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Concept
Barbara Vucanovich
Summary
Barbara Farrell Vucanovich (June 22, 1921 – June 10, 2013) was an American Republican politician who was the first Latina elected to the United States House of Representatives, in which she served representing Nevada from 1983 to 1997.
Vucanovich was born in Camp Dix, New Jersey. Her father, Thomas Farrell, who hailed from Troy, New York, was of Irish ancestry. Between the world wars he was the chief engineer for the New York State Department of Public Works, and during World War II rejoined the United States Army to become Deputy Commanding General of the Manhattan Project. Vucanovich's mother, Maria Ynez White, was of English and Mexican ancestry from southern California, with her maternal great-grandmother having been a Mexican who became a U.S. citizen upon the transfer of California to the United States in 1848.
Vucanovich grew up in the capital city of Albany, New York. She married James Henry Bugden at the age of 18 but became separated when her husband was assigned overseas during the war. She was employed by several New York businesses during the 1940s. In 1949, she moved to Reno, Nevada and obtained a divorce. In 1950 she married Kenneth Dillon, a founding partner in the law firm Vargas, Dillon, and Bartlett. Their children were Patricia, Michael, Kenneth, Thomas, and Susan. Widowed in 1964, she married George Vucanovich in 1965. They met while working on Paul Laxalt's unsuccessful campaign in 1964 for the U.S. Senate. George died of leukemia in 1998.
Vucanovich's second husband, Ken Dillon, introduced her to Nevada Republican politics in the 1950s, when the party was slowly building after decades of minority status. Dillon introduced her to Paul Laxalt, then a young district attorney from Carson City. After working on Laxalt's gubernatorial campaigns and his razor-close win in the senatorial election over Democrat Harry Reid in 1974, Vucanovich was hired as the district director for the newly elected Senator.
Official source
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