Smith, Margaret Chase

ENCAENIA, MAY, 1955
MARGARET CHASE SMITH
to be Doctor of Laws

It is a happy custom of this out University to honour, when occasion arises, distinguished men and women from outside our Province and, indeed, from beyond our national borders. Seldom has occasion been more auspicious than this present, nor choice been supported by goodlier reasons. Of which let the more intimate and endearing be spoken first. This lady of international stature, Margaret Chase Smith, hailing as she does from Skowhegan in Maine, is our next-door neighbour.

In that Republican stronghold, her own state, marriage would seem to be less of a check-rein on, than a spur to, politics. When Clyde H. Smith, her husband, won his way into Congress she served -- if that, indeed, is not too humble a term -- as his secretary. On his death a scant four years later, she, who in the year of her wedding had been elected to the Republican State Committee, was now elected to the United States House of Representatives to fill his unexpired term.

A career of brilliant and many-sided achievement now began. This woman, who, in her personal life has been teacher and company executive and is, in the military sphere, Lieutenant-Colonel in the United States Air Force Reserve, has served her country on a round dozen of congressional and party committees, sub-committees and delegations; and, though his constitutional opponent, was a member of the only congressional committee ever to draw the commendation of the late Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Nine years of vigorous and invaluable work were crowned by a yet greater honour. In 1949, and by a devastating majority, Margaret Chase Smith was elected to her nation's Senate. She is the first, and only, woman in American history to serve in both the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate. This amazing feat was summed up by the Associated Press when it named her "Woman of the Year" for 1948 -- a compliment it has repeated and defined on her re-election last September to her second term as Senator.

Honours and acclaim have followed her with the years. Thrice elected by other bodies as their "Woman of the Year" and seven times the recipient of kindred patriotic awards, she is recognized from coast to coast of her own land, and far beyond it, as a woman whose public service is above all politics and whose genius transcends all parties.

We have in our midst (and who would fail to recognize it?) the epitome of all that is strongest and finest in American public life.

Yet few are the figures, however public and -- may we add the compliment? -- however feminine, who have the alchemy to transmute a national proverb. But of her it might be truly said that as goes Margaret Chase Smith, so goes the Nation. Now while, in day-to-day politics, generalizations connected with the State of Maine must concede certainly temporary exceptions, no exception can be taken to Maine's greatest lady, nor to the place she holds in the admiration of her fellow-countrymen, of ourselves and of the world.

Speaking, therefore, with the manifold but undivided voice of New Brunswick, this ancient of North American universities welcomes Margaret Chase Smith to the capital of our border Province, to the Doctorate of Laws in our University, and to the hearts of our people.

From:
Cattley, Robert E.D. Honoris causa: the effervescences of a university orator. Fredericton: UNB Associated Alumnae, 1968.