“Community is the antidote to despair.” —Noelle Damico
The League of Women Voters of Martha’s Vineyard membership tea honoring longtime member Leigh Smith was on Saturday, Sept. 23, at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum. The weather was frightful. Heavy winds and torrential rains threatened to dampen attendance. Members placed reminder calls, and made plans to carpool — not unlike helping voters get to the polls. Some roads on the Island require high clearance, powerful engines, and four-wheel drive. Alongside the jack, blanket, and shovel, we keep a stool to help the vertically challenged get in and out.
The lounge at the museum, also known as the Morgan Learning Center, was warm, well-lit, and filled with beautifully decorated tables complete with floral centerpieces. Hot pots of coffee and tea and platters of cookies sat under windows without views, because of the heavy rain.
Admirers, colleagues, friends, and family of Leigh Smith filled the chairs. Leigh has been a member for 70-plus years. Leigh, enthroned in a seat of honor, presided.
Elizabeth Foster-Nolan, president of the Massachusetts League of Women Voters (LWV), was in the room. It can be easy to forget that voting isn’t an obligation, but an opportunity to participate.
The LWV was founded in 1920 to engage women in the voting process across party lines — help register voters, provide voter information, and advocate for voting rights.
In the 1930s, Tisbury women created an association. Meetings were held at the town hall. Dues were 25 cents. Their bylaws held, “Men are not permitted to attend the meetings, except in the capacity of speakers.” Some of the ground rules included that candidates for public office might address the meetings of the association, but no candidate might be permitted to hear his or her opponent speak. “Notices of the meetings shall be published In the local newspaper one week in advance of the meeting, or in emergency, by postal card or by telephone.”
The duties of members are to render valuable service by keeping pace with advanced thought on public questions, and to meet responsibilities that will give promise of becoming strong factors for human betterment through government.
Members identified themselves by first and last name, instead of the customary Mrs. followed by their husband’s last name.
Deborah Medders’ remarks opened the tea. Leigh first got involved with LWV at Smith College, where she was in the class of 1949, through her classmate and friend Lucy Wilson Benson. Lucy went on to become head of LWV in Amherst in 1957; head of LWV for the state of Massachusetts in 1961, and then president of LWV, U.S., in 1968.
Leigh supported Lucy’s idea to have men become members of the LWV in 1974. She has been an active member of the Martha’s Vineyard League since she and her husband, Procter, became year-round residents of Tisbury in 1987.
Before their move to the Vineyard, Leigh and Proctor’s family lived in Montclair, N.J., where she was active in the local league. The family lived in a house that was once the home of Lucy Stone, who purchased it in 1840.
Lucy Stone, born in 1818 in West Brookfield, was an abolitionist, suffragist, and women’s rights advocate, and helped establish the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). She was the first woman to earn a college degree in Massachusetts, the first to keep her maiden name after getting married, and the first to speak about women’s rights full-time. Lucy’s daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell, lived in Chilmark in the 1930s.
Leigh said she has always had a great interest in the women’s suffragette movement, especially Lucy Stone and Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, and the subsequent right for women to vote.
Leigh feels the right to vote is one of our most important liberties. To this day, she continues to learn about state policies and legislation.
Leigh tirelessly attended meetings and activities hosted by the league, participating in our local League Scholarship Program awarded annually to a Vineyard student.
She exemplifies what Eleanor Roosevelt said about LWV members in 1953: “I have always found that the best workers are graduates of the League of Women Voters. The group provides an opportunity to learn to organize and do research work. Members learn how to find out what they want to know on a wide variety of subjects. They study both sides of questions very impartially, and, while they never back individuals in politics, they do work for certain measures that they believe in, and that is what makes them valuable when they come into a political party.”
“Leigh handwrote lovely, personal letters to every person who donated to the league. She felt the old-fashioned handwritten note was far superior to the very same words typed on a computer,” Judy Crawford said. I agree.
“Leigh was so well-informed about so much. When anything crossed her desk that she thought I, or anyone else, could use to move a project forward, she would let us know about it,” Crawford says. “I usually received two or three newspaper articles a month, either mailed to me or hand-delivered by her daughter, Pam. The margins were covered with notes about the importance of this information. We should all be as bright and interested in our world as Leigh is at her age! I have such admiration for her.”
Leigh may be slowing down, but her living legacy to us has set a standard to which we all can aspire.
A hearty thanks and well done to co-moderators Deborah Medders and Judy Crawford; to the rest of the committee, Kristi Strahler, Beatrice Phear, Marie Araujo, and Dr. Lorna Andrade; and to the museum for hosting the event, and historian Bow Van Riper. I would like to remind everyone to encourage students to apply for the LWV Leigh Smith Scholarship.
To learn more about the League of Women Voters of Martha’s Vineyard, visit leagueofwomenvotersmv.org. The next meeting is Saturday, Oct. 7, at 9 am via Zoom.
