In celebration of International Women's Day, we’re highlighting six former Vikings who went on to become leaders and contributors in Oregon.
BARBARA ROBERTS: First woman Oregon governor 1991-1995
(attended Portland State from 1961-1964)
Born Dec. 21, 1936, Barbara Roberts served as the 34th governor, one of the first 10 women governors in the country and the only woman elected to that office until 2016. A Democrat, Roberts was also the first woman to serve as majority leader in the Oregon House of Representatives. She also won two terms as Oregon Secretary of State, and served in local and county government in Portland. Roberts was married to Oregon state Sen. Frank L. Roberts from 1974 until his death in 1993.
While Roberts was governor, Oregon was recognized by Financial World Magazine as the seventh-best-managed state in the nation. Roberts has been an active public speaker and advocate, focusing on issues of death and grieving, leadership, women in politics and environmental stewardship.
In 2005, the state legislature voted to name the Human Services building of the state government after Roberts. The Barbara Roberts High School, an alternative high school in Salem, was also named in her honor.
Roberts donated her personal papers to the PSU Millar Library. She also wrote “Death Without Denial, Grief Without Apology.” Roberts is a fourth-generation Oregonian.
AVEL GORDLY (Class of ‘74): First African American woman to be elected to the Oregon Senate
Born Feb. 13, 1947, Avel Gordly served in the senate from 1997 to 2009. Previously, she served for five years in the Oregon House of Representatives.
Gordly graduated from Girls Polytechnic High School in 1965 and worked at Pacific Northwest Bell until 1970, when she enrolled at Portland State. She earned a degree in the administration of justice in 1974, the first person in her family to graduate from college. She went on to work for the Oregon Corrections Division as a women’s work-release counselor and later as a probation officer.
She was elected state representative from north and northeast Portland in 1992. In 1996, she was elected to the Oregon Senate, where she served from 1997 to 2009.
In 2008, OHSU opened the Avel Gordly Center for Healing, which provides mental health and psychiatric services. Gordly has also served as a professor of black studies at PSU.
NANCY RYLES (Dec. 18, 1937 to Sept. 12, 1990): First woman to serve on the Public Utility Commission
Nancy Ryles served in the Oregon House of Representatives, the Oregon Senate and as one of three members of the state's Public Utility Commission. She was known as an advocate for education and for equality for women and minorities. An elementary school in Beaverton is named after her.
Born Nancy Ann Wyly, she graduated from Jefferson High in Northeast Portland and was chosen as Portland Rose Festival Queen in 1955. Ryles attended Portland State and Willamette University, but did not graduate from college.
Ryles served on the Beaverton School Board from 1972 to 1978. The Oregon Education Association gave her its Human Rights Award in 1974, and she was named Beaverton's "First Citizen" in 1979. She was elected to the Oregon House of Representatives in 1978, the Oregon Senate in 1982, and was appointed to the Oregon Public Utility Commission in 1987.
In July 1990, Ryles was diagnosed with brain cancer. She died in September at age 52. Her early death gave her farewell speech to the Senate added poignance: "The challenge then is to do the best we can ... wherever we are ... in whatever time we have. I hope I have done that."
Before she died, a group of Ryles’ friends decided to honor her legacy by creating a scholarship in her name. She insisted that it go to students who returned to school at PSU after their education was interrupted.
BETTY ROBERTS (Feb. 5, 1923 to June 25, 2011): First woman to serve on the Oregon Supreme Court and the Oregon Court of Appeals
Betty Roberts was the 83rd Associate Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, the highest state court in Oregon.
She was the first woman on the Oregon Supreme Court and the first woman on the Oregon Court of Appeals. Roberts served from 1982 to 1986 on the high court and from 1977 to 1982 on the Court of Appeals. She graduated from Portland State College in 1958.
A native of Kansas and raised in Texas, Roberts had previously been elected to both chambers of the Oregon Legislative Assembly, but lost bids for the governor's office and the United States Senate, both in 1974. She was married three times, including to Frank L. Roberts and Keith Skelton, both of whom she would serve with in the Oregon Legislative Assembly.
She was a private mediator and senior judge until her death due to pulmonary fibrosis.
MARGARET CARTER (Class of ‘72): First African American in the Oregon House
Born December 29, 1935, Margaret Carter was the first black woman elected to the state's legislature. She served in the Oregon House of Representatives from 1985 to 1999, and the state senate from 2001 to 2009.
Born Margaret Hunter in Shreveport, Louisiana, on Dec. 29, 1935, she was one of nine children. Her father was a Baptist minister, and her mother was a cook at the school cafeteria. After getting married she had five daughters by the age of 28, and moved to Oregon in 1967 to escape abuse by her then husband. In 1970, she enrolled at Portland State, graduating in 1972 with a bachelor of arts degree in education. She earned a masters of education in psychology from Oregon State University in 1973.
She resigned from the senate in 2009 and took a post as deputy director for human services programs at the Oregon Department of Human Services.
TAWNA D. SANCHEZ (Class of ’12): Currently serving in the Oregon House of Representatives
Sanchez is the second Native American elected to the legislature in Oregon, and the first to represent Portland. She represents the 43rd district, which covers parts of north-central Portland. She was elected in 2016.
Sanchez is of Shoshone, Bannock and Ute descent. She earned her masters in social work from Portland State in 2012, and has worked with the Native American Youth and Family Center for much of her life.
SOURCES: wikipedia.org. oregonencyclopedia.org, pdx.edu. All images courtesy of Portland State University Special Collections & University Archives