Admiration laced with concerned outrage hung heavy in prominent attorney Roxanne Conlin’s voice as she told the story of her friend and political mentor Elaine Szymoniak’s insistence on doing things her way. On one hand, Conlin marveled that the 86-year-old Szymoniak still had the mettle and stamina to take an overnight canoe trip down the Raccoon River and an insatiable appetite for sleeping under the stars. On the other hand, Conlin was incredulous.

“This insistence of hers on taking those treks worries me. You have to admire that, even while you abhor it. Trekking through Montana and getting in a canoe and riding the rapids when you’re over 80 – really, should you?” said Conlin, who became Iowa’s first female gubernatorial candidate in 1982. “I’m over 60, and I know I shouldn’t. That kind of vitality, that kind of risk-taking – physical risk-taking – has always been part of Elaine.”

At least it was the calm, lazy Raccoon that Szymoniak floated down this year. Usually, she heads west for churning waters and wild whitewater rafting trips. Conlin knew better than to try to stop the longtime Des Moines and Iowa civic leader, whom she calls “a second mother, my political mother, my movement mother,” from taking her overnight camping trip.

Anyone who knows this would be hard pressed to disagree with Conlin’s choice for inaction. In the annals of women’s history in Iowa, Szymoniak’s is a sometimes unnecessary surname. Mention Elaine, and only the politically inept won’t recognize the name as referring to a beloved public servant who championed social causes that weren’t always popular.

“We go a lot of places together, and there is just this love that is washed over her,” said Judy Conlin, the fund development director for the Girl Scouts of Moingona Council and Roxanne Conlin’s sister-in-law. The Girl Scouts just attached Szymoniak’s name to the Health and Administration Building at Camp Sacajawea near Boone as a surprise birthday gift recognizing not only her longtime commitment to the organization, but also her lifelong interest in public health issues.

To measure the breadth of affection Iowans have for Szymoniak, consider the fact that donations are still coming in for The Szymoniak Center. The money has been raised in increments ranging from $25 to $10,000 from Iowans who, Judy Conlin suggests, asked themselves the same rhetorical question: “How do you give to a remarkable woman something that says, ‘We love you, we honor you, we thank you for all you have done and are doing’? It goes beyond respect and honor. It goes to love and cherish.”

Szymoniak is surprised by all the attention. “It’s hard for me to really believe that, but when I’m talking to young women – 50ish – and they tell me how they respect me and why, it must be real,” she said. “It just never occurred to me that so many people would give this much money. I’m amazed by it. I really don’t have any concept of what people see in me – I wasn’t doing it to make myself look good.”

THE SZYMONIAK WAY

Many women seek out Szymoniak, a state senator for more than 20 years until her retirement in 2000 and a member of the Des Moines City Council for 11 years prior to that, before launching their own political careers. Her advice? “Don’t attack your opponent, especially if it’s a man. Stress who you are and what you have to offer instead of trying to tear down the opposition.”

To call her the dean of women in Iowa politics is accurate, however limiting. It also would be fair to call her one of the deans of the Girl Scouts organization in Iowa, or to credit her for a half-dozen or so other progressive initiatives that have improved the quality of life for countless Iowans. Most of all, her admirers – and there are legions of them, fellow Democrats, of course, but also Republicans with whom she sometimes found herself in fierce debates over ideology – say she epitomizes the civility that is often lacking in politics today.

“I think politicians need to learn that their constituents, as well as the general public, do not appreciate name-calling and unwarranted criticism,” said former Iowa governor Robert D. Ray, a Republican who credits Democrat Szymoniak with working tenaciously but respectfully to advance policies in the Legislature. “It doesn’t mean you don’t call attention to differences of opinion, but that’s based on fact and not personalities.

“The Legislature is a wonderful body for dialogue and for differences of opinion, but for those differences to come to a conclusion sometimes requires compromise, and a better answer results than both parties started with,” Ray said. “In those days, it was a matter of coming to a conclusion that was acceptable. It was not a name-calling environment.”

“We’re at a moment in history where we need people like Elaine Szymoniak,” Judy Conlin said. “There’s something that goes beyond intelligence that is rare. Mary Louise Smith had it and Elaine has it. It’s called wisdom.”

“Elaine does represent a generation past,” Roxanne Conlin added. “What I perceive is that the parties now, and therefore their representatives, are deeply divided in a way that I don’t recall. There is a sense that those who hold opposing views are not just wrong, but are evil; are not just wrong, but are immoral. That is a scary, unfortunate thing, and it doesn’t lead to good government.”

Szymoniak said that kind of polarization led to an entirely inadequate legislative response to the kidnapping, rape and murder of 10-year-old Jetseta Gage. Legislation passed in the wake of the crime severely limited where convicted sex offenders could live, leaving some of them homeless, Szymoniak said, but ignored information readily available through the Department of Corrections. In scouring those records and talking to prison therapists, she learned that the majority of convicted sex offenders – some estimate that as high as 90 percent – were also abused as children.

A better solution, she insists, is one that focuses on the family, allows for preventive measures against abuse before it occurs, and recognizes there are diagnostic tests and treatments that work. Many people are loath to view sex offenders as human beings with an illness, but not Szymoniak. “I have enough respect that people might pay attention and not criticize me,” she said, but admitted that as she approaches her 90s, she lacks the physical energy to carry that torch.

Others ponder how Szymoniak have might affected the debate on the issue if she were still in the Legislature. “Elaine always comes prepared, knows the facts, has thought through the effects and knows the consequences,” Roxanne Conlin said. “The effect has been to put sex offenders on the street – not exactly what we had in mind. You have to think through consequences, which are often unintended. To have someone like Elaine saying, ‘Let’s at least look at what would happen,’ that would be a good thing.”

POLITICAL AT 8

Szymoniak has been attracted to politics for almost as long as she can remember. Al Smith’s 1928 presidential campaign was swallowed up in a surge of anti-Catholicism and Szymoniak, 8 years old at the time, remembers hearing women whisper about “how evil being Catholic was.” Raised in the Catholic faith herself, she spread the newspaper open on the floor to a picture of Smith and was surprised to see he didn’t have horns, as she had always seen evil depicted.

Both of her parents were deaf and her Aunt Millie, who was unmarried, came to live with the family when Szymoniak was a child and remained in the family home in small-town Wisconsin until her death. They became great friends. “She talked to me a lot,” Szymoniak said, “and in her stories, the girl always won.”

Szymoniak has made a career out of helping other girls win, through the Girl Scouts and political initiatives that help women trapped in the webs of poverty and other circumstances that prevent them from leading full lives.

She’s one of those rare politicians who can claim no regrets about their lives of public service. “I don’t think I did anything I wish I hadn’t done,” she said.

But, clearly, she wishes she could have done more.

“I don’t know how much we have done on poverty,” she said. “I don’t think we have done very much.”

There is it was: vintage Szymoniak, an emphatic understatement to draw attention to a dramatic problem, and then an anecdote to hammer her point home. “It makes me furious when I hear women who are very successful and have had children saying, ‘These people could just pull themselves up if they wanted to, because I did.'”

Soft-spoken and gentle, Szymoniak doesn’t on the surface appear to be a woman who would be furious about anything. The twinkle in her eye, however, suggests she probably spoke her mind – with graciousness, of course, but leaving no doubt about where she stood.

“I call it her charm,” Roxanne Conlin said. “She’s very kind to people, but she’s also very blunt, not in an unkind way, but in a time-saving way.

“She has led a very successful, principled and important life.”