Minnette Doderer
Minnette Doderer’s 36-year political career was filled with firsts.
She was the first woman from Johnson County to be elected to the state Legislature and the first woman to chair a legislative committee. Her two runs for lieutenant governor in 1970 and 1978, although unsuccessful, also were a first for a woman in Iowa. And she was the first female president pro tempore of the Iowa Senate in 1975 and 1976.
Doderer started in politics by serving as a state representative for four years, elected to the Iowa House of Representatives in a 1964 special election. She went on to serve in the Iowa Senate from 1969 to 1978.
She returned to the Iowa House in 1981, serving until her retirement in 2000.
Doderer volunteered for the Iowa Democratic Party before deciding to run for office, serving as vice-chairwoman of the Johnson County Democratic Central Committee from 1956 to 1959. She co-chaired the Iowa presidential campaign of Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and served as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1968 and 1984.
Doderer’s work on rape law reform, the federal and state Equal Rights Amendments, juvenile justice and child care resulted in many laws that improved the legal status of women.
She was inducted into the Iowa Women’s Hall of Fame in 1979.
Born on a farm near Holland, Minnette Frerichs Doderer graduated from high school in Waterloo.
“Politics were always discussed during meals in my home,” she once said. “Most of the Iowa farmers of that day were Republicans, including my father. But after Dad left the farm, he switched to the Democratic Party while President Franklin Roosevelt was in office and never switched back.”
She married Fred Doderer, a soldier she met while vacationing with her parents in Clear Lake, in August 1944. They had two children, Dennis and Kay.
She died at age 82 at Oaknoll Retirement Residence in Iowa City after battling colon cancer.