Ruth Bryan Owen, daughter of William Jennings Bryan, was born in Jacksonville, Illinois, on October 2, 1885. During World War I, she served as a nurse in the Egyptian-Palestine campaign. She lived in Coral Gables, was vice president of the first Board of Regents of the University of Miami from 1925 to 1928, and taught speech at the university from 1926 to 1928. A Democrat from Florida, she was a member of the Seventy-first and Seventy-second Congresses from 1928 to 1933 and was the first woman elected to Congress from the South. She was also the first congresswoman to serve on a major committee when she became a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee. She worked with environmentalist Marjorie Stoneman Douglas to help create Everglades National Park. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed her Minister to Denmark, making her the first American woman to hold a major diplomatic assignment, and she was President Harry Truman's appointee to the United Nations General Assembly. Ruth Bryan Owen died while visiting Copenhagen, Denmark, on July 26, 1954.