Delaware’s first and only female governor Ruth Ann Minner has died at the age of 86 after living a “truly remarkable story of triumph in the face of adversity,” according to multiple government officials.
Minner dropped out of high school at 16 to help out on her family farm. At 32, she was widowed suddenly and left to raise three sons on her own while working two jobs and finishing her GED.
She later remarried and built a family towing business with her second husband, who died of lung cancer in 1991.
Delaware Senate President Pro Tempore Dave Sokola, Majority Leader Bryan Townsend, and Majority Whip Elizabeth Lockman issued a lengthy statement on Minner’s death, citing her life story as a catalyst for the number of women in the Senate Democratic Caucus today.
“As governor,” they said, “she worked to reduce Delaware’s high cancer rates, helped to pass the then-controversial Clean Indoor Air Act to ban smoking in restaurants and bars, helped more than 13,000 Delawareans and counting earn a college degree by signing the SEED scholarship into law, placed reading specialists in every elementary school and math specialists in every middle school, signed full-day kindergarten into law, and fought for common-sense gun safety.”