From Restrooms to Rights, A Career Full of Changes
Pauline Menes Made It Her Agenda to Help Boost Women's Status

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 6, 2006; T12

"The big story of my life is the fur-covered toilet seat," says Maryland Del. Pauline Menes (D-Prince George's) with a smile and a twinkle in her eyes.

She's retiring after a 40-year political career -- the longest-serving member of the House of Delegates. Now she will spend more time with her three daughters and grandchildren. It will be a new life, a new adventure.

But there will always be the toilet seat.

Don't laugh. Read on. And everything will become clear.

It was 1971, and female delegates didn't have their own restrooms inside the House building in Annapolis. They had to leave the chamber and walk across the concourse to use the public restroom. That sometimes meant being absent during a vote.

So Menes complained.

Thomas Hunter Lowe, the House speaker at the time and namesake of the Lowe House Office Building, decided to play a sexist joke. In front of all the delegates, he appointed her "chairman" of the women's restroom committee and presented her with the toilet seat.

Menes saw it as a small victory of sorts. It was the first time, she says, a woman had been on the male-dominated rostrum.

Menes took the toilet seat and put it away.

"It turned out to be a very poor joke," recalls Menes, a petite woman with owlish glasses and a measured voice. "We were just beginning to see the women's movement come to the fore. There were some chuckles, some embarrassed laughs. But most were as outraged as I and the other women were."

A couple of years later, the women got their own restroom, she says.

That was only the beginning of Menes' contributions to state politics.

Throughout her political and personal life, especially since she took her elected position on Jan. 18, 1967, she worked on issues as diverse as the prison system, drug and alcohol abuse, and children's rights. But the issue she fought for the most was women's rights. This is her legacy. This is what she wants to be remembered for.

"As a woman, I was very concerned about women and the way they were treated," says Menes.

Menes still vividly remembers her first days in the House.

"As a woman, you were an outsider, with very little going for you when you got here to be an effective legislator," she recalls. "It was made fairly clear to the few women who were here that we were not expected to accomplish very much, that we were not expected to stay very long.

"We were almost a surprise and a disappointment to the men who were here, that we even were here."

She worked to change this. One of her proudest moments, she says, was her role in starting the women's caucus in the House. There were only 11 women in the state legislature -- House and Senate.

"We were the first in the country to start a women's caucus," says Menes. "We realized we needed to work together as a group interested in similar issues if we were going to be successful. We joined together and began a cause, and it has grown.

"Now it has power to get good legislation passed or stop legislation that is not in the best interests of women and children. That's something I'm very proud to leave behind, a very active women's caucus," she says.

Today, there are 67 female legislators. And many of them say they owe their success to Menes' championing women's rights.

"The legacy she leaves behind is one of quiet leadership," says Shirley Nathan-Pulliam (D-Baltimore County), the incoming president of the Maryland Order of Women Legislators. "She's always been the kind of person to go to for real advice and be comfortable knowing that she won't lead you in the wrong direction."

"She was a tremendous mentor," Nathan-Pulliam adds. "In all the accomplishments of women legislators over the years, there's nothing we've accomplished that she has not been an integral part of."

Menes is a former president of the Maryland Order of Women Legislators, as well as a former president of the organization's national order. She's been honored time and again for her commitment to women's rights: by the National Organization for Women. By Hunter College, where she graduated in 1945 with a degree in economics. In 1989, she was elected to the Prince George's County's Women's Hall of Fame.

Today she feels a sense of nostalgia, as one would expect after a 40-year career. Her only regret is that she didn't have enough time to accomplish all her goals.

"The system works so slow," she says.

"I think I've made the right decision. I gave it a lot of thought," she adds. She pauses and reflects for a moment, then says: "I really don't know yet how life is going to be when I don't have this to keep me busy. But I feel very confident there will be other things to do. I'm going take one day at a time."

Menes plans to sell her house in College Park and downsize to an apartment. But she won't leave her turf, the 21st Legislative District, she says. Her immediate goal is to spend more time with her three children and three grandchildren. "I've missed an awful lot of their growing up," she says. "I have some catching up to do."

What she'll remember most, she says, are all the legislation she championed and the friendships she cultivated.

And what about the toilet seat?

Well, it mysteriously disappeared one day. Lowe, says Menes, took it back after his joke backfired.

"He said he would give it back to me with his picture framed inside of it," she says. "I never got it back."

A few weeks ago, a legislator presented her with a gift: a fur-covered toilet seat with a picture of Lowe inside. It now hangs on her office wall, along with all the other memories of her extraordinary political career.

And what does she think when she looks at the seat? "I think, 'You've come a long way, baby,' " says Menes. "You, meaning yourself and all of the women. We've made such tremendous progress."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company