By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
The teachers and students at O’Loughlin Elementary School have long thought of themselves as trailblazers, but long before the school honored her name, Kathryn O’Loughlin McCarthy was blazing trails of her own for women and the disenfranchised.
O’Loughlin McCarthy, a Hays resident, was most noted as being the first woman from Kansas elected to Congress, but she was breaking barriers and making a name for herself in politics long before she was elected to Congress in 1932.
She was born on April 4, 1894, in Ellis County. She lived with her family on their ranch outside of Hays until she was 9 and the family moved into the city of Hays, where her father owned an auto dealership and garage.
The initial move to the city from her country school was difficult. She was bashful, and the other children taunted her, calling her “country jake.” However, when O’Loughlin McCarthy entered the Fort Hays Normal School, which is now Fort Hays State University, to study education, she found her fire. She quickly earned honors as an accomplished debater and speaker.
After completing her bachelor’s degree in 1917, she enrolled at University of Chicago School of Law. Her father opposed Kathryn’s decision, but she persisted and was only one of three women in her graduating class. After law school, she clerked for the Kansas House Judiciary Committee for a year.
O’Loughlin McCarthy returned to Chicago where she became very active in politics during the 1920s. She campaigned on behalf of the Illinois League of Women Voters for eight-hour work days for women, maternity and infant care, and for women to be allowed to serve on juries.
O’Loughlin McCarthy told a reporter in 1932 how her years in Chicago readied her for her run for Congress.
“I had been well-trained in political tactics and debate and in rough-and tumble street speaking in political campaigns in Chicago and rural Illinois. … I spoke from the tail of a truck a thousand times to street meetings, through Chicago and towns nearby. I had learned to think rapidly while on my feet, even before a hostile audience. The heckler was meat for me. I organized the business women of Chicago into Democratic clubs, I had organized thousands of Negro women into Democratic clubs.”
Also while in Chicago, she served as an executive for an insurance company, but left that work for lower pay to assist the less fortunate. She worked as an attorney for Chicago Legal Aide and was an attorney for the Cook County Board of Public Welfare.
O’Loughlin McCarthy came back to Kansas in 1930, and ran for and won a seat in the Kansas House. She was the first woman from the area to earn a seat in the Legislature. While in the Legislature, O’Loughlin McCarthy helped establish what would become the Fort Hays State Historic Site.
When she decided to run for Congress in 1932, she faced an uphill battle. She was a single, female, Irish-Catholic, running against a two-time Republican incumbent in a primarily Protestant district. She beat nine men in the primary to advance. During her campaign, she wrote thousands of personal letters and crisscrossed the district, one of the largest in the nation, putting more than 30,000 miles on her car.
Right before she took her seat in Congress, she married fellow attorney Dan McCarthy. They were the first couple to be certified to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court.
While in Congress, she supported Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. She fought to assist farmers and rural residents in her district who were suffering during the Depression. Key accomplishments included wheat allotment payments, government loans to farms, federal home loans, and getting one of the Kansas Civilian Conservation Corps stations in Hays.
She served only one term in Congress, as she was defeated in 1934 by Republican Frank Carlson.
She returned home and worked as an attorney in Hays, but her years of service did not end.
O’Loughlin McCarthy pushed to integrate FHSU. She offered African-American students a place to stay in her own home and even paid some needy students’ tuitions. She lost political clout with her fellow Democrats when she fought to stop the forced sterilization of institutionalized girls in Beloit and campaigned for better living conditions for both boys and girls in state custody.
She also campaigned for funding for a hot school lunch program at Jefferson School in Hays.
She died of cancer at the age of 57 on Jan. 10, 1952.
In a news story announcing her death, a friend said, “I think a better woman never lived in Hays. She gave almost to the point of sacrifice to make the burden a little easier for others. Of herself she never thought. She was impatient of her last illness because it hampered her in work she had cut out to do for others. She was a selfless person, generous to a fault and sincere in all she did.”
The building that would become O’Loughlin Elementary School opened as Marian High School, a girl’s Catholic School, in 1961. The Catholic Diocese closed the school when the girl’s and boy’s Catholic high schools merged into Thomas More Prep-Marian in 1981.
Hays USD 489 acquired the former Catholic high school in 1989 with the help of a school bond. After the school was extensively remodeled, it was opened as O’Loughlin Elementary School in 1990.
Nancy Harman, O’Loughlin principal from 1998 to 2015, taught kindergarten and first grade when O’Loughlin opened as a public school.
“O’Loughlin school has always been a leader in educational research and looking at what makes learning successful for students,” Harman said.
O’Loughlin was a “choice school” at the time of its opening. In 1990, when many schools were still offering half-day kindergarten, O’Loughlin had an all-day kindergarten program.
O’Loughlin implemented “looping,” a practice in which a teacher kept a group of students for two grades. O’Loughlin also eliminated grades in favor of portfolios and parent-teacher conferences, which meant the sky was the limit for student academic achievement, Harman said.
Cooperative learning and hands-on science education were included in the curriculum, which were new strategies in education at the time. Instead of studying primarily from textbooks and workbooks, teachers were more actively involved in curriculum development and reading, writing and social studies were integrated programs.
“We really did a lot of research on what was working in education and what would help students be successful,” Harman said. “Then we tried to implement those research-based practices into our classrooms.”
For their innovative approaches the school was recognized with a number of awards in its first 10 years. Some of these included Bank IV Better Schools Award in 1996; Kansas Exemplary Reading Award in 1993, ’95 and ’96; America’s Best Schools Award from Redbook magazine in 1995; Kansas Elementary Principal of the Year, Tanya Channell in 1995; and national Blue Ribbon School in 1997.
“It was an exciting, fun place to work,” Harman said.
Today, O’Loughlin is open to all students and continues to provide quality education to children kindergarten through fifth grades. A bust of Kathryn O’Loughlin McCarthy, carved by Hays artist Pete Felten, watches over the students as they come and go through the school’s main entrance.
However, the future of the building is unclear. O’Loughlin is not the oldest building in the Hays public school system, but it has not had significant upgrades or renovations in years. A failed school bond posed to voters in November would have remodeled the school into a center for the Early Childhood Education program, Westside program and Learning Center.
The school board continues to discuss elementary schools in its long-range facility plans, but how O’Loughlin will factor into the plan has yet to be decided.
“I would be sad to see it go,” Harman said. “I have so many wonderful memories there. It was my home base for many, many years. My heart would be sad, but I think our district needs to go forward. Whatever makes that possible, we will have to adjust and accommodate.”
Whatever happens to the building, Harman, who still volunteers at the school, said she hopes students will keep the spirit of Kathryn O’Loughlin McCarthy alive.
“She believed in what was right and she followed that belief,” Harman said. “That was her guiding light. I think as long as you have in your heart what is true and right and you follow that, it will take you many amazing places.”
Special thanks to the Hays Public Library, O’Loughlin Elementary School, Ellis County Historical Society and USD 489 for assistance with research for this story.