Hartford Courant from Hartford, Connecticut • 100

Tt'lKWKO UHOITHAH 'il a TWELVE THE HARTFORD COURANT MAGAZINE Sunday, March 6, 1935. Know Your Legislators 2 The Woman in the Senate Meef Florence Finney of Greenwich, lone lady on ihe chamber's rosier raviow 4l'jftl pi 9 1 t. 6 4eftK. re! II Committee, and when the committee visits power plants and utilities or hears technical testimony, Mrs. Finney has no difficulty in following and grasping the thoughts and ideas expressed.

The mechanical ability, she says, comes naturally. She repairs the sewing machines in her husband's shop and loves to tinker with small machines. But her experience as an executive secretary and bookkeeper are put to good use in the firm, too. "DJRING World War when her son went into the Navy, Mrs. Finney became active in volunteer war work for the Red Cross and other organizations.

She worked in the Motor Corps, the Blood Bank and logged 3,500 sewing hours for the Red Cross. Her experience in sewing canvas in the awning shop was invaluable. In addition to this war work, Mrs. Finney spent two and a half years working as a volunteer telephone operator at the Civil Defense Control Center Sunday afternoons. She worked on Sundays, she says, because no one else wanted to work those hours.

She became interested in government about 15 years ago and volunteered to do clerical work for the Greenwich Republicans. Greenwich has a non-partisan form of government and local candidates run without party labels. She ran for a seat at the Town Meeting in 1941 and won. In 1947, Prescott Bush, now a U. S.

Senator, had been moderator of Greenwich town meetings for 17 years. A furor had arisen in the town over the dismissal of the superintendent of the town home by the Greenwich Welfare Commission. Bush, as moderator, appointed a five-member committee to investigate the situation. Mrs. Finney was the only woman named to the committee.

Before the investigation, the town meeting was completely divided over the dismissal. That was when Mrs. Finney broke into the political limelight for the first time. Her committee investigated the matter and made its report, upholding the dismissal. The town meeting accepted the report unanimously.

FROM THEN on, she began rising in civic affairs. She is the only woman member of the Greenwich Civil Defense Advisory Committee; the only woman ever to hold a district chairmanship in the Greenwich town meeting; and is now the first woman ever to be elected from her district to the State Senate where she sits with 35 male senators. When she was first approached in 1948 to run for a seat in the State House of Representatives, she was reluctant to accept the nomination. She says it was because she felt then that she didn't know enough about state government. Other factors that made her hesitate, too.

There was the long distance between the State Capitol and her home and the fact that she was busy working for her husband. But she finally agreed to accept the nomination. After viewing the matter from all sides, she decided it was another form of public service such as her war work for the Red Cross and her work for civil defense. She was elected and served in the House in the 1949 session- of the Legislature, was reelected for the 1951 session and was elected a third time to serve in the 1953 session. Last year she was offered the nomination for State Senate and won by a comfortable margin in the normally Republican Greenwich.

IN ALL her service in the Legislature, she has been a member of the Public Welfare and Humane Institutions Committee. She feels that women can do a better job on this committee than men because the committee deals with welfare and family problems which, she says, are more in a woman's She has been on the Legislature's Public Utilities Committee for three terms and last session was the the committee's clerk. She has also served on the Legislature's Penal Institutions Committee, Federal and Intergovernmental Relations Committee, Education Committee and Public Personnel Committee. Where will Mrs. Finney go from here? One place she won't go is the Governor's office, she says.

"I wouldn't like to see a woman as Governor," she declares. "The Governorship is a job for a man." All her life, Mrs. Finney says, she has been trained as a good secretary. "I have been trained to believe that a woman's place' is aiding able men," she says. "I did this as a secretary.

I do this in my husband's business. In the Senate, I serve the public." STATE Sen. Florence Finney, Greenwich Republican, doesn't want to be treated like a lady. She wants to be treated like a person. Mrs.

Finney, the fifth woman in the history of Connecticut to be elected to the State Senate, says, too many women who demand to be treated as equals with men, really mean they want to be treated as equals plus. "When I talk about women's equality I mean it," she says, "and when I get treated as an equal, I don't expect a lot of extra favors that many women expect from men. A woman should stand on her own two feet as a person and not as a woman." That Mrs. Finney, a grandmother, can stand on her own two feet on an equal footing with men, she has proven time and again, both in the House of Representatives, where she served three terms, in the State Senate where she's the only woman member, and in her home town of Greenwich where she has established many firsts for women in local government. SEN.

FINNEY'S working day starts at 7 a.m. and ends at 2 a.m. Throughout most of her adult life, the 51-year-old woman has rarely gone to bed before 2 a.m. Her typical day finds her getting up at 7 a.m. and driving to the State Capitol in Hartford.

She spends the morning in the Senate and the afternoon attending the various meetings of the committees on which she has membership. She arrives back home in Greenwich at about 6 p.m. and cooks dinner for herself and her husband, James A. Finney, who owns an awning business. After the dinner dishes are done, Mrs.

Finney attends meetings in Greenwich, goes out to make a speech, sometimes in other parts of the state; or attends to political and civic jobs in her district. Home by midnight, she then spends two hours working on the books of her husband's business, answers her mail and goes over the many bills that her committees will be acting on during the current legislative session. On days when the Legislature is not in session, Mrs. Finney works in her husband's awning business, sewing, repairing sewing machines, taking care of correspondence and keeping the books. This, she says, is her way of relaxing.

"In my public jobs, I have to work all day with my brain. In the awning shop, I work with my hands and find it the best way to relax." MtS. FINNEY was born in Long Island City, N. Y. and was graduated from Bryant High School there after taking a 4-year commercial course.

Upon graduation from high school, she went to work as a secretary in an insurance agency in Long Island. Three months later she left to take a job with the New York Men's Credit Assn. but after a short time, left and went to work for an insurance brokerage firm in New York City where she stayed five years. The firm was John W. Thomas, Inc.

This is the way Mrs. Finney got the job and a husband as well. She paid a visit to her sister in Greenwich and went out on a blind date with James Finney, a Greenwich grocer. They started going steady and she met his sister, who was treasurer of John VV. Thomas, Inc.

Mrs. Finney was offered a job with the firm and accepted. In 1923, she married her blind date, James Finney. She stayed on the job for two years after her marriage then quit when her son, James Finney, was born. Her son is a graduate of Massachusetts Institute of a Navy veteran of World War II and now a project engineer with the Thermix Corp.

of Greenwich. He has two children. AFTER her son was born, Mrs. Finney worked with her husband in the grocery store until 1928 when she was offered a job as executive secretary to the vice president of Guggenheim Brothers of New York, the international metals and chemicals holding company. She stayed with Guggenheim until 1935, leaving when her husband sold the grocery store and opened up an awning business.

She went to work for her husband. While with Guggenheim, she had to learn to read blue prints and learned many technical terms as well as a basic knowledge of mechanics and machinery. This knowledge has not only proved a tremendous aid to her husband's business, but has helped her greatly In her work in the Legislature. She is a member of the Legislature's Public Utilities Hi i i I CM It I I 1 ii ni.uftl iHiln-im" ROLE OF PRESIDING OFFICER in Senate sometimes comes to Mrs. Florence Finney through legislative custom.

Thus she handles a hall full of men. Courant Photos By PHILIP J. ACQUAVIVA.