Helen Gordon Davis Still Shaking Things Up
By Judy Hill
After the introductions, the speeches, the heartfelt accolades from colleagues and friends, Helen Gordon Davis moved to the podium, scanned the audience in the ballroom at the Tampa Hyatt Regency and smiled.
She smiled again. And again.
Was she speechless after all the kudos?
Almost.
But not quite.
Still elegant at 80, still gracious, still committed to issues she has championed for many years, she thanked those who gathered to honor her Oct. 16 at a luncheon hosted by the Centre For Women and the Florida Displaced Homemakers Network.
Then she said:
“I was told not to talk about politics … “
The crowd of nearly 200 laughed. No way the consummate politician whose impact on Florida is without measure, could resist politics.
She didn’t mention candidates, but the long-time Democrat did talk about issues: Women’s issues. Children’s issues. Gender and racial discrimination. All of which still need our attention, she cautioned.
She also called for appropriate elder care, meaningful welfare reform, expanded access to healthcare, equal pay for equal work.
Helen Gordon Davis has been speaking out in one way or another about such things since 1948 when she became the first Caucasian woman in Florida to join the NAACP after she realized that her nanny had to ride in the back of the bus.
She believed that what was occurring around her in Tampa in those days of legal segregation wasn’t fair. So she spent the better part of the next 60 years fighting to right wrongs.
Even in tiny type, her accomplishments could take up an entire page in the Davis Islands Community News.
Highlights include being the first woman from Hillsborough County elected to the Florida House of Representatives. She sponsored the Displaced Homemakers Act; revised divorce laws; co-chaired with iconic attorney Chesterfield Smith the Governor’s Commission on Court reform and helped establish the Guardian ad Litem program for children in foster care. Oh, and she founded the Centre for Women, co-host of the luncheon.
In 1998 she was inducted into the Florida Women’s Hall of Fame. Earlier this year, Florida Sen. Arthenia Joyner and Florida Rep. Antiere Flores of Miami shepherded a resolution through the Legislature to honor Gordon Davis. The actual resolutions were presented to her at the luncheon. The City of Tampa also declared Oct. 16 Helen Gordon Davis Day.
Not all of her accomplishments include her name on a piece of legislation or an award, however.
Some are more subtle – and maybe even just as significant.
Retired Circuit Judge Elvin Martinez, who served with Gordon Davis in the Florida Legislature many years ago, said that she was responsible for educating him about women’s rights many years ago.
After his enlightenment, Martinez helped Gordon Davis shepherd many pieces of legislation that advanced the rights of women. One that didn’t make it into law, which Gordon Davis still regrets, was the Equal Rights Amendment. The bill to ratify the amendment in Florida failed numerous times in the Legislature.
“We’re still not in the Constitution,” she pointed out at the luncheon.
George Sheldon, Secretary of the Florida Department of Children and Families, recalled that Gordon Davis helped educate him, too, when he was a freshman legislator.
He assisted her, as well, sometimes in ways that weren’t quite so legislative.
One day Sheldon said he got an early-morning emergency call from Gordon Davis during a legislative session in Tallahassee. They lived in the same apartment complex and Gordon Davis needed him to come over to her apartment right away.
The emergency? A roach in her bathtub.
The audience roared.
Others who spoke with great affection and regard for Gordon Davis included Pat Frank, Clerk of the Circuit Court; Debbie Bass, president of the Florida Displaced Homemakers Network Association and Sen. Joyner, who met Gordon Davis as an 8-year-old.
Centre for Women Executive Director Beth Ficquette emceed the event.
At one point during her remarks, Gordon Davis, a longtime Davis Islands resident, who, with her husband, Gene, moved recently to Grand Court , a Bayshore Boulevard assisted living facility, said,
“I guess now I don’t need an obituary.”
Hopefully, she won’t for a very long time.
Judy Hill is a freelance writer who has chronicled the goings-on in the Tampa Bay area for over three decades. Contact her at judyhill[at]judyhillonline[dot]com
