Aleksandra's Note: I had the opportunity to meet Congresswoman Helen Delich Bentley in Chicago in the early 1990's. I was struck by her energy and the strength and integrity she exuded. I was very proud that she was of Serbian heritage and serving America in the United States House of Representatives. She would serve in that capacity during a very difficult time for the Serbian people in the homeland and those of us in the Diaspora who watched the disasters of the 1990's unfold in the former Yugoslavia. It could not have been easy for Congresswoman Bentley, because she was surrounded by politicians and policy makers in Washington, D. C. who were hell bent on making the Serbs in the homeland suffer.
I love the fact that she was a supporter of General Draza Mihailovich and paid tribute to him publicly - a tribute that is permanently etched in the U.S. Congressional Record that I have included following The Washington Post obituary below.
Congresswoman Bentley was a true inspiration - a journalist and politician of integrity and courage, and she was ahead of her time. She fought the good fight and walked the walk.
Rest in Peace.
Sincerely,
Aleksandra Rebic
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The Washington Post
Emily Langer
August 6, 2016
Rep. Helen Delich Bentley in 1988. She vacated her House seat in 1994 to seek the Republican nomination for Maryland governor. (Jason Lee/AP)
Helen Delich Bentley, a Maryland journalist-turned-politician who elbowed her way as a woman into newsrooms, shipyards and the U.S. House of Representatives, distinguishing herself as one of her state’s foremost boosters of Baltimore’s port, died Aug. 6 in Timonium, Md. She was 92.
The cause was brain cancer, family spokesman Key Kidder told the Associated Press.
Mrs. Bentley, a Republican, was once described in The Washington Post as “an unreconstructed American original — raised in the desert, schooled on the waterfront, propelled to Capitol Hill.” She represented a largely blue-collar swath of the Baltimore suburbs in the House from 1985 to 1995.
A daughter of Serbian immigrants, she had grown up in a Nevada copper-mining town. She trained as a journalist when few women covered hard news and was hired in 1945 by the Baltimore Sun.
She vowed that she would write for any section but the society pages and found an assignment covering the port, a cornerstone of the state’s economy, where she said the newspaper sorely needed greater coverage.
As the Sun’s maritime reporter and editor, she discarded skirts in favor of work pants and cussed in her memorably raspy voice as wantonly as the sailors she covered. Baltimore legend had it that when a longshoreman insulted her appearance, she punched him in the jaw. Mrs. Bentley became widely respected for her extensive sourcing, which reached from the ranks of dockhands to the higher echelons of Maryland’s political establishment. Outside her beat reporting, she did publicity work for port agencies and the shipping industry, an arrangement that would be considered improper in modern newsrooms but one that she said did not represent a conflict of interest.
“She was one of the best reporters I ever saw,” Russell Baker, the Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist and onetime rewrite man at the Sun, once told The Post. “She was dogged. She knew everybody.”
He added that while her connections were among her strengths, writing was not. “It was always terrible to have to rewrite Helen,” he remarked, “because she didn’t take it well.”
During her quarter-century career with the Sun, Mrs. Bentley wrote a syndicated column, “Around the Waterfront,” and produced an educational television program, “The Port that Built the City and State,” which aired from 1950 to 1965.
In 1968, President Richard M. Nixon offered her a seat on the Federal Maritime Commission. In an oral history with Pennsylvania State University, Mrs. Bentley recalled her ire when she learned that a man “who had never been on a ship, who knew nothing from a bow and a stern,” was to be offered the chairmanship as a political favor.
She told a Nixon representative that she would take “the chairmanship or nothing” and that if the administration preferred otherwise, they could “shove it.”
Nixon relented, and Mrs. Bentley left the Sun to serve as the commission’s chairman, becoming one of the highest-ranking women in the executive branch at that time. “I suppose I’ll have to stop swearing now that I am going to be a madam,” she remarked.
She held the post from 1969 to 1975, using her clout to bolster federal support for U.S. shipyards and attracting controversy over allegations that she had also used her position to solicit political donations from the shipping industry.
She soon began eyeing the House seat held since 1962 by Clarence “Doc” Long, a Democrat who for environmental reasons opposed deepening Baltimore’s port — a move that Mrs. Bentley supported. She lost to Long in 1980 and again in 1982 before winning in 1984, a narrow victory attributed in part to President Ronald Reagan’s landslide reelection that year.
In Congress, Mrs. Bentley defied easy categorization. She was mainly conservative but was staunchly pro-union. She supported women’s causes, including the Equal Rights Amendment, but opposed abortion rights. In the 1990s, when Serbia was widely seen as the belligerent in the Balkan wars and the perpetrator of ethnic cleansing, she defended her parents’ homeland, saying that there was “blame to go around.”
She was known most of all as a trade protectionist — her station wagon’s license plate read “BUY USA” — and as a promoter of Maryland’s shipping interests. She won seats on influential House committees including Appropriations and obtained funds to deepen the Baltimore port. She successfully mediated a labor dispute there in the winter of 1989-90.
The nerviness that she had shown as a journalist often surfaced on Capitol Hill.
“It’s like this, Mrs. Bentley,” an admiral told her in a discussion of foreign-made equipment for Navy vessels, “they make these parts cheaper in Korea.”
The Sun recalled her retort: “Well, Admiral, they make admirals cheaper in Korea, too, and maybe we should buy some!”
In 1987, to highlight what she regarded as the country’s ill-advised trade practices with Japan, Mrs. Bentley took a sledgehammer to a Japanese-made radio outside the Capitol, declaring that “this is what we feel about Toshiba products.” Later, House Speaker Tom Foley (D-Wash.) told her, “Helen, you’re the most famous American in Japan since Admiral Perry.”
Mrs. Bentley vacated her seat in 1994 to seek the Republican nomination for Maryland governor. She lost to Ellen R. Sauerbrey, the minority leader in the House of Delegates, who in turn lost to Democrat Parris N. Glendening. Mrs. Bentley remained active in maritime issues as a consultant, and in 2006, then-Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) renamed the port of Baltimore in her honor.
Helen Delich was born in Ruth, Nev., on Nov. 28, 1923. She traced her interest in maritime issues to her mother, who had come to the United States on a steamship.
Mrs. Bentley was 8 when her father died of silicosis, an occupational disease contracted by miners. She worked in a dress shop while her mother took in boarders.
Scholarships allowed her to pursue university studies, which she interrupted to work on the 1942 Senate campaign of then-Rep. James G. Scrugham (D-Nev.). He appointed her his Senate secretary, giving the future congresswoman her first experience on Capitol Hill.
In 1944, she received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. She worked briefly for a wire service before being hired by the Sun.
Eight years after leaving Congress, Mrs. Bentley tried to reclaim her old seat in 2002, when Ehrlich, her successor, left the House to run for governor. She lost to Baltimore County Executive C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D).
Mrs. Bentley co-authored the book “The Great Port of Baltimore: Its First 300 Years” (2006). With her husband, William Bentley, she ran an antiques business in Cockeysville, Md. He died in 2003 after 44 years of marriage. She had no children, and a list of survivors could not immediately be determined.
Reflecting on her career, Mrs. Bentley once told The Post that she did it “all on my own.”
“Women have to be willing to work and produce,” she said, “and not just expect favors because they are women.”
She received no favors on her last reporting assignment for the Sun, when she scored a spot aboard the SS Manhattan in 1969 as it became the first commercial ship to traverse the Northwest Passage.
Transmitting over the radio a dispatch to the newsroom in Baltimore, she used what she described as “a common Anglo-Saxon expletive” to convey her “impatience with a rewrite man.” The frequency, which was monitored by the Federal Communications Commission, was no longer made available to reporters on the ship.
“The male correspondents onboard were furious, blaming me for shutting down communications,” Mrs. Bentley wrote years later in a recollection published in the Sun. “I realized later that sponsor Humble Oil was trying to one-up the only female correspondent onboard, and management later admitted that it had seized the chance to eliminate press traffic from the ship.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/helen-delich-bentley-journalist-turned-politician-who-promoted-baltimore-port-dies-at-92/2016/08/06/ddc7cd6a-5c10-11e6-831d-0324760ca856_story.html
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Congressional Record -- House
Thursday, March 29, 1990
101st Congress 2nd Session
136 Cong Rec H 1341
Reference: Vol. 136 No. 36
A TRIBUTE TO GEN. DRAZA MIHAILOVICH
[By Helen Delich Bentley]
[*H1341] The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from Maryland [Mrs. Bentley] is recognized for 60 minutes.
MRS. BENTLEY. Madam Speaker, I am pleased that the distinguished gentleman from Illinois, Congressman Philip Crane, suggested that we use this special order today to discuss a very heroic and courageous man, Gen. Draza Mihailovich.
Today's special order is a very timely one, Madam Speaker. Today marks the 42d anniversary of General Mihailovich being posthumously awarded the Legion of Merit Award by President Harry Truman.
And 2 days ago, on the 27th of March, we commemorated what would have been General Mihailovich's 97th birthday.
Unfortunately, however, most of our Nation's citizens do not even know who this brave freedom fighter for democracy was.
Perhaps more telling than anything else about General Mihailovich is the fact that he was the bitter enemy of both the Nazi occupiers of Yugoslavia during World War II and the dictatorial Communist government of Broz Tito who ruled Yugoslavia after the war.
It was Tito's government that was eventually responsible for the mock trial in a kangaroo court that culminated in the execution of General Mihailovich.
What better day is there than this one to remember why President Truman posthumously awarded the Legion of Merit Award to General Mihailovich?
While World War II was raging in central Europe, over 500 American airmen were shot down behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia.
These men were rescued, protected, and returned to safety by the freedom-fighting Chetnik forces under the command of Draza Mihailovich, whose forces fought first against the Nazi occupiers and then against the Communist forces that held sway over Yugoslavia.
I would like to quote from a letter sent to me recently from Maj. Richard L. Felman, U.S. Air Force, retired. Major Felman was one of these American airmen whose life was saved by General Mihailovich.
Major Felman includes in his letter a public thank you to General Mihailovich, saying, "Thank you, General Mihailovich, for saving the lives of over 500 of our boys while they were serving in the defense of our country. No one else has ever done that and we as a people and a nation are mighty grateful!"
Mr. Speaker, Major Felman is indeed correct in stating that no one has done so courageous a deed for American soldiers behind enemy lines as Gen. Draza Mihailovich.
When President Truman awarded General Mihailovich the Legion of Merit Award on March 29, 1948, the brave general was already dead.
Mr. Speaker, we have only recently been able to officially confirm this high honor bestowed upon the general. This information became available after the records in the National Archives were opened to the public 40 years after the end of World War II. Here is a copy of the award on the front cover of a Serbian publication "Pogledi."
LEGION OF MERIT CHIEF COMMANDER
General Dragoljub Mihailovich distinguished himself in an outstanding manner as Commander-in-Chief of the Yugoslavian Army Forces and later as Minister of War by organizing and leading important resistance forces against the enemy which occupied Yugoslavia, from December 1941 to December 1944. Through the undaunted efforts of his troops, many United States airmen were rescued and returned safely to friendly control. General Mihailovich and his forces, although lacking adequate supplies, and flighting under extreme hardships, contributed materially to the Allied cause, and were instrumental in obtaining a final Allied Victory.
Harry S. Truman
March 29, 1948.
General Mihailovich was tried and executed by Communist authorities on the grounds that he collaborated with the Nazis during the war.
The American airmen who were under the general's protection knew that this was a patent lie, and had the evidence to disprove it.
Not only did the Yugoslav Communist government refuse the American airmen permission to come testify, but they also disallowed any use of their written testimony altogether.
Over 600 pages of sworn testimony by American airmen were presented by our State Department to the general's legal counsel, and thrown out at his trial.
Mr. Speaker, a great injustice has been done against the name of Draza Mihailovich. But time has proved what our boys, shot down in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia, knew all along.
General Mihailovich was both a Yugoslav patriot and freedom fighter, not the traitor that the Communists executed him as.
[*H1342] I urge all Members of Congress to join me in commemorating the life of Gen. Draza Mihailovich on this very special anniversary.
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If you would like to get in touch with me, Aleksandra, please feel free to contact me at ravnagora@hotmail.com
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