New Mexico Political Journal

Frances Payne Bolton: A Remarkable Woman, A Remarkable Life

03/29/2018

This date in 1885, was the birth date of Frances Payne Bolton of Ohio, the first* woman to serve as a US Delegate to the United Nations General Assembly. She was also the first* woman elected to Congress from Ohio, going on to serve 15 terms. She eventually served in Congress with her son—the only* mother and son combination to serve in Congress.

Bolton was perhaps the greatest supporter of the nursing profession ever to serve in Congress. (See below.)

Bolton is also is credited with saving George Washington's Mount Vernon for American posterity.

She was also the first* American woman to head an international delegation.

FRANCES PAYNE BINGHAM BOLTON

was born on this date in 1855 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Charles William Bingham, a prominent banker-industrialist, and Mary Perry Payne Bingham, She was the granddaughter of wealthy oilman Henry B. Payne.

She grew up in a tradition of helping the poor. As a young girl, she belonged to a club in which she and her friends made and sold souvenirs and sent the proceeds to poor residents of the Appalachian region. By the time the club’s members were 18, they adopted the Visiting Nurse Association as their charity and made the nurses dressings and bandages to use when they made house calls. But she was not satisfied with making the dressings; instead, she started traveling with the nurses when they visited patients. This experience helped her develop a philosophy she carried with her throughout life: “You must give something to someone to be happier, especially when that gift is your own time and strength.”

MARRIAGE and EARLY FOCUS on NURSING

She married Chester C. Bolton in 1907 and eventually had three sons. The same year of her marriage, she was invited to speak at a Lakeside Hospital Board of Trustees meeting on the subject of living and working conditions of nurses. Her presentation impressed the board so much that Samuel Mather gave the money to expand the nurses' residence by adding two extra floors to the dormitory at old Lakeside in 1911. Her advocacy for the profession continued during World War I when she was instrumental in persuading Secretary of War Newton D. Baker to set up an Army School of Nursing rather than relying on untrained volunteers.

Bolton was appointed to the Board of Lady Managers of Old Lakeside School of Nursing and, in 1921, she was appointed to the Board of Trustees of Lakeside Hospital. Two years later, she contributed funds to establish and endow the School of Nursing at Western Reserve University—a donation that enabled the university to raise the School of Nursing from a department of the College of Women to the rank of a separate college at the university, one of the first* in the nation. In June 1935, the school was renamed the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing in honor of her continued support and interest.

In 1939, Frances Payne Bolton’s husband died while serving as a Republican congressman from Cleveland’s 22nd District. Mrs. Bolton served out his term and, in a special election in 1940, she won the seat in her own right, becoming the first* woman to serve in Congress from Ohio.

ELECTION to CONGRESS

Upon election to the remainder of her late husband's term, Bolton refused the customary widow's allowance comprising the remainder of the salary her late husband would have collected had he served out his term. She represented the 22nd District, mostly consisting of Cleveland's eastern suburbs. Bolton went on to serve an additional fourteen terms, serving alongside her son, Oliver P. Bolton, for three of those terms. She and Oliver appeared on What's My Line? as the only mother and son serving together. It was reported that when he voted against her, she once stage-whispered, "That's my adopted son."

WORLD WAR II

In the late 1930s Bolton took an isolationist position on foreign policy, opposing the Selective Service Act (the draft) in 1940, and opposing Lend-Lease in 1941.

During the war she called for desegregation of the military nursing units, which were all-white and all-female. In 1947 she sponsored a long-range bill for nursing education, but it did not pass. When the draft was resumed after the war, Bolton strongly advocated the conscription of women. Pointing to their prominent role during the war, she said it was vitally important that women continue to play these essential roles. She saw no threat to marriage, and argued that women in military service would develop their character and skills, thus enhancing their role in the family.

As a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Bolton strongly supported the United Nations, especially UNICEF, and strongly supported the independence of African colonies.

HOUSE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

Serving on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Bolton called Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in May 1954, after the fall of the French base at Dien Bien Phu, urging him to invite nurse Genevieve de Galard to the United States. When Galard arrived in July, Bolton described her as a "symbol of heroic femininity in the free world." After receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Galard was received at a dinner for three hundred in Congresswoman Bolton's home district of Cleveland while on a tour of the country.

BOLTON'S SIGNIFICANT NURSING LEGISLATION

? In 1942, she introduced a bill that became law, giving nurses in the military regular officer status, including pay equal with that of male officers. Prior to that, they held the same rank and received less pay and fewer privileges.

? In 1943, she promoted the Nurse Cadet Corps, known as the Bolton Act, which has been called "the most significant nursing legislation in our time." It was the largest experiment in federally subsidized education in the history of the country at that time, and it represented the most dramatic example of the war's intensification of the relationship between nursing and the federal government.

? In 1951, she renewed the effort to provide federal aid to nursing education, but, being opposed by the American Medical Association and the representatives of hospital schools of nursing, it did not pass.

? In 1955, she sponsored the equal rights bill to eliminate discrimination against male nurses who, prior to that time, served as enlisted men and were not permitted to function as nurses. When the bill passed, male nurses were commissioned as officers and became members of the Army and/or Navy Nurse Corps.

? In 1964, the Nurse Training Act was passed, after perseverance by Mrs. Bolton, to give nurses financial assistance for advanced education.

Despite all her time in Washington, Mrs. Bolton maintained personal contact with student nurses over the years, attending capping ceremonies, graduation exercises, teas and receptions at the school and even entertaining students at her home.

DELEGATION to AFRICA

In 1955, as a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee's subcommittee on Africa, she became the first* American woman member of Congress to head an international delegation, using her own resources to fund it.

Arriving in Senegal on September 1, she spent the next six weeks crisscrossing the continent by plane, train, boat, and car. Her important stops included Liberia, Ghana (then still known as the Gold Coast), the Belgian Congo, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), South Africa, and Ethiopia, meeting with leading nationalists such as Kwame Nkrumah, powerful politicians such as Haile Selassie, and leading women such as the Queen Mother of the Tutsis.

REPORT to CONGRESS: Bureau for African Affairs

When she got back to the United States she submitted a very thorough and insightful report to Congress. One of her recommendations was that Congress should create a new State Department Bureau for African Affairs to be overseen by a new assistant secretary of state for African affairs. Congress created the new bureau in 1958.

In addition to educating Congress and the general public about Africa, Bolton's trip helped to begin the process of opening doors for women to play a major role in US foreign relations.

MOUNT VERNON

Another of Bolton's most lasting achievements was sponsoring legislation to purchase property across the Potomac River from Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington. This prevented commercialization of the area and preserved its appearance as it was when Washington lived there.

FINAL TERM

After rising to become ranking minority member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Bolton was defeated in a bid for a sixteenth term in 1968 by Charles Vanik. She was, until Louise Slaughter's continued service in 2012, the oldest woman to serve in the House of Representatives.

LATER LIFE, and DEATH

Bolton retired to her family home, Franchester (named for herself and her late husband), in Lyndhurst, Ohio. She died in Lyndhurst, Ohio on March 9, 1977.

LEGACY

The nursing school at Case Western Reserve University is named in her honor for her accomplishments and generosity in the field of public nursing.

The Bolton Fellowship supports research in parapsychology.

Bolton and her husband donated land adjacent to their estate in 1922 to create the campus of Hawken School in Lyndhurst, Ohio.

Her papers are held at the Western Reserve Historical Society.

She was a devotee of yoga.

* Republicans are responsible for more than 90% of "firsts" regarding the appointments, elections, and the recognition of the heritage and contributions of minorities and women, as well as in the area of conservation and preservation of American heritage.

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Intelligent Political Discourse—for the Thoughtful New Mexican

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Jeb Bush gets religion.

"They said he got religion at the end, and I'm glad that he did." — Tom T. Hall. The Year Clayton Delaney died.

Well, it's official. Jeb Bush has changed quite of few of his positions on illegal immigration. The single most significant is that he no longer endorses the "path to citizenship" for those who came here illegally.

This is, after all, the key portion of any proposal aimed at "reforming" our existing illegal immigration situation.

No sensible citizen can see any point in trying to deport between 12 and 16 million people currently living in America illegally. And no candidate for any office that we know of supports that. What the average American wants is for the country to "get a handle on it." They want it stopped, our borders secured and future illegal immigration prevented. It is a national security issue.

The Path to Legal Status

The only way to accomplish the above goals, is to identify current illegal immigrants, get them accounted for, have them documented, and placed on a path to legal status. Neither they nor their children or spouses should live in a state of fear or anxiety.

But a path to "citizenship" is not the right course. It is not morally or legally correct. A merciful and compassionate nation can provide the safeguards of legal status without sending the message to the rest of the world that all you have to do is cross our border and you will eventually get to become a citizen, thus circumventing the legal framework scores of millions of Americans have followed, honored and respected.

If someone who is granted legal status eventually wants to become a citizen, that person should have to return to his or her country of origin and wait in line like 20 million people around the world are doing at any given time. Failing that, America will forever send the signal that anyone in the world can "jump the line," and that there is no reason at all to obey our immigration and naturalization laws.

We Like Jeb Bush

We are glad Jeb Bush has learned this lesson. He is a fine speaker, and can eloquently explain his positions on complex issue. If he were not named "Bush" he would be an actual top tier candidate—in all that that title would entail, including likelihood of acceptance and support of and from the American people in the primaries, and in any theoretical general election.

We also recognize that he already is a de facto top-tier candidate because of his fame and his fundraising.

If he were to be the nominee of the Republican Party we would heartily support him and endorse him. We hope, however, that he is not, as he does not give the center-right coalition the best chance of winning.

The Major League Baseball Playoffs are not realistic, and destroy the actual meaning of the sport.

Major League Baseball is unique in this respect—its postseason is markedly different from the way the game is played normally. No other major league sport suffers from this flaw.

Not that much is wrong with baseball. In some respects it's the most well thought-out sport there is. The "perfect game" many aficionados say.

But the Major League Baseball postseason experience is unique in the world of professional sports, and not in a good way.

In fact the playoffs are flawed in such a way as to detract from the sport itself and diminish the game and what it means to be the world champion of the sport.

Among the Big Four team sports of North America: football, hockey, basketball and baseball—and all the 122 professional major league teams competing in the NFL, NHL, NBA and MLB respectively—it is in baseball alone that the postseason turns the sport itself on its head and makes it reflect something that it is not. This article will explain why that happens and why it is wrong-headed.

Background on the The Frequency of Play

The 30 teams in both the National Hockey League and the National Basketball Association teams play a very similar schedule. On average, each team has a day off between games, sometimes two days off. Though there are back-to-back games, they are relatively infrequent. NBA teams play between 14 and 22 back-to-back games a season, and for the NHL it usually ranges between 9 and 19. The NFL has a full week between games, the exception being the new Thursday games that each team plays once, leaving them only four days' rest once a year.

But baseball players play every single day. Ten days straight, then a day off, then seven more games, then a day off, then ten more games. Typically a baseball team plays 27 games every 30 days. For the NHL and NBA it would be 14 per month, and for the NFL the number would be 4.

Getting to the Playoffs: It's a grind

In all four sports, getting to the postseason requires a total team effort—in fact an all-out total organizational effort. Teams must be deep, have bench strength and the capability of moving players in and out of the lineup, and on and off the roster, who can take the place of key players who go down for an injury, or who have to miss games for whatever reason. While this is true of the other three major sports as well, it is most certainly even more of a concern for baseball teams because of the sheer volume of games in which a team must field a competitive lineup.

Each league's regular season* is a marathon, not a sprint. NFL teams play for 17 weeks, 16 games. The NHL has an 82-game season over six months, paralleled by an NBA season of 84 games over the same timeframe. Baseball is the biggest marathon of all—a true test of resilience and endurance—162 games usually starting around the beginning of April and finishing about the end of September.

NHL teams carry 23-man rosters, of which 20 can be active for any particular game. The NBA is similar, with 15-man rosters of which 13 can be on the bench for a given game. In the NFL, the teams have 53 players on a roster, but only 46 can suit up on game day. In Major League Baseball, teams have a 25-man active roster, and all 25 are at the park every day.

The Postseason Playoffs: Sport by Sport

The National Football League:

Of the 32 teams, 12 qualify for the playoffs. The playoffs are conducted in the exact same manner as the regular season. Each team plays once a week, the exception being that the four top teams get the first week off. For a typical qualifier to reach the Super Bowl, the team must play three consecutive weeks. At that point both remaining teams have two weeks off before the Super Bowl.

In short, the playoffs, with a game each week, reflects the same means of advancement as is present in regular season grind.

The National Hockey League:

16 of the 30 teams qualify for the postseason. The playoffs are conducted in the exact same manner as the regular season: a game, a day off, a game, a day off, a game, a day off, and so on. Just as in the regular season, there are occasionally two days off. But the playoffs require the same stamina, the same approach as that required to make the playoffs.

The National Basketball Association

Major League Baseball

10 of the 30 teams qualify for the postseason. (Although four of those teams qualify only for a one-game do-or-die play-in game.)

Here is where all similarity to baseball ends.

Unlike the other three sports whose playoffs mirror the test of the regular season, and whose conditions are the same as the regular season, Major League Baseball playoffs in no way resemble the sport itself. In hockey, basketball and football, the teams win playoff games and reach the pinacle of the sport in exactly the same way that they qualify to try to do so.

Not so in baseball. They are two entirely different concepts. Teams make the playoffs only because they have depth, five-man pitching rotations and can play day-in and day-out at a high level. But the baseball playoffs suddenly become a kind of "all-star" game within each team's roster. MLB playoffs are conducted in a way that more closely follows the NBA and the NHL. Teams have enormous numbers of days off.

Here's the key point: No Major League Baseball team could even qualify for the postseason if they played the same way during the regular season that they do in the playoffs. None.

In the regular season Major League Baseball teams have to use a 5-man starting rotation, with pitchers pitching every 5th day. There are not enough days off to have even a four-man rotation, let alone a team with three pitchers. Even the best team in baseball using only a 4-man rotation, would wear them out, and most likely end up with a record of something like 66-96, or 70-92—and that would be if they were otherwise teh best team in the sport.

The 2014 Baseball Postseason is Typical

As examples, last year's World Series teams the Kansas City Royals played only 15 games in 30 days, and the San Francisco Giants played only 17 games in 30 days. The 12 to 15 days off in the non-baseball fantasy world of the MLB postseason, means that teams can turn to three pitchers and give all of them plenty of rest. But it isn't the way baseball really works.

At one point, the Royals had 5 consecutive days off, and the Giants had 4. This never happens in the regular season. Even the All-Star break is only three days. Very rarely is there anything beyond a one-day break, and even that happens only a couple of times a month.

What this means is that neither team used the team that got them to the playoffs. (The NFL, NBA and NHL teams ALL used the very same teams that got them to the playoffs.)

Baseball teams use a three-man pitching rotation in the playoffs. Sometimes, they essentially opt for two pitchers only—conceding the likelihood that some of their games are going to be lost—when their third-, or rarely fourth-best pitcher has to face one of their opponents' two-man or three-man rotation members.

Imagine an NFL team using only one running back and three wide receivers, instead of rotating through their roster in the course of a playoff game—or using only 4 defensive backs and 4 linebackers, instead of rotating 8 or 9 DBs and 6 or 7 linebackers? In hockey, would a team use only two or three of their forward lines? Would an NBA team use only the starting five? They would never make the post season if they tried to present that product to their fans during the regular season.

Those are the equivalents of what Major League Baseball sets up every fall. No other sport drags its playoffs out in such a way as to completely change the playing field—completely change the dynamics of its game.

Why Does Baseball Do This?

MLB does this because the TV networks want to drag out the games so that they can try to have one game each day This requires an unnecessary staggering of games, and creates the phenomenon of 15 off-days in a month.

What about travel days?

What about them? Baseball has travel days constantly. A team may play in Chicago one day and in Miami the next, or in New York one day and Phoenix the very next day. Travel days as a routine part of the game are again, a phenomenon of television, and stretching out the playoffs.

In years past, travel days were employed only when necessary. The famous "subway series" games were played on seven consecutive days. Why? Because there was no "travel day" required to go from Brooklyn to the Bronx. Today, they would put in artificial travel days.

Even fairly long train trips didn't necessarily matter. The 1948 World Series between the Cleveland Indians and the Boston Braves was played in six consecutive days, October 6 & 7 in Boston, October 8, 9 & 10 in Cleveland, and October 11 back in Boston.

This reflects actual baseball, the way the teams play day-in and day-out, and the kind of unique test that baseball presents to its athletes, its managers and management, and to its fans.

In the modern world of charter planes, teams fly from coast to coast to play games on consecutive days. The artificial "travel day" should be eliminated so that teams can play in the playoffs in the same way that got them there in the first place.

*All these leagues also have pre-seasons and training camps, which add an additional 6-8 weeks to each player's year.

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Frances Payne Bolton: A Remarkable Woman, A Remarkable Life

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