Sadie Loewith exemplified the adage that “all politics is local.” To see the ripple effect of one person’s contribution to local activism, one need only look to the example she set in her town of Bridgeport.

Moving with her family to the small Connecticut community when she was four, she excelled academically and graduated first in her class from Bridgeport Normal School. At 21, she married Walter Loewith. After teaching for several years and taking private instruction at Yale Art School, she joined her husband in his insurance brokerage firm in 1929. Upon his death in 1952, she took over the operation of the firm.

But it was what she gave back to her community that made her stand out.  At a young age, she fervently worked for passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, which empowered women with the right to vote.  Following its passage on August 18, 1920, Loewith vowed to use her new enfranchisement to effect positive changes for women. From that year on, she served in every election—local, state, and national—as an active party worker.   She formed the local Women’s Republican Associations in her town and county, later serving as their president.  She was elected to the local Board of Education, helping to set a single pay schedule for women and men, in addition to a higher minimum wage for teachers and the building of new schools.  She lobbied for passage of the Aid to Dependent Children bill, which was passed by the 1939 legislature. During World War II, as a member of the Bridgeport War Council, she chaired the Women’s Mobilization Committee to recruit women for war work in industrial, retail, and commercial establishments.  President of her local sisterhood, she was also honorary president of the Bridgeport Section of the National Council of Jewish Women, which she helped organize and which she headed for eight years, and director of the Inter-Group Council, which was affiliated with the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

Sadie Loewith died on this date in 1956 at age sixty-five. The town of Bridgeport is far from alone in benefitting from her advocacy.