Congratulations to
Georgene Chissell, who was presented with the Florence Fifer Bohrer Award at the September League of Women Voters meeting. The award is named for the first female senator in Illinois and founder of the League of Women Voters of McLean County.
Chissell was recognized for her extensive community service, including as a League observer for the Bloomington Housing Authority and monitoring the crisis of the unhoused in Bloomington-Normal. Her civic engagement is extensive. Chissell chairs the Bloomington-Normal NAACP political action committee, serves as Precinct 13 committee person and on many other community organizations.
In accepting the award, Chissell shared that she has overcome big personal challenges, including her mother's departure from her family before her sixth birthday and overcoming a severe burn injury as a young adult.
She ran for Bloomington City Council, but lost in a close election. As a result of that experience she lamented that many people in her ward didn't vote. That has motivated her to work on voter registration efforts. On a recent weekend, she registered 167 people to vote.
Chissell credits her father with setting a great example for how to give back to your community. "That's why I do what I do," she shared.
This annual League award honors Florence Fifer Bohrer (1877-1960), a trail-blazer who embodied the vital concept of good citizenship. She was Illinois' first female state senator. Elected in 1925, just five years after women got the right to vote, she modernized child welfare and adoption laws. She chaired the Depression-era Emergency Relief Commission, and founded the Girls' Industrial Home and a local tuberculosis sanitarium. She established and was president of the McLean County chapter of the League of Women Voters and also served on the League national Board. She tirelessly drove through many states forming additional LWV chapters after serving in the Illinois legislature.