Ms. Helen Gordon Davis

TAMPA – Helen Gordon Davis, the first Hillsborough County woman elected to the Florida Legislature and a champion of women's and minority rights for decades, died Monday of congestive heart failure. She was 88.


Known for her passion, poise, fearlessness and quick wit, the native New Yorker and one-time high school drama teacher was never afraid to speak out for those facing injustices. In the 1950s, she was one of the first white women to join the NAACP after she boarded a bus with her black housekeeper and found the housekeeper had to sit in the back. In the 1960s, she was one of two whites who joined black patrons at a Woolworth's lunch counter to help desegregate Tampa's public facilities.


Davis was elected to the state Legislature's House of Representatives in 1974 in an election few thought she could win. She was Jewish, married to a man who sold whiskey and known by many as the woman who modeled in Maas Bros. ads.


When she won, she quickly began tackling what she saw as institutionalized injustice for women, minorities and the poor. When the Legislature refused to study why women and minority state employees were paid less for the same job than white men, Davis began privately fundraising. The report that followed showed significant pay disparities and led to reforms.


Over the years, she sponsored a $25 million program to cut the state's dropout rate by working with 3- and 4-year-olds, a bill that changed Forida's alimony laws to give women credit for their years spent as homemakers and legislation to give paternity leave to new fathers employed by the state.


Late in her legislative career, Davis attracted much attention for what became known as the "potty parity'' bill - legislation to put more toilets in women's restrooms. When the Senate passed the bill, she thanked her mostly male colleagues in her inimitable way: "Thank you for standing up to allow women to sit down.''


Davis served in the state House from 1974 to 1988 before winning election to the state Senate. She lost her re-election bid four years later to Charlie Crist.


Davis never pictured herself raising a family on Davis Island but quickly found herself rising through the ranks of local civic organizations because "of the many changes she saw right away that needed to be made here," said her daughter, Stephanie Davis.


She felt led to be a voice not only for women, but for people of color, gays and lesbians and disenfranchised people from all walks of life, her daughter said. Yet her primary role was always as a doting mother, and so she waited until her three children had gone off to college to run for office.


"She was a mother who did not fit the stereotype of the typical homemaker raising children in the '50s," Stephanie Davis said. "She was a fierce warrior and a vanguard for social change who raised us all to be strong and independent and follow our own path."