About Nancy Kassebaum
Nancy Josephine Kassebaum Baker (née Landon; born July 29, 1932) is an American retired politician from Kansas who served as a member of the United States Senate from 1978 to 1997. She is the daughter of Alf Landon, who was Governor of Kansas from 1933 to 1937 and the 1936 Republican nominee for president, and the widow of former U.S. Senate Majority Leader and diplomat Howard Baker. With her victory in the 1978 U.S. Senate election in Kansas, Kassebaum entered the national spotlight as the only woman in the U.S. Senate, and as the first woman to represent Kansas. She was also the first woman ever elected to a full term in the Senate without her husband having previously served in Congress. In her three terms in the Senate, Kassebaum demonstrated a political independence that made her a key figure in building bi-partisan coalitions in foreign affairs and domestic policy. As chair of the Senate Subcommittee on African Affairs, she played a limited role in legislation to sanction apartheid South Africa. The legislation which was enacted in 1986, over a presidential veto, was drafted by Senators Lugar, Roth, McConnell, and Dole, although later in life, Kassebaum claimed credit for it. As chair of the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, she led the fight for major health care reforms that, for the first time, assured health insurance coverage for people changing jobs with pre-existing medical conditions. She graduated from the University of Kansas in Lawrence in 1954, where she was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta, and where she met her first husband, John Philip Kassebaum.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.