[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 22 (Monday, February 22, 2010)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E186-E187]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 COMMEMORATING THE LIFE OF JEAN HANDLEY

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. ROSA L. DeLAURO

                             of connecticut

                    in the house of representatives

                       Monday, February 22, 2010

  Ms. DeLAURO. Madam Speaker, I rise to commemorate the life and work 
of Jean Handley, an inspiring leader in our New Haven community and a 
long time friend to the arts and to the dispossessed, who passed away 
at the age of 83 last month.
  A path-breaking career woman who spent three decades working for AT&T 
and Southern New England Telephone, SNET, Jean

[[Page E187]]

knocked down barriers for working women across Connecticut. After 
serving 10 years as the Executive Director of the Connecticut League of 
Women Voters, she joined SNET in 1960 and later AT&T in 1972. Six years 
later, she was the highest ranking female employee in the Bell system, 
eventually retiring as Vice-President of Public and Corporate Relations 
in 1989. And she was the first female member of the Quinnipiack Club, a 
New Haven business institution since 1871. As it turns out, she was 
elected to the Club because she refused to enter through the kitchen 
there, as was the questionable custom for women before Handley gently 
and firmly put a stop to it.
  This was the type of leadership Jean showed throughout her life--She 
led by example, with grace, elegance, good humor, and enormous 
competence.
  Her career aside, Jean was a passionate admirer of the arts and a 
dedicated supporter of non-profits and community service efforts in our 
state. She was a longtime board member of Learning, Education, and 
Athletics in Partnership, LEAP, the Long Wharf Theatre, and the New 
Haven Symphony. In addition, she served as an Emeritus Trustee of her 
alma mater, Connecticut College, as well as the University of New 
Hampshire. And, in 1996, she was a co-founder of the International 
Festival of Arts and Ideas, an 18-day arts festival in New Haven that 
now attracts over 100,000 people each June. True to her enthusiasm, her 
passion for the arts, and her diligence, Jean not only commissioned a 
market study to ascertain the appeal of the festival first, she 
researched the weather to figure out the best two-week window to hold 
it.
  Last December, in her last public appearance before succumbing to the 
cancer she had so bravely and silently fought, Jean was awarded with 
the Connecticut Arts Council's C. Newton Schenk III Award for Lifetime 
Achievement, which deemed her a ``life-long champion of the region's 
arts organizations and an individual of exceedingly high standards.'' 
That she was. Our city of New Haven, and our world, is a smaller place 
with her passing.

                          ____________________