UNICO

PEOPLE
Legends
Political
trailblazer
by Otto Bruno
More than two centuries after the formation
of our American democracy, we are
just now approaching a national election
with the very real possibility of a female
nominee on a major party ticket for president
of the United States. When that happens,
our nation will
have trailblazers like Ella
Tambussi Grasso to thank
for paving the rocky road
toward the acceptance of
women in power in our
public and political institutions.
Grasso was the
very first woman ever
elected in her own right
as governor of one of
America’s 50 states. It
was a monumental
achievement in 1974, not
only for a woman but also
for a child of Italian immigrants.
Ella Rosa Giovanna
Oliva Tambussi was born
and raised in Windsor
Locks, Conn., on May 10,
1919, to Maria and Giacomo
Tambussi. She may
have been an only child
but she was not a lonely
child, having grown up in
a neighborhood filled
with relatives and friends
that her parents had
known in Italy.
She was close to both
of her parents but her father was particularly
dear to her. He started out as a machine
operator and eventually opened a
bakery in Windsor Locks with his brother.
He went on to own a tavern before retiring
as a partner in the Windsor Locks Machine
Co. Grasso once admitted that her father
“indulged and spoiled me.” In the biography
“Ella Grasso: Connecticut’s Pioneering
Governor” author Jon E. Purmont quotes
Grasso’s son James as saying his mother
“absolutely adored” her father and she felt
a “greater tie to him rather than her
mother.”
She was devastated when her father
died in 1971, saying, “I became a pathetic
fifty-year old orphan.” In remembering her
father’s influence she wrote, “He worked
▲ ELLA GRASSO
A woman of deep faith and unshakeable
principles, she needed every
ounce of her resolve to reach heights
never before attained by a woman.
long hours, six days a week but he always
had time for me and he took me seriously.
From him I learned respect for others and
persistence. By his example, I learned one
does not abandon a task. Quit? We didn’t
quit anything.”
She may have been emotionally closer
to her father, but her mother had a decided
influence on her daughter as well. Grasso’s
parents encouraged educational advancement
for their daughter from a very early
age, making whatever sacrifices were necessary
to send her to Catholic grammar
school and later the prestigious Chaffee
School. Neither of Grasso’s parents ever
made it past the sixth grade, but she remembered
them as “very intelligent and
generous people.” Grasso grew up with a
love for books and study, which no doubt
was actively encouraged by her mother.
She remembered that her mother believed
that learning “was a special key to living …
and … books were my ‘open-sesame’ to a
whole new world.
“My mother was self-taught,” Grasso
wrote. “She had a quick wit and charm.
She had great respect for learning and encouraged
me in my studies.”
Grasso had a series of important and
influential mentors in her life beginning
with her parents. In the eighth grade, a nun
named Sister DeChantal, whom Grasso re-
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