![]() She had an engaging smile, a warm handshake, an unusual ability to remember names and an uncanny ability to work a crowd.Īlmost 40 percent of the work force in her district was employed by the federal government - the highest percentage of any congressional district in the nation - and Spellman was careful to respond to its needs. liked to call her "Madame Tinkerbell" for what often seemed like a magical ability to float into a crowded room bubbling with happiness and cheer. Former Prince George's County executive Winfield M. She went to Congress from the County Council in 1974, but continued to spend most of her evenings meeting with civic and neighborhood associations, hosting open complaint sessions and attending receptions in her district. Her years of PTA and civic association activism as a young mother and housewife in Cheverly during the 1950s led to leadership positions in the reform movement that seized control of the county's government during the 1960s, ousting the old guard Democratic organization that had managed affairs in Prince George's for decades. The following February the House voted to declare her seat vacant, the first time in history a House seat was declared vacant because of a disability.Ī consummate politician, Spellman was part of the wave of young, new suburban dwellers who moved to Prince George's County from Washington and elsewhere in the years after World War II, and that group remained her constituency throughout her political career. Widely regarded as the most popular local politician in Washington's Maryland suburbs at the time, she easily won the 1980 election five days after the heart attack, although she was comatose in a hospital. She died of complications from the heart attack. 31, 1980, while visiting a children's Halloween costume contest in Laurel, less than a week before her election to a fourth term. Spellman, who also served a term on the first County Council in Prince George's, never regained consciousness after a severe heart attack on Oct. Gladys Noon Spellman, 70, a three-term Democratic member of Congress from Prince George's County who began her political career as a PTA and civic association activist and served two years as head of the Board of County Commissioners before her election to the House of Representatives, died yesterday at the Hebrew Home of Greater Washington in Rockville.
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