Author Talk: Pat Pascoe
Spend an evening with Colorado author Pat Pascoe, discussing her new book, Helen Ring Robinson: Colorado Senator and Suffragist.
Pat Pascoe has written a biography of the first woman state senator in Colorado, Helen Ring Robinson, a progressive Democrat elected in 1912 before any woman served in Congress or the British Parliament. This amazing woman joined the small all-male club of the senate to pass a minimum wage bill for women, sponsor legislation to allow women to serve on juries, and increase the length of the school year for all children. Although Colorado women had already gained the vote in 1893, Helen fought for the vote for women in other states.
About the book
Helen Ring Robinson: Colorado Senator and Suffragist.
Calling herself “the housewife of the senate,” Helen Ring Robinson was Colorado’s first female state senator and only the second in the United States. Serving from 1913 to 1917, she worked for social and economic justice as a champion of women, children, and workers’ rights and education during a tumultuous time in the country’s history. Her commitment to these causes did not end in the senate; she continued to labor first for world peace and then for the American war effort after her term ended. Helen Ring Robinson is the first book to focus on this important figure in the women’s suffrage movement and the 1913, 1914, and 1915 sessions of the Colorado General Assembly.
Author Pat Pascoe, herself a former Colorado senator, uses newspapers, legislative materials, Robinson’s published writings, and her own expertise as a legislator to craft the only biography of this contradictory and little-known woman. Robinson had complex politics as a suffragist, peace activist, international activist, and strong supporter of the war effort in World War I and a curious personal life with an often long-distance marriage to lawyer Ewing Robinson, yet close relationship with her stepdaughter, Alcyon. Pascoe explores both of these worlds, although much of that personal life remains a mystery. This fascinating story will be a worthwhile read to anyone interested in Colorado history, women’s history, labor history, or politics.
“For nearly a century, Helen Ring Robinson has rested in peaceful anonymity. Pat Pascoe’s exhaustive research has changed all that. Robinson can now take her proper historical place as Colorado’s first elected state senator and pioneer crusader for the rights of women and children. Pat Pascoe’s detailed narrative provides, with clarity, a fascinating picture of Colorado politics in the first quarter of the 20th century.”
—Clé Cervi Symons, former editor, Cervi’s Journal
“This careful documentation on the little-known and gutsy achievements of the second woman in the world to serve as an elected state senator, dedicated to bettering lives of women and children, should be in every Colorado high school and college library so that current and future students may know what women have accomplished here. Pat Pascoe has produced a very readable work with many personal insights, exemplifying the tradition that past women are role models for future generations.”
—Beverly Chico, Women’s History, Regis University
Off the Beaten Path Bookstore will be on site for book sales and an author signing after the talk.
About Pat Pascoe
Pat Pascoe represented a Denver district in the Colorado Senate for twelve years ending in 2003. In the legislature she was especially interested in education and in improving the lives of women and children, sponsoring bills on preschool, child care, truancy, and bilingual education. She passed bills on temporary marital maintenance and spousal protection. Providing freedom of press for students, creating an organ donor registry, and reducing wood smoke pollution were the subjects of other successful bills. She chaired the Public Policy and Planning Committee and the Education Committee in the Senate, as well as the Democratic Caucus.
In the 1800s Pascoe's family pioneered Wisconsin, where she was born. She moved to Colorado in 1951 and finished high school at Aurora High. She graduated cum laude from the University of Colorado in Boulder where she was selected for Phi Beta Kappa. After teaching at the high school and college level, she earned her MA and PhD in English from the University of Denver. She was married to the late Monte Pascoe, attorney. Their three children live in Denver.
Pascoe's articles have appeared in The Denver Post, The Rocky Mountain News, Denver Magazine, Denver Business and Headfirst. For several years she was a regular Leading Voices commentator on KUVO. The Society of Professional Journalists awarded her first place in the editorial division in 1986.