Mary_B._Newman--William_Floyd_Weld

Mary B. Newman (February 15, 1909 – December 6, 1995) was an American politician and state government official who was elected to her first term in the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1953. A moderate Republican, she represented the 2nd Middlesex District from 1953 to 1954 and, again, from 1957 to 1970. Appointed to the Massachusetts Parole Board in 1955 after her initial legislative term ended, she held that parole board post until 1957 when she returned to the Massachusetts House. During the early part of that second term, she served on the House's Labor and Industries and Water Supply committees.The first woman to serve in the cabinet of Massachusetts Governor Francis Sargent, Newman was an early champion of the women's liberation movement, and became known as "the fighting Quaker from Cambridge." Upon learning of her death in 1995, Massachusetts Governor William Weld recalled, "Mary Newman, for years the grande dame both of Cambridge and its Republican party, launched me in politics by serving as chair of my statewide campaign in 1978." In 1984, a reporter for The Christian Science Monitor referred to her as "one of the most highly respected forces on the Massachusetts civic scene for almost four decades."