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History and Government—Congressional Biographies—ConnecticutGRASSO, Ella Tambussi
(1919—1981)
GRASSO, Ella Tambussi, a Representative from Connecticut; born Ella Rose Tambussi in Windsor Locks, Hartford County, Conn., May 10, 1919; attended the St. Mary’s School in Windsor Locks, and the Chaffee School in Windsor; B.A., Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Mass., 1940; M.A. same college, 1942; during the Second World War served as assistant director of research for the War Manpower Commission of Connecticut; Connecticut house of representatives, 1953-1957, and became first woman to be elected floor leader, 1955; secretary of State of Connecticut, 1958, and reelected, 1962, 1966; first woman chairman, Democratic State Platform Committee, 1956-1968; member, Platform Drafting Committee, 1960, Democratic National Convention; cochairman, Resolutions Committee, Democratic National Conventions, 1964, 1968; elected as a Democrat to the Ninety-second and Ninety-third Congresses (January 3, 1971-January 3, 1975); was not a candidate for reelection in 1974 to the Ninety-fourth Congress but was elected Governor of Connecticut in 1974 for the four-year term commencing January 1975; reelected in 1978; resigned due to a physical disability, December 31, 1980; resided in Windsor Locks, Conn., until her death in Hartford, Conn., February 5, 1981; interment in St. Mary’s Cemetery, Windsor Locks, Conn.
Bibliography
Purmont, Jon E. “Ella Grasso: As She Saw Herself.” Connecticut Review
17 (Spring 1995): 23-29.
Bysiewicz, Susan. Ella: A Biography of Governor Ella Grasso
. Hartford: Connecticut Consortium for Law and Citizenship Education, Inc., 1984.
“Ella Tambussi Grasso” in Women in Congress, 1917-1990.
Prepared under the direction of the Commission on the Bicentenary by the Office of the Historian, U.S. House of Representatives. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1991.
Leeper, Mark Stephen. “Springboard or Vacuum? Women, State Legislatures, and Political Ambition.” Ph.D. diss., The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1995.
Purmont, Jon E. “Ella Grasso: As She Saw Herself.” Connecticut Review
17 (Spring 1995): 23-29.
Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present
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