Letter to the Editor

First woman speaker

To the editor:

I saw a Catherine Hanaway ad on TV. Her ad states among other things that she is the first woman to be speaker of the Missouri House.

It so happens that the honor of being the first woman speaker goes to Sarah Lucille Turner of Kansas City, who was elected for one term to the Missouri House in 1922.

Turner, a Democrat and a lawyer, was the first woman to serve as acting speaker of the House in 1923. While Hanaway was the first woman elected to that position, she most definitely was not the first woman to serve in that position.

SHARON HOPKINS, Marble Hill, Mo.