Landmarks: Distinguished woman lies unheralded

For a woman who was such an innovator, pioneer and who rubbed shoulders with some of America’s most influential people, Rebecca Jane “Reba” Hurn is buried below a modest and unassuming grave marker.

The flat, plain stone only gives her nickname and years of birth and death – Reba J. Hurn, 1881-1967. It is situated at Greenwood Memorial Terrace next to the vertical and more prominent headstone of her parents, David W. and G. Harriet Hurn, which provides full names and exact dates of birth and death. Her father was a prominent attorney and judge, which may be why theirs is the more noticeable marker. And perhaps Hurn herself was more modest in her wishes for her own gravestone.

But it is still of note that there is no indication that there lies the first woman to serve in the Washington state Senate; the first woman to become a member of the Washington State Bar Association; the person who helped Nathan Strauss, co-owner of the famous Macy’s Department Store, with his work to promote pasteurization of milk; and the woman who worked with William Jennings Bryan during his run for the presidency in 1908.

She did these things, and more, in an era when most women assumed traditional roles and usually only had the opportunity to step forward as the wife of someone prominent. The never-married Hurn was born in Clear Lake, Iowa, in 1881, daughter of the town’s mayor, who was also an attorney, judge and journalist.

According to a report in the IaGenWeb Project of Cerro Gordo County, Iowa, the family moved to Spokane in 1905, where her father started a new law practice, eventually to serve as Spokane Superior Court judge, and where it appeared the young Reba would follow societal convention and have a career as a teacher.

After earning a degree (graduating Phi Beta Kappa) at Northwestern University, she spent two very unhappy years teaching in Spokane and Ritzville, after which she left to study German at Heidelberg University in 1907, hoping to return to Spokane and be able to teach German. But fate intervened.

While in Germany, she met Nathan Strauss, who became her long-term mentor. Strauss, one of the greatest retail merchants in American history, and his wife took Hurn under their wing. Strauss, who gave away most of his fortune during his lifetime, had as his greatest philanthropic focus providing safe milk for the children of America. He was in Germany trying to perfect a process of pasteurization.

Hurn became so caught up in this effort that she gave up her graduate studies and joined in this work in New York City. In 1908, she supervised Strauss’ pasteurization demonstrations at the Sixth International Congress on Tuberculosis in Washington, D.C, according to the 2013 Spokane Women’s History Sites Project of the Spokane Historic Landmarks Commission, and was swept up in the social life of the Strauss family.

Strauss chaired the unsuccessful presidential campaign of William Jennings Bryan in 1908, and Hurn jumped into politics herself by chairing the New York committee for Bryan, and found herself at times the only woman on the platform with a host of political dignitaries.

In 1910, she returned to Spokane, where she was determined to become an attorney, which she accomplished via a combination of studies at the University of Washington and private studies with her father. In 1913, she became the first woman admitted to the Washington State Bar Association and the first to practice law in Spokane.

When she decided to run for state Senate, women had already served in the state House. She preferred the four-year terms of the Senate. According to the March 2011 Bar News of the Washington State Bar Association, Hurn had declared that by “the close of the first session they (men in the Senate) will be in the habit of taking me for granted, and by the time the second session comes around I shall have a foothold and be capable of worthwhile constructive work.”

She ran in 1922 as a Republican, despite her earlier work for Bryan, a Democrat. And when she won, defeating her opponent by a 2-1 margin, she became the first woman to serve in the Senate. A fiscal conservative, she won re-election in 1926 without even campaigning. In 1930, a year after the Great Depression began and when Democrats enjoyed huge successes at the polls, Hurn was defeated, according to some accounts, because of her platform to eliminate “wasteful and inefficient township system of county government.”

While serving in the Senate she was known as a relentless cost-cutter, pushed tax relief for Eastern Washington farmers and, in defiance of Gov. Roland Hartley, supported a constitutional amendment against child labor. She introduced legislation for local zoning restrictions and tighter control on lobbyists. She was an early supporter of a state income tax and was well-known for her support of Prohibition.

Hurn lost a bid to serve as a Spokane County Superior Court judge in 1936. She continued her law practice and enjoyed travel, often leaving Spokane for a year or more. One of her favorite destinations was the Middle East, where instead of staying in hotels she would find families to live with so she could immerse herself in the lives and culture of each location.

At age 65, she moved to the Middle East, living in Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan from 1946 to 1948. She was in the region during the creation of the state of Israel, where she witnessed firsthand the unrest and violence that surrounded the partition of Palestine. She wrote a memoir of those days, but it was never published.

Hurn continued traveling until near the end of her life. She died at age 86 in Chula Vista, California, in 1967 – when she finally came home to Spokane to be buried quietly next to her parents.