Biography
Elston Kabis was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, to Reginald Hastings Andrews and the former Mabel Aston. She was attending Maryville College in Maryville, Tennessee when she married Russell Ransom Elston (1911-1975) in 1936. The couple divorced in 1960. During the 1940s and 1950s, Elston worked in the legal department at the Du Pont Company in Wilmington, Delaware. After 1946, she also operated a nursery farm in Middletown.
Elston Kabis became active in Republican politics beginning with the Eisenhower administration. She worked in the Delaware office of the Farmers Home Administration from 1956-1959. She was a delegate to the Republican National Conventions in 1956 and 1960, serving on the rules and platform committees. She was also a member of the Delaware Republican State Central Committee from 1954 to 1958.
Considered a moderate conservative, Elston endorsed Barry Goldwater for President in 1964 but thereafter announced that she preferred Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York, considered the most liberal of serious Republican candidates. However, she supported Nixon's nomination at the convention in Miami Beach, Florida, and was rewarded with an appointment to the office of Treasurer of the United States, the fifth consecutive woman to hold the position.
Elston Kabis joined the GOP women's auxiliary group, the National Federation of Republican Women, in 1954 and was elected president at the national NFRW convention in 1962, a post that she held from 1963-1968. The most publicized of all NFRW elections was held in Washington, D.C. in 1967 to choose a successor to Elston. Normally the First Vice President, then conservative Phyllis Schlafly, would have been unopposed for the top position. When Schlafly sought to move up to the presidency, however, Elston worked covertly against her, and Schlafly lost to Gladys O'Donnell, a favorite of the Republican moderates, who drew the active support of Governors Nelson Rockefeller, Winthrop Rockefeller of Arkansas, and George Romney of Michigan. Elston Kabis was also active in the League of Women Voters as well as the Methodist Church.
Elston Kabis died of a heart attack in Sheffield, Massachusetts at the age of 54 while visiting her father's grave. In her honor, the NFRW established an internship program for young women.
Read more about this topic: Dorothy Andrews Elston Kabis
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