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She Has Given Women A Voice

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By SHERRI ACKERMAN

sackerman@tampatrib.com

Published: October 11, 2008

TAMPA - Helen Gordon Davis surprised friends when she told them she was running for the Florida House of Representatives.

Sure, the New York City native had enough spunk. The one-time high school drama teacher was one of the first white women to join the NAACP after she had boarded a bus in Tampa with her children and black housekeeper and discovered the housekeeper had to sit in the back.

She was one of two white people who had joined black patrons at Woolworth's lunch counter to help desegregate Tampa's public facilities.

The Florida League of Women Voters member had co-chaired a study that reformed the state's judicial system into four branches with elected judges, work that resulted in a national award.

However, it was 1974, Gordon Davis was married to a man who sold whiskey, she was Jewish and, well, she was a woman known more for her modeling in Maas Bros. ads and Paul T. Ward commercials than her politics.

None of that mattered to Gordon Davis. Her husband, Gene, tried to talk her out of campaigning, but eventually supported her. Their three children gave up summer vacations to stump for their mother.

The night she became Hillsborough County's first female legislator, Gordon Davis remembers going to bed in her Davis Islands home thinking her victory might not be real.

The next morning, she learned it was.

"Now what?" she asked herself.

One answer to that is coming Thursday, when the Centre for Women will honor Gordon Davis for her contributions to the facility and beyond during a luncheon at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Tampa.

Earlier answers came during her 18 years of public service, first in the House, then the Senate. They came through the list of bills the Democrat sponsored to help women succeed, most notably the Displaced Homemakers Services of 1976 and, later, a perpetual trust fund.

The fund uses a portion of fees from marriage licenses and divorce filings to pay for job training and counseling for divorcees or widows, women who gave up careers or bypassed them to raise families, women who are suddenly alone and without survival skills.

In 1977, Gordon Davis founded Florida's first women's center in Tampa, going door-to-door to raise $150,000 to buy the former Taliaferro mansion on Hyde Park Avenue. Her husband of 60 years donated $15,000.

Last year, 119 women at the center benefitted from the Displaced Homemakers program; 30 got jobs or the training they needed to get one.

However, there's more work to be done, Gordon Davis said. "Women are still not in the Constitution."

To reserve a $35 seat for Thursday's luncheon or for information, call (813) 251-8437, ext. 225.

Researchers Melanie Coon and Stephanie Pincus contributed to this report. Reporter Sherri Ackerman can be reached at (813) 259-7144.

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