She lived to see Red Sox win Series again

Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2005 | 8:53 a.m.

Helen Grace Bartlett Leckemby knew what it was like to be a suffragette and what it was like to suffer.

She was a proponent of women's voting rights during the early 20th century. She cast her first ballot in 1920 after women were granted the right to vote by the 19th Amendment and never missed voting in an election. She voted for the final time last November for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

A native of New England, she was a die-hard Boston Red Sox fan. Weeks after giving birth to her first child in 1918, she was on a train from Maine to Fenway Park to watch pitcher/leftfielder Babe Ruth lead the Red Sox to the World Series title. It would be 86 agonizing years before she would see Boston win another.

One of Leckemby's happiest moments in her twilight years came last fall when the Red Sox, down three games to none to the New York Yankees, came back to win the American League Championship Series.

"Beating the Yankees was the big thing for her -- the World Series was anticlimactic," Bradshaw said. "After watching the Red Sox beat St. Louis in the World Series she simply said, 'Now I've seen history.' "

Leckemby, the daughter of a wagon-wheel maker, the widow of a preacher and a purported descendant of Declaration of Independence signer Dr. Josiah Bartlett, died last week in Las Vegas. She was 107.

Relatives said that on Jan. 18, she had a bowl of chili with cheese and a root beer for dinner, told her granddaughter she loved her and quietly died in her arms.

"Nana was just a remarkable woman who lived in three centuries," said granddaughter Judith Bradshaw, who was Leckemby's care-giver for the last seven years of her life.

"She felt very strongly about women's right to vote, and said she had met some of the women in the suffragette movement while she was going to nursing school in Boston in 1917. She was proud that she never missed a vote."

Clark County Election Department voting records show that she was the county's oldest living registered voter.

Leckemby was the oldest registered voter by two years as of the November general election and was the only voter older than 105 to cast a ballot in that election, county voting records show.

Born Oct. 24, 1897, in Damariscotta Mills, Maine, she was the youngest of three children of Lee John Bartlett and the former Ella Boynton.

Her father owned the town's wagon wheel manufacturing plant, and, early on, she rode to school in a horse-drawn wagon. During the winter, she ice-skated to school on the frozen Damariscotta River, her family said.

Bradshaw said her grandmother became interested in politics at a young age after being told she was a descendant of Josiah Bartlett, who in 1776 served as a New Hampshire delegate to the Continental Congress.

Josiah Bartlett was the first delegate to express an opinion on the colonies declaring independence from England and the third signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Family members say Leckemby is believed to be either a great-great-grandniece or great-great-great-granddaughter of Josiah Bartlett.

In 1917, a year after graduating from Lincoln Academy in Newcastle, Maine, Leckemby met her future husband on a train from Boston to Damariscotta Mills during a break from nursing school. Three months later they were married.

The Rev. Joseph Clarence Leckemby died in 1964 after a 47-year marriage.

The couple raised four children and ran churches in Maine, Troy, Ala., and Panama City, Fla., before he retired to Denver in 1961. In Maine, the Leckembys were longtime Red Sox season ticket holders and at times had Boston slugger Ted Williams in their Bangor home for dinner, Bradshaw said.

After Joseph Leckemby died of a heart attack while golfing in Denver, Helen moved to Las Vegas and was a resident here until 1979. During that time, she was a founding member of the West Oakey Baptist Church, her family said.

After living in Maine from 1980 through 1996, Leckemby moved in with her granddaughter in Washington, D.C., at age 100, then moved with Bradshaw to Las Vegas in 2002.

Leckemby called the ratification of the 19th Amendment the greatest event during her lifetime and considered Franklin D. Roosevelt the nation's greatest president, her family said.

Leckemby is survived by three daughters, Betty Jean Mace of Pahrump, Mary Edge Vonhemert of Friendship, Maine, and Helen Ann Miles of Denver; 14 grandchildren; 16 great-grandchildren; and 16 great-great grandchildren. She was preceded in death by a daughter, Marion Ruth Moore.

Services for were Tuesday at Bunker's Mortuary. Interment will be in Denver's Fairmount Cemetery next to her late husband.