Advertisement

Carlton: Helen Gordon Davis and the Gucci Cadillac

 
Then-Sen. Helen Gordon Davis, D-Tampa, talks Sen. Quillan Yancey, left, and Sen. Bob Johnson in the Florida Senate in 1992. Davis was the first woman from Hillsborough elected to the state House.
Then-Sen. Helen Gordon Davis, D-Tampa, talks Sen. Quillan Yancey, left, and Sen. Bob Johnson in the Florida Senate in 1992. Davis was the first woman from Hillsborough elected to the state House.
Published May 20, 2015

Helen Gordon Davis probably shocked a few people after she landed in this small Southern town nearly 70 years ago from New York, gorgeous and glamorous and Jewish to boot, a woman who later dared take a seat in a good ol' boy state Legislature like she had the right to be there.

There are the big stories about her making her mark as a politician, championing women and minorities and pointing out the lopsided nature of things, no matter how much the boys rolled their eyes and tried to ignore her.

But one of my favorites has to be the story of the Cadillac.

She liked to drive Cadillacs, and in the late 1970s, her husband, Gene Davis, a successful liquor distributor, got her a limited-edition Gucci version.

People will describe it to you still, the distinctive Gucci colors and all those "G's," a Cadillac like a designer handbag on wheels.

Helen, people told her, scandalized, you can't take that car campaigning in rougher neighborhoods. She did anyway. "That car drew more attention — and more votes, probably — because it drew people to the car," said Sandy Freedman, who was a little girl when her parents befriended the Davises and who was later Tampa's first female mayor.

"She wanted to be herself," said Hillsborough Clerk of Courts Pat Frank, who would sponsor bills in the Legislature alongside Davis. "She didn't phony it up."

There are more important stories about the life of Helen Gordon Davis, who died this week at 88 — of her getting blocked at the door of a powerful Tampa men's club, of becoming the first white woman in Florida to join the NAACP and the first Hillsborough woman elected to the state House, where she served many years before getting elected to the Senate.

She was known for feminist causes, for issues of race and poverty, for taking up for the underdog. She fought for pay equity and even fairness in the number of public toilets for women. Friends will tell you she took on the criminal justice system and judicial reform, too.

Sometimes fellow legislators would snicker and vote against her. She pushed on.

"She was somebody," Frank said. "If you think one person doesn't make a difference, you're wrong. She made a difference. She got a lot of things passed because of her perseverance."

When Betty Castor first got to town, she got a call from Davis, who had been one of her husband's teachers. "She said, 'I know you're new to Tampa, but you need to come and join the League of Women Voters.' " Impressed, Castor went to a meeting and was immediately pressed into heading a committee.

"Helen, of course, was a great mentor to many of us," said Castor, who was the first woman elected to the Hillsborough County Commission and the first female president of the University of South Florida. "She organized. She rounded up women."

A story about her would be remiss if it did not mention her striking looks, that dark hair, her eyes and those cheekbones, a Powers model at 15 and in Tampa for Maas Bros. Even in her later years, when she arrived at a South Tampa restaurant of the moment, you noticed.

And here is a story I did not hear until after her death and one that surely shaped what she became: Her father lost his fortune during the Depression and died when she was only 9, leaving her mother a widow with three small children. "I will never forget the look of despair on my mother's face every single day," she recalled.

That story came from her friends at the Helen Gordon Davis Centre for Women, which helps women find jobs, gain skills and open their own businesses.

Frank and Freedman went to see her at her Bayshore Boulevard high-rise a few weeks ago, and she called them darling, like she always did. They all talked about Hillary Clinton, with Freedman secretly hoping that when the candidate who could be America's first female president comes to Tampa, she could get her to come see Helen Gordon Davis. That there would be time.

"That," Freedman says, "just would have made her day."