Republican Leader and fellow Massachusetts Representative Joe Martin spoke about Rogers at the portrait unveiling:
“I know her wonderful heart and generous impulses, and a desire to make the veterans and their dependents a little better off, and in her service to our common country no one has given more of her real self to her country than Mrs. Rogers has.”
Starting at the beginning—or close to it—there is a handbill made in support of Rogers’s second campaign in 1926. Before her election to represent a Massachusetts district, she worked as a nurse overseas during World War I, and later with the American Red Cross at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C. Rogers acted on her commitment to veterans immediately once in Congress. This handbill details her accomplishments during her first term, leading off with securing a hospital for veterans in Bedford, Massachusetts. The handbill also highlights the respect Rogers earned from her colleagues. Edgar Howard of Nebraska posited that “if every state in the Union should send one or more women of the Edith Nourse Rogers type to Congress the welfare of the American people would be safeguarded.”
A few years later, in 1931, Rogers was captured participating in the demonstration of the “world’s fastest tank” at the Capitol. Like her fondness for airplanes, her interest in the latest equipment played up her connection to the military. Although her work focused more on the people of the armed services than the machines they used, her understanding of the entirety of the military experience is a recurring theme among news images of her.
With World War II, Rogers’s support of the military evolved and deepened, with the passage of her Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps Act (WAAC)in 1942, establishing a means for women to volunteer in the Army in noncombat capacities. Rogers said her efforts gave “women a chance to volunteer to serve their country in a patriotic way,” taking on roles as medical professionals, clerical workers, or in hundreds of other capacities. A 1943 photo shows Rogers, along with fellow Representatives Winifred Stanley of New York and Frances Bolton of Ohio, hosting a lunch for the WAAC recruiting staff at the Capitol. Just months after this photo was taken, the WAAC Act was supplanted by Rogers’s updated Women’s Army Corp Bill, granting official military status to the women volunteers, now part of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) within the Army, an early step in the progress of women’s professional engagement in the military.
Whether the woman taking part in the demonstration of the latest tank or the serene and dignified leader depicted in her chairman portrait, Rogers was, in the words of her fellow committee member Leonard Allen, a “most gallant lady from Massachusetts” who looked “after those fine boys” in the military “as a devoted mother,” all the while reframing what their service meant to the nation through her unceasing support.
Sources: "Presentation of the Portrait of Honorable Edith Nourse Rogers to the Committee on Veterans' Affairs House of Representatives," June 27, 1950, United States Government Printing Office Washington, DC: 1950.
In honor of the 100th anniversary of the election and swearing-in of the first woman in Congress, we will publish a series of blog posts about the early women Members and the changing role of women in the institution. Check back each month through 2017 to see the latest posts.
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