Essay About Junior Year And Ella T Grasso

Ella T Grasso
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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 didnt 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