Nancy Brataas, 86: Dauntless force for women in politics

That's the last word Anne Brataas heard her mother say before she died April 17. It would be hard to find a better one to sum up her life.

From her groundbreaking political accomplishments to her penchant for unusual gardening — she loved "misplaced" plants that she nurtured in unusual locations — Nancy Brataas was a bona fide original.

She was elected to the state Senate in 1975. Only one other woman had served as a senator, but that was to fill her husband's seat after he died.

Brataas was the first woman to be voted in strictly on her own merits.

Male senators threatened to deny her the right to speak because Senate rules required members to wear ties. Nonplused, she marched confidently into the chamber wearing a scarf.

She was co-chair of the Minnesota Republican Party for six years, and served in the Senate until 1992.

A master at organizing grass roots political campaigns, Brataas put together a sprawling phone bank of 11,000 volunteers in 1989.

Whatever she did, she did it with enthusiasm. In a tribute she wrote to her mother, Anne Brataas noted that among the life lessons she passed on was to "live imaginatively, believe ferociously."

Then, of course, there was that last word.

"You were unconventional, and blessedly so, Mom," Anne Brataas wrote in a eulogy.