Pyle, Gladys, 1890-1989

<p>Gladys Shields Pyle (October 4, 1890 – March 14, 1989) was an American politician and the first woman elected to the United States Senate without having previously been appointed to her position; she was also the first female senator to serve as a Republican and the first female senator from South Dakota. Further, she was the first female senator from outside the south. (The previous four had come from Georgia, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Alabama, respectively.) She was also the first unmarried female senator.</p>

<p>Gladys Shields Pyle was born in Huron, South Dakota on October 4, 1890, the daughter of John L. Pyle and Mamie Shields Pyle, and was the youngest of their four children, three girls and one boy. Her father was a lawyer who served as Attorney General of South Dakota and her mother was a leading suffragist in the state. The family lived in a home John built, remaining there after his death from typhoid fever in 1902.</p>

<p>John and Mamie were instrumental in the establishment of Huron College, which Gladys attended. While a student, Gladys competed in debates alongside her sisters. She graduated in 1911, and moved to Chicago to attend the American Conservatory of Music and the University of Chicago.</p>

<p>The short Senate career of Gladys S. Pyle stood in marked contrast with her long and influential participation in her native South Dakota’s politics. A daughter of a leading suffragist and state attorney general, Pyle was oriented to public service from an early age. Her brief time as Senator, nevertheless, stood as a signal moment in a life of commitment to South Dakotans. “Citizenship,” she once observed, “is service.”</p>

<p>Gladys Shields Pyle was born on October 4, 1890, in Huron, South Dakota, the youngest of four children of John L. Pyle and Mamie Shields Pyle. Her father was a lawyer, the South Dakota attorney general, and a patron of Huron College. Mamie Pyle led the Universal Franchise League, which eventually won the vote for South Dakota women in 1918. Both parents fostered in their children a commitment to public service from which young Gladys drew for the rest of her long life. After graduating with a liberal arts degree with a music emphasis from Huron College in 1911, Gladys Pyle took graduate courses at the American Conservatory of Music and the University of Chicago. In 1912 she returned to Huron, where she taught high school until 1918, when she accepted a position as principal of a school in Wessington, North Dakota. Two years later she left teaching to work briefly as a lecturer for the League of Women Voters, traveling to several midwestern states to deliver talks on citizenship and voter participation. Pyle never married.</p>

<p>Gladys Pyle made the transition to politics in order to put into practice what she had preached in the classroom. Years later she described her lifelong political philosophy as being that of a Progressive, moderate Republican. “Politics . . . is like sailing a boat,” Pyle observed. “You have to learn to tack, going from one side of the river to the other. It takes a little longer, but you can make good progress.” Political activism was requisite for her. Ironically, she embarked on her new career against the advice of her mother, who had reservations about Gladys running for elective office, perhaps because she believed it would make her daughter vulnerable to charges of riding her mother’s coattails. Undeterred, 32-year-old Gladys Pyle ran for the state legislature in 1922, winning election to the South Dakota house of representatives by a slender 350 votes. Pyle, the first woman elected to the state legislature, served an additional two terms and was instrumental in gaining South Dakota’s ratification of the Child Labor Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. During her time in the legislature, Pyle also served as assistant secretary of state. In 1926 she became the first woman elected as South Dakota secretary of state. She served for two terms from 1927 to 1931, introducing some of the nation’s first safety codes for automobiles and motorcycles.</p>