The Lady from Bar 99

In the U.S. Senate's 165-year history, it has had just seven women members.* Last week an eighth name was added to the list. To fill the vacancy created by the death of Republican Dwight Palmer Griswold, Nebraska's Governor Robert B. Crosby appointed Mrs. Eva Bowring (rhymes with now ring), owner and operator of an 8,000-acre cattle ranch at Merriman, 315 miles northwest of Omaha.

Saleswoman, Horsewoman. The new Senator is a remarkable woman. Married at 19 to a blacksmith, she was widowed at 32 with three small sons. To support them, she became a traveling saleswoman, for more than four years fought her way over muddy and rutted Nebraska country roads selling bakery supplies. In 1928, she remarried, and moved on to her husband's Bar 99 ranch in the Nebraska sandhills. She was told then that grass and trees would not grow in the sand, but her sprawling white ranch house now stands in a grove of hackberry and willow trees and on a velvet green lawn. Inside are her collections of Early American glass, beer steins, colonial furniture and needlework.

Since her second husband, Arthur Bowring, died in 1944, Mrs. Bowring has bossed the ranch. Equally at home in a western saddle or as the hostess at a formal dinner, she is up at 5 a.m. with the hands, often helps with branding, haying and riding the range. Last month, she missed the Nebraska Republican Founders' Day ceremonies because a sudden snowstorm came up and she was helping to drive some of her 700 Herefords 10 miles to a feed lot. Her philosophy: "I've not been one who thought the Lord should make life easy; I've just asked Him to make me strong."

Mrs. Bowring's interest in politics came from her second husband, for many years a county commissioner and a state legislator. (He once was appointed to the state legislature to succeed Dwight Griswold.) She was a Republican precinct worker for 20 years, then county chairman; since 1946, she has been vice chairman of the Nebraska Republican State Central Committee. To get to political meetings on the western Nebraska plains, she has traveled by plane, car, snow sled and on horseback. Says she: "I've gone to those meetings in everything but a manure spreader."

"To Kiss the Cattle Goodbye." When Governor Crosby announced her appointment, he said that he had spent two days trying to persuade Mrs. Bowring to take it. At a press conference in the governor's office, she confirmed his statement: "He kept talking about the honor. But I told him it would be just a burden. I think that what really convinced me was myself. I've been saying for years that women should get into politics, and so when I got the chance, I just didn't feel I could turn it down." The way she plans to use that chance: "The Eisenhowers. Ike and Mamie, deserve all the support we can give. Nevertheless, I reserve the right to make some decisions myself."

A handsome, erect woman ("My grandmother always told me: 'Stand tall and spurn the earth' ") with a weather-tanned face, Mrs. Bowring flew back to the ranch after the announcement "to kiss the cattle goodbye." Said she, with a characteristic twinkle: "They're about the only ones interested in kissing me any more." For her introduction to Washington, she adopted a rancher's formula: "I'm going to ... ride the fence awhile . . . until I find where the gates are."

The new Senator has announced that she will not run for the full term. Leading contender in that race: Governor Crosby, who helped his own cause by appointing popular and respected Eve ("Everyone calls me 'Eve'") Bowring. Said one of the governor's aides: "I think we sewed up the women's vote with this one."

*The seven: Georgia's Democrat Rebecca Latimer Felton, who served for two days in 1922; Arkansas' Democrat Hattie Caraway, who was appointed to succeed her husband in 1931, later was elected three times; Louisiana's Democrat Rose Long, who served a year after her husband, Huey, was assassinated in 1935; Alabama's Democrat Dixie Bibb Graves, appointed for five months in 1937; South Dakota's Republican (Miss) Gladys Pyle, elected for two months in 1938; South Dakota's Republican Vera C. Bushfield, who succeeded her husband for three months in 1948; Maine's Republican Margaret Chase Smith, elected in 1948 and the only woman now serving.

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