Ella Grasso: Connecticut's Pioneering Governor

3 The Whole Day . . . a Rosy Glow

[ 30 ] Tom Grasso would eventually win Ella’s hand in marriage. His persistent and tenacious quest to marry her, however, would take years to accomplish because Ella put off marriage until she completed her graduate academic studies at Mount Holyoke. He availed himself of assistance from Ella’s mother, who “put her foot down” and convinced Ella to marry Tom Grasso and not pursue the entreaties of her other suitor from Union College. Mrs. Tambussi preferred Grasso because she had known him for many years and felt a level of comfort with him but not with Ella’s admirer from Hudson Shore. It was a debt to his future mother-in-law Tom Grasso felt deeply throughout his married life.1 On June 10, 1940, Ella graduated with a B.A. degree magna cum laude. It was a joyous and proud day for her parents to see their only child receive honors and recognition from one of America’s outstanding institutions of women’s higher education. As an undergraduate, she had excelled academically, maintaining her Williston Scholarship for all four years, and in her junior year she had been elected to Phi Beta Kappa. At the end of her senior year, she ranked among the top five in her class. It is important to note that Ella often said years later that she frequently felt socially distant from her classmates because of her economic and social background.2 “My mother,” recalls Ella’s son Jim, “had only two or three skirts and three sweaters at Mount Holyoke.”3 She took on “babysitting chores” to earn money primarily with Mt. Holyoke College y 3 Y the whole day . . . a rosy glow The Whole Day . . . a Rosy Glow [ 31 ] Professor Valentine Giamatti’s family. Years later, Professor Giamatti’s son, A. Bartlett Giamatti, became President of Yale University.4 Despite that social and economic separation from her classmates, Ella’s years at Mount Holyoke College were years of preparation for what was to come in her public career. At Mount Holyoke, her intellectual horizons, self-confidence, initiative, inner-strength, and aggressiveness were energized and solidified by the stimulating and thought provoking academic environment she encountered. Her persona was molded and shaped by the role models she observed, and the nurturing faculty relationships she developed. Likewise, her career path was determined in large part by the enlightened Mount Holyoke emphasis on public service and responsibility to others; and it was there she developed her passionate conviction, sharpened by the Depression era economic turmoil, that a relationship between politics and government deeply affected the lives of people. One Mount Holyoke classmate remembered Ella as a “strong, clear spoken, straight standing girl in her blouse and long wool skirt who seemed to set the air around her vibrating with purpose and life.”5 While another contemporary recalled Ella as “something of a loner,”6 the 1940 Mount Holyoke yearbook, Llamarada reveals that Ella participated in several extracurricular activities. She was President of the American Student Union chapter, served as Vice President of the International Relations Club, and was active in the Student Industrial Club. The American Student Union (ASU) chapter at Mount Holyoke was the organization that promoted campus-wide discussions about political issues, U.S. foreign policy, and contemporary issues.7 It sponsored lectures and forums, all of which aimed to generate student interest in current events of the day. It was cited as one of the “most active clubs on campus.”8 The national ASU, formed in 1935, was a “coalition of socialists, communists , and liberals” which at its peak numbered around “twenty thousand members out of a student population of over one million” across Ella Grasso [ 32 ] the country.9 One comprehensive study of student movements of the 1930s concluded that student movements, including the ASU, “received . . . major impetus from the anti-war movement” of the pre-World War II period.10 The ASU and other student groups (the American Youth Congress for example) were frequently outspoken supporters of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s noninterventionist policies and were also vocal opponents of Fascist governments in Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany . While communists were noticeably prominent in the student movements of the thirties, including the ASU, they were increasingly less dominant in the late thirties, after the Soviet Union’s foreign policies shifted and became more pro-German. Students opposed the turnabout , and the communists influence within the ASU...