Past leaders offer perspective in busy election year

An article was circulated this month from the Phelps County Focus about Missouri’s first female mayor.

Mayme Hanrahan Ousley was 34 and living in St. James. It was 1921, two years after women were given the right to vote with the 19th Amendment.

Ousley faced an incumbent mayor and an uphill battle with the local newspaper’s editor against her (which makes me cringe for obvious reasons.)

He wrote, “There are those who can hardly bear the idea of a woman holding such a position and are as much opposed to a woman holding an important office as they were to giving women the right to vote.”

Ousley campaigned on promises to draw a salary of only $1 per month and to clean up the city, starting with city hall.

Ousley won by eight votes. She proceeded to do just as she had promised, cleaning up the physical appearance of city hall and organizing it into a mayor’s office, council chambers and jail. She forced landlords to provide indoor plumbing, and tackled the clean up of streets and sidewalks.

Signs along the streets were put up warning, “Drive slow and see our beautiful city. Drive fast and see our jail.”

It obviously made me think of Poplar Bluff’s first female mayor, Betty Absheer. Absheer became mayor in 1993. She served a record 26 years on the council, before retiring in 2016. She passed away in 2021.

I consider myself very fortunate to have been able to cover the city council during her time on council. To me, her legacy was one of being levelheaded and thoughtful through many tumultuous years for the city. She offered a steady and trusted hand when it was most needed.

Her service to the community and mentorship of women who serve today on the council created a lasting legacy. current members of the council have also shared.

“What a lot of people didn’t know until Betty’s funeral was Betty quietly went about her job at the Housing Authority, worked at her church,” councilwoman Barbara Ann Horton shared shortly after Absheer’s death. “When the sheriff … needed to deputize a woman to help transport women prisoners back years ago, Betty quietly was deputized, carried a gun and a badge and nobody in the community knew … Whatever role she was asked to do, she did it and did it to the best of her abilities.”

As we look ahead to a busy year, first with municipal elections in April, then primaries in August for state and national seats, followed by November’s general election, this seemed like a good time to reflect on good leadership.

Whether man or woman, Republican or Democrat, what are the characteristics we would look for? Is the person we are voting for someone we would invite into our home, like to see interacting with our family? Have they earned our respect?

These are big questions that can be very difficult to answer. But Ousley and Absheer are proof that the right kind of leaders not only leave a legacy we can be proud of today but build up their communities.

Donna Farley is the editor of the Daily American Republic. She can be reached at dfarley@darnews.com.