finally in Sheridan.</p>

<p>In 1954, she married her high-school sweetheart Neal Sanders, graduating the following year from Sheridan High School. The couple moved to Texas, where they had two children, Mike and Mark, before returning to Oregon several years later, settling in Portland where she attended Portland State University from 1961 to 1964.</p>

BARBARA ROBERTS was born in Corvallis, Oregon. She attended Portland State University from 1961 to 1964 and Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1989. She worked as an unpaid advocate for handicapped children, which led to her 1973 election to the Parkrose School Board, on which she served for ten years. She also served as Multnomah County Commissioner in 1978 and was a member of the Mt. Hood Community College Board for three and one-half years. Roberts was a member of the Oregon House of Representatives from 1981 to 1985, holding the post of House Majority Leader from 1983 to 1984. In 1984, she was elected Secretary of State, winning reelection in 1988. She chaired the Governor’s Task Force on Worker’s Compensation Reform, served on the Governor’s Commission for Financing Long-Term Care, and was the Governor’s representative to the Hanford Waste Board. She became Oregon’s first woman governor in 1991. As governor, she was a strong supporter of public education, handicapped rights and services, environmental management, and streamlining of state government. After leaving office, Roberts accepted a position with the John F. Kennedy School of Government as Director of the Harvard Program for Senior Executives in State and Local Government and later as a senior fellow to the Women and Public Policy Program. In 1998 she became Associate Director of Leadership Development at Portland State University’s Hatfield School of Government’s Executive Leadership Institute.

<p>In November 1990, Barbara Roberts became the thirty-fourth governor of Oregon, the first woman elected to that office and one of three women in the United States elected as governors that year (the others were Joan Finney of Kansas and Ann Richards of Texas). By the time she was elected, Roberts had become known as a hardworking politician with strong positions on education, civil rights, and the environment. Her policies on tax reform and the timber industry were controversial, and she faced three recall efforts before deciding not to run for a second term.</p>

<p>Barbara Kay Hughey was born in Corvallis on December 21, 1936. Her family moved to California and then Yamhill County, eventually settling in Sheridan. On December 26, 1954, when she was a senior in high school, Barbara married Neal Sanders, who was in the Air Force. Following her graduation from Sheridan High School in 1955, she joined Neal in Texas, where their first son was born. After Sanders was discharged in 1958, the family returned to Oregon, where their second son was born. Barbara attended Portland State University from 1961 to 1964 and later continued her studies at Marylhurst College.</p>

<p>In 1962, a doctor diagnosed her oldest son Mike as "extremely emotionally disturbed." In her biography, she writes that "these ‘experts’ predicted Mike would never be able to go to school, never work, never be able to live independently." The difficulties she encountered were similar to the experiences of most parents with disabled children in the 1960s. Few resources were available and public schools had no programs for them, so the children were sent home or institutionalized. Barbara’s political career began when she became an advocate for her son and other children with disabilities.</p>