First woman on DuPage County board dies at 88

Giddy Dyer's heart may have always been in North Carolina, but her greatest influence was in Illinois.

A memorial service for the first female DuPage County Board member will be held from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Sunday at the Hinsdale Golf Club. The service comes a few months after she was laid to rest in her family's North Carolina plot, where she and her husband had returned after their retirement in the 1990s. She was 88.

"Up here is where she made an impact and this was where her career was made," said Dyer's daughter, Wynn Graham. "I felt we needed to celebrate that."

Dyer, a Republican, served on the DuPage County Board from 1960 to 1968 and then went on to serve six terms as a state representative.

Former longtime Naperville state Rep. Mary Lou Cowlishaw used to help Dyer campaign.

"She was the kind of woman my mother used to describe as a lady, and there was no greater goal in my mother's life for me than to be a lady," Cowlishaw said. "It was very difficult, even as the pacesetter she was, not to like her."

Dyer's granddaughter, Leigh Dyer, said her grandmother "shaped me into a feminist."

Leigh Dyer recalled her grandmother entering the political fray, not because she was going to become a torchbearer but because her party needed someone experienced.

"It was the '60s and the dawn of the women's movement, but in reality she had paid her dues, and it was kind of her turn," she said. "She was really proud of her work getting DuPage County's first air pollution control ordinance passed."

But that's not to say Dyer didn't embrace her feminine political power. When she went on to serve in Springfield, she championed the Equal Rights Amendment.

Graham said the groundbreaking legislator had a nifty retort for anyone who would question her working in the male-dominated world of politics.

"She would say, 'A woman's place is in the house -- the statehouse,'" Graham recalled.

But while she defended women's rights, it was done with charm and grace, Cowlishaw said.

"She was not someone who was blustery and didn't think she had to be macho like the men," Cowlishaw said. "She could be ladylike and still do the things just as well as any man."

Graham said her father, Robert, never fought her mother's political aspirations. The couple met in New York playing bridge and were married for 63 years until his death in 2004.

Because she had attended the all-male Davidson College in North Carolina, Dyer was used to blazing gender-equity trails. She could attend classes because her father was a professor there, but she had to graduate from Atlanta's Agnes Scott College.

Dyer also had a strong female role model in her life. Her mother was so highly regarded by the leaders of her hometown in North Carolina that they once asked her to be mayor, Leigh Dyer said.

Born in 1919, her given name bears her Scottish heritage. Goudyloch Saffold Erwin was teased by schoolmates as the "Goudy Loch Ness Monster," her family said. The name means "Golden Lake," but it didn't have the same impact in American English.

She embraced Giddy as a nickname, but would find it troublesome in politics.

"On the ballot, she first ran as Mrs. Robert Dyer," her daughter said. "She was afraid that when people saw Giddy they would think she was lightheaded and the voters wouldn't think she was sharp."

And no one disputes Dyer's sharpness.

"Right up to the end they had this ongoing bridge tournament and she and her partner came in second," said friend Betsy Perry. "She was an expert player."

Cowlishaw said when Dyer decided to seek state office, she turned to her old friend for help.

"She had a great many friends on both sides of the aisle," Cowlishaw said. "She was among a few that were practically nonpartisan. I cannot recall anyone, even people who ran against her, who didn't genuinely like her."

Perry said Dyer's ability to forge relationships was an amazing talent.

"She had a way of making everyone she met believe they were her best friend."