Rogers, Edith Nourse, 1881-1960

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<p>Edith Nourse Rogers (March 19, 1881 – September 10, 1960) was an American social welfare volunteer and politician who served in the United States Congress. She was the first woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts. Until 2012, she was the longest serving Congresswoman and was the longest serving female Representative until 2018 (a record now held by Marcy Kaptur). In her 35 years in the House of Representatives she was a powerful voice for veterans and sponsored seminal legislation, including the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 (commonly known as the G.I. Bill), which provided educational and financial benefits for veterans returning home from World War II, the 1942 bill that created the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), and the 1943 bill that created the Women's Army Corps (WAC). She was also instrumental in bringing federal appropriations to her constituency, Massachusetts's 5th congressional district. Her love and devotion to veterans and their complex needs upon returning to civilian life is represented by the Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans Hospital in Bedford Massachusetts that is named in her honor.</p>

<p>Edith Nourse was born on March 19, 1881 in Saco, Maine to Franklin T. Nourse, the manager of a textile mill, and Edith France Riversmith, who volunteered with the Christian church and social causes. Both parents were from old New England families, and were able to have their daughter privately tutored until she was fourteen. Edith Nourse then attended and graduated from Rogers Hall School, a private boarding school for girls in Lowell, Massachusetts, and then Madame Julien's School, a finishing school at Neuilly in Paris, France.</p>

<p>Like her mother, she volunteered with the church and other charities. In 1907, she married John Jacob Rogers, newly graduated from Harvard Law School, who passed the bar and began practicing in Lowell in the same year. In 1911, he started his career in politics, becoming involved in the city government, and the next year he became the school commissioner. In 1912 he was elected as a Republican to the 63rd United States Congress as the Representative from the 5th District of Massachusetts, and began service in Washington, D.C. on March 13, 1913.</p>

<p>As a nursing volunteer and advocate for veterans across the country during and after World War I, Edith Nourse Rogers was thrust into political office when her husband, Representative John Jacob Rogers, died in 1925. During her 35-year House career, one of the longest tenures of any woman to date, Rogers authored legislation that had far-reaching effects on American servicemen and women, including the creation of the Women’s Army Corps and the GI Bill of Rights. “The first 30 years are the hardest,” Rogers once said of her House service. “It’s like taking care of the sick. You start it and you like the work, and you just keep on.”</p>

<p>Edith Nourse was born in Saco, Maine, on March 19, 1881. She was one of two children born to Franklin T. Nourse, an affluent textile plant magnate, and Edith Frances Riversmith. She received a private school education at Rogers Hall School in Lowell, Massachusetts, and finished her education abroad in Paris, France. Returning to America in 1907, she married John Jacob Rogers, a Harvard-trained lawyer. The couple had no children and settled in Lowell, Massachusetts. In 1912 John Rogers was elected as a Republican to the 63rd Congress (1913–1915) and was successfully re-elected to the House for six succeeding terms. He eventually served as Ranking Majority Member on the Foreign Affairs Committee and authored the 1924 Rogers Act, which reorganized and modernized the U.S. diplomatic corps. During World War I, Edith Nourse Rogers inspected field hospitals with the Women’s Overseas Service League. “No one could see the wounded and dying as I saw them and not be moved to do all in his or her power to help,” she recalled. In 1918 she joined the American Red Cross volunteer group in Washington, DC. Her work with hospitalized veterans earned her the epithet the “Angel of Walter Reed Hospital.” During the 1920s, Presidents Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover each appointed Rogers as their personal ombudsman for communicating with disabled veterans. She also continued to work in her husband’s congressional offices in Lowell and Washington. The Congressman considered his wife his chief adviser on policies and campaign strategy. Their home on Sixteenth Street in northwest Washington became a fashionable salon where the Rogers entertained powerful politicians and foreign dignitaries.</p>

<p>On March 28, 1925, Representative John Rogers died in Washington, DC, after a long battle with cancer. Edith Rogers declared her plan to run for her husband’s seat a week later. Her chief Republican competition for the nomination was James Grimes, a former Massachusetts state senator who ran on a “dry,” Prohibition and pro-law-and-order platform. During the campaign, Rogers noted that she had always been a prohibitionist and believed in strict enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution—a position that won her the support of temperance advocates. In the GOP primary of June 16, 1925, Rogers dispatched Grimes with 13,086 votes to 1,939. Democrats nominated Eugene Noble Foss of Boston, a former Massachusetts governor, to challenge Rogers in the June 30th special election. Foss believed the GOP was vulnerable because it did not support stringent tariff policies—a matter of concern especially in the strongly Democratic district which encompassed textile mill cities such as Lowell. Local political observers had nicknamed the northeastern Massachusetts district the “fighting fifth” because of its equal proportions of registered Democrats and Republicans. Having come from a family in the textile business, however, Rogers appealed to many textile workers as a more empathetic Republican. “I am a Republican by inheritance and by conviction,” she declared. On June 30, 1925, voters overwhelmingly went to the polls for Rogers, who prevailed with 72 percent of the vote—handing Governor Foss the worst political defeat of his long career. Rogers observed, “I hope that everyone will forget that I am a woman as soon as possible.</p>