Ivy Baker Priest was Treasurer of the United States.
Background
She was born on September 7, 1905in Kimberley, Utah, United States, the daughter of Orange Decatur Baker, a miner, and Clara Fearnley, a boardinghouse keeper and local political activist.
At an early age, Priest had to assume considerable family responsibility by helping in her mother's boardinghouse and caring for her six younger siblings. When only ten, she was initiated into political life by her mother, who was known as "Mrs. Republican" because of her work in local politics.
Education
In 1924, Priest graduated from the Bingham Canyon high school, where she was captain of the debating team. Because of her family's straightened circumstances, Priest had to forgo her dream of attending college and studying law.
Career
She took a job selling tickets at a local movie theater. Later she and her husband moved to North Carolina and later Virginia, where Priest worked as a salesclerk in a department store.
In 1929 she returned to Utah to live with her family, who had moved to Salt Lake City. Priest first got a job as a long-distance telephone operator. Later she held positions in both sales and merchandising at several department stores in Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. Part of this time she earned extra money by teaching evening classes in American history and citizenship at a local Salt Lake City high school.
Following in her mother's footsteps, Priest became active in precinct politics in the early 1930's. She joined the Young Republicans and, she rose rapidly through the party's ranks. Although she repeatedly won leadership positions, especially those within the party, she was defeated in a 1934 race for the Utah state legislature. Shortly after the legislative race, she was elected to a two-year term as cochairman of the Young Republican organization for the eleven western states (1934 - 1936).
With her secnd husband she moved to Bountiful, Utah. Roy Priest encouraged his wife's political activities, so she continued to succeed in politics and public service. From 1937 to 1939, Priest served as the president of the women's Utah Legislative Council and helped to formulate a minimum-wage law for working women. She also served as the Republican committeewoman from Davis County and as a member of the Utah Central Committee. In 1944, she was chosen the Republican national committeewoman from Utah, a post she held until 1953.
In 1946, she became vicechairman of the Western Conference of Republican party leaders of the eleven Western states. Priest's chief task in this position was to organize women voters at the grass-roots level, using the plan she had initiated in Utah during the preceding two years. In 1948, Priest attended the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia as a delegate of the National Committee on Women from Utah. Two years later, Priest challenged the Democratic incumbent, Reva Beck Bosone, in the congressional election but was defeated.
Priest was one of the leaders of a Republican faction known as the "Young Turks" (1952), party members who were working for the selection of Dwight Eisenhower as the Republican presidential nominee. After Eisenhower received the nomination, Priest was appointed as the assistant chairman in charge of the women's division of the Republican National Committee. In the 1952 election, women cast about 52 percent of the ballots and the number of female voters was 40 percent greater than in the previous presidential election.
After being elected, President Eisenhower appointed Priest as treasurer of the United States. She used her position to foster Eisenhower administration programs, political candidates, and other civic causes, including some for which she had been a long-time worker and supporter: the American Red Cross, the Utah and National Safety Councils, and the National Society for Crippled Children and Adults. The latter organization named Priest as the national chairman of the 1957 Easter Seals campaign.
When she left federal service in 1961, she moved to California. In 1965, she successfully petitioned the court to drop her surname Stevens and reestablish her identity as Ivy Baker Priest. The next year, Priest won her first elective office, treasurer of California. She served two four-year terms in Governor Ronald Reagan's administration.
In 1974, because of poor health, she declined to run for a third term as California state treasurer. She died of cancer in Santa Monica, California.
Achievements
Ivy Baker Priest was the second woman in the history of the United states, who hold the position of treasurer of the counrty. She became the first woman to nominate a candidate for U. S. president for a major political party (1968) when she placed Governor Reagan's name before the Republican National Convention.
Priest received the Women's National Press Club Achievement Award "for her role in helping to marshal to the polls the largest number of women ever voting in a national election. " She also was named one of the "twenty most outstanding women of the century" by the Women's Newspaper Editors and Publishers Association.
(Autobiography of Ivy Baker Priest, an engaging story of t...)
Politics
Throughout her political career, Priest argued that the female vote could have a significant impact on elections - an idea that had finally been given serious consideration by the Republican party organization.
Views
When asked to identify the most difficult handicap she had overcome, Priest said it was poverty. When naming the most positive influence that inspired her achievements, she credited her mother.
Quotations:
"We women don't care too much about getting our pictures on money as long as we can get our hands on it. "
"The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning. "
"I'm often wrong, but never in doubt. "
Personality
She had natural talents in leadership and public speaking.
Connections
On July 31, 1924, she married Harry Howard Hicks, a traveling salesman; they had no children. In 1929 the Hickses were divorced.
On December 7, 1935, she married Roy Fletcher Priest, a traveling wholesale-furniture dealer, who was twenty-one years older than she and several inches shorter. They had four children. In 1959, Priest was widowed.
On June 20, 1961, she married Sidney William Stevens, a Beverly Hills real estate developer. Priest was widowed for the second time in 1972.
