UNICO

… continued from page 63 …
membered as “a very modern woman,”
taught her at St. Mary’s School. She remained
close to DeChantal until she died
during Grasso’s third term as Connecticut’s
secretary of state. Biographer Jon Purmont
believes that DeChantal's religious devotion
greatly influenced Grasso’s character,
as it was faith that defined her moral outlook
throughout her life.
In 1932, Grasso won a scholarship to
the private Chaffee School. She flourished
academically and discovered an entirely
new world of music, art and drama. However,
she never felt completely comfortable
with the student body, which came from
considerably wealthier families than her
own. She admitted years later that she felt
as though a few of her classmates at Chaffee
had “treated her with patrician disdain.”
The Great Depression was spreading
across the nation, and as the child of working
class immigrants in school with the
children of moneyed families, Grasso
viewed the culture of “the haves and the
have-nots” through a unique lens.
It was while she attended Chaffee that
she met a young Hartford native named
Tom Grasso. He noticed her on the beach at
Old Lyme. She was reading Shakespeare
and unlike the other girls tanning themselves
on the beach, “she seemed intent on
reading, not meeting young men,” he later
recalled. He admits he had to pursue her
and asked for a date three or four times before
she finally agreed to go out with him.
Their relationship proceeded slowly, starting
as a friendship mixed with admiration,
affection and the shared desire to achieve.
Eventually, it turned into a long-term romance
and a 38-year marriage. But before
she would become anyone’s wife, she had
to go to college.
Her studious nature served her well as
she entered the freshman class at Mount
Holyoke College on a scholarship in the
fall of 1936. She was enrolled in a brand
new, experimental program called the
“Two Unit Plan,” which permitted just 20
freshmen that first year. The idea behind it
was to allow students to focus on a specialized
curriculum rather than a broad, liberal
arts plan of study. In this program, the students
worked closely with a faculty advisor.
In Grasso’s case, that was Amy Hewes,
chairperson of the Economics and Sociology
Department and one of the faculty
members who’d championed the new
“Two Unit Plan” program.
Professor Hewes became another important
influence in Grasso’s life and career.
A much-admired teacher, she
emerged as a state and national advocate
and leader for labor reforms, particularly
child labor and women’s rights in the
workplace. Grasso learned a great deal
from Hewes and worked closely with her
on a variety of research projects.
Grasso never forgot the struggles and
terror of the Great Depression. Her empathy
for the working class remained at the
foundation of her career in public life. She
often described herself as a “child of the
Depression” and recalled the sacrifices
her parents had made for her. She remembered
that her parents had “lived tenaciously
… we were pressed, other people
were destroyed. We ate, other people
starved.”
Her biographer believes that Grasso’s
childhood experiences in the tight-knit,
immigrant community of neighbors helping
one another led to her “conviction
that, in a stressful, bleak and overwhelmingly
harsh economic climate, government
must replicate on a larger scale what local
communities tried to do for themselves.”
As an interested young scholar,
Grasso began to realize that government’s
traditional role of non-involvement in
people’s lives was changing. FDR’s New
Deal further led her to realize that “the
machinery of government can be used for
the service of the people.” She began to
see, as she once said, a “relationship between
politics and the lives of the people
— that what happens to us was affected
by government and I wanted to be part of
that government.”
The scholarly environment at Mt.
Holyoke proved invigorating to Grasso, as
did the frequent participation of the
school’s faculty in national and international
affairs. Mt. Holyoke emphasized
participation and service, all of which she
found inspiring. She earned a B.A. in
1940 and a M.A. in 1942 in economics
and sociology. Upon completion of her degrees,
she married her longtime beau.
Her time at Mt. Holyoke, her years
with teachers like DeChantal and Hewes,
and the changing political landscape of
America all convinced Grasso that her future
lay in public service. As a 23-year-old
newlywed, Grasso took a job on “the lowest
rungs of public service,” by her own
account, as an Interviewer for the State of
Connecticut’s Employment Service.” The
position, insignificant as it may have initially
been, gave her the ability to apply
her knowledge of labor and personnel relations
as well as the skill of statistical analysis
as she worked her way up to assistant
director of research in the Office of Manpower
Research.
After four years in the workforce, she
left her position in 1946 to focus on starting
a family. Her daughter Susanne was
born in 1948 and her son James in 1951.
In 1952, Grasso initiated her public life
as she ran for an opening in the Connecticut
House of Representatives and won. She
was re-elected in 1954. In 1958, she ran for
the office of Connecticut’s secretary of state
and again proved victorious. She won reelection
to that post two times, serving a
total of 12 years, the longest anyone had
held the post since 1835.
Grasso’s daughter Susanne once observed,
“If it hadn’t been for my grandparents
… my mother would have had a much
different destiny.” Shortly after Ella and
Tom were married, they purchased a home
right across the street from her parents in
the same neighborhood where Ella had
grown up. This proximity to her children’s
grandparents, as well as relatives and
neighbors she’d known all her life, allowed
her the freedom and security to leave her
children knowing they’d be watched over
by trusted loved ones.
In 1970, Grasso was persuaded to run
for Congress. She had been asked multiple
times before but had always turned down
the opportunity due to family considerations.
Her husband had suffered two heart
attacks in the 1960s and her daughter had
been in a serious auto accident. By 1970,
her daughter was healed and her husband’s
health had stabilized. She was elected to
Congress and won re-election in 1972.
Once in Washington, however, she was
frustrated by the impotence of being a
rookie legislator. Washington was a rigid
hierarchy and it took years to build power
and affect any kind of worthwhile change.
Disenchanted with Washington, she
decided to run against incumbent Governor
Thomas Meskill in the fall of 1974. She
bested Connecticut Attorney General
Robert Killian in the Democratic primary.
While victory over Killian infused her campaign
with increased confidence and support,
she was nevertheless persuaded by
her mentor, the leader of the Connecticut
64
September 2015
FRA NOI for ComUNICO