by Tom Coombe
Echo editor
Anne Swenson never cared about popularity contests, taking the easy way out or capitalizing on her gender to get ahead.
In fact, one of the statements from Anne that I’ll never forget, and one she repeated more than once during the decades I worked with her was this: “I don’t belong to women’s groups.”
Anne, who passed away Wednesday afternoon at the age of 85 and after emerging from a series of health problems that would have taken the strongest among us much earlier, wouldn’t have it any other way.
A trailblazer? Forget about that. She plowed through snow piles a mile high nearly five decades ago, when she purchased the Ely Echo.
Today, women own businesses, sit on the U.S. Supreme Court and serve in the U.S. Senate and one is just a heartbeat away from leading the nation.
That was unheard of nearly 50 years ago, when Anne became one of the only female business owners in town.