[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 22 (Monday, February 22, 2010)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E181]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


            IN HONOR OF MARTHA LOIS McGINNIS CAMERON NORTON

                                 ______
                                 

                             HON. SAM FARR

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Monday, February 22, 2010

  Mr. FARR. Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the memory of Martha 
Lois McGinnis Cameron Norton, or just simply Martha. It is with great 
sadness that I must share the news of her death last week at the young 
age of eighty-eight. Martha was one of those Americans who embodies the 
meaning of the word citizenship; who always worked to strengthen our 
democracy. Martha was born in 1922 in the little town of Washington, 
Iowa. She grew up on a farm and spent her childhood raising corn, 
tending hogs, and seeing to all the other chores of an Iowa farm girl. 
But being from a place called Washington, she had politics in her 
blood. As a child she saw both President Hoover and Governor Roosevelt 
speak during the 1932 presidential campaign. Four years later she 
worked her first of many campaigns when she helped re-elect President 
Roosevelt.
  In 1945, following her graduation with a degree in chemistry from 
Monmouth College, Illinois, Martha became a research scientist for 
Shell Chemical Company in San Francisco. After several years, she 
returned to Iowa to take a position as the principal of Ainsworth High 
School. Following another stint as a research scientist, Martha settled 
on a career in teaching, which brought her to Monterey in 1962. And 
while Martha built a stellar career of teaching with the Monterey 
Peninsula Unified School District, she is remembered by the wider world 
for her relentless political activism.
  That activism began in earnest in 1946 when Martha joined a local 
campaign to save San Francisco's landmark cable car system. In 1956, 
she worked to re-elect President Eisenhower. In 1959, she helped run 
her father's successful write-in campaign to become Mayor of her 
hometown. Soon after her move to Monterey, Martha began working on 
numerous local election races, including one of my father's California 
State Senate re-election campaigns. In the late 60s, she worked on the 
coastal protection campaign that culminated in the voters' 1972 
adoption of the landmark Coastal Act. In 1976, Martha worked as a 
precinct walker in Leon Panetta's first successful run for Congress. 
She also worked on Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign, coordinating 
more than 100 volunteers from their teens into their 70s.
  Martha became a bedrock fixture of elected politics in Monterey 
County. Campaign after campaign, she made the calls, distributed the 
signs, gathered the volunteers, registered voters, got out the vote, 
and all the other indispensible grassroots tasks that make 
participatory democracy work. I know all this because she helped me in 
every one of my own campaigns going back to my service as a County 
Supervisor in the 1970s. I often said that she was my political mother.
  Martha was also a tireless volunteer for many community causes. She 
devoted countless hours to many different boards, commissions, and 
other community organizations, including the MPUSD school board, the 
Highway 68 committee, the Toxic Waste committee for Fort Ord, several 
League of Women Voters committees, and local Democratic committees and 
clubs.
  Martha is survived by her husband, Joe Norton; sons, Jeff Norton and 
his wife Dana; Christopher Norton and his wife Julie; daughter, Cheryl 
Herzog and her husband, David; and daughter-in-law Linda Cameron; as 
well as ten grandchildren; one great-grandchild; and her brother, Bill 
McGinnis. She was predeceased by her son, Bill Cameron, in 2007.
  Madam Speaker, Martha Norton touched countless people through her 
service and good works. Our Nation is poorer for her passing but 
enriched by the example she leaves behind.

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