Sen. Martha Hughes Cannon — or at least her statue — is leaving Utah and headed to Statuary Hall
“I’m going to miss her,” said Lt. Governor Deidre Henderson, speaking of the 7-foot-3-inch statue of Martha Hughes Cannon standing outside the historic Supreme Court Chambers at the Utah Capitol. She means “so much more to me than just an important figure in the past,” Henderson said. The statue is finally on her way to Washington, D.C.
Henderson visits Martha and, on occasion, gives her a fist bump. “She’s someone that I identify with on a lot of levels and someone that I admire for knocking down barriers that made it possible for me to be where I am,” said Henderson.
Cannon was the first female Senator, elected in 1896. Henderson was the 27th, elected in 2012. That’s not even enough to fill Utah’s 29 current Senate seats. You could say that the two women elected to the Utah Senate 116 years apart are friends. Henderson said she does feel a special kinship with the nation’s first elected state senator and has looked to Cannon’s example multiple times during her time in elected office, especially during difficult, challenging and lonely times, drawing courage and strength from her predecessor’s example.
She laughs when asked to explain the process behind the legislation to send Martha to Washington. “It ended up being the most controversial bill I worked on in my eight years in the Senate,” she said.
Henderson said that no one can honestly tell the story of equal rights in America without talking about Utah’s participation and influence. In fact, her favorite quote of Cannon’s is this: “The story of the struggle for women suffrage in Utah is the story of all efforts for the advancement and betterment of humanity.”
This post is an excerpt from a longer article I wrote for the Deseret News. You can find it here.
