Standing in front of 3,000 insurance agents at a conference in Texas, the former schoolteacher-turned-saleswoman thought to herself, “My gosh. I did it.”

It was that moment in 1986 when then-keynote speaker and now-Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas) said she realized her long struggle to survive as a single mother was just a memory.

“I was a high school teacher with three children, a 2-year-old and six-month-old twins, and my husband left. I was making $13,000 a year,” she said. “It’s the reason I talk so much to working mothers … you just fight your way through the day.”

In the beginning, it was not easy. Granger worked from home, selling commercial insurance.

She studied at night. And when the business expanded, she opened an office in Arlington, Texas.

Her mother, Alliene Mullendore, who moved in with Granger after a stroke, helped keep an eye on the kids.

“Although she was basically bedridden, she had a very strong personality,” Granger said. “The children were very close to her. She would teach them lessons and read to them.”

She added, “There were times when my mother was very ill and I had a nurse care for her during the day, so there was always another adult in the house.

“It was complicated,” she said.

Granger’s challenging personal experiences prior to public life have helped her in her role as vice chairwoman of the House Republican Conference.

As the highest-ranked Republican woman in the House, Granger has advocated for issues affecting families, co-chairing the Iraqi Women’s Caucus and the Women Impacting the Nation (WIN) coalition.

Elected the mayor of Fort Worth in 1991, Granger inherited a city in distress. In a 1994 article, the Dallas Morning News wrote of an expected budget shortfall of $27 million and a crime rate that was one of the highest in the country. The city was facing a military base closure that would cost the city thousands of jobs.

“When I ran for mayor my issues were economic development and crime — they were always hard issues,” she said. At the time, Granger was not affiliated with either party.

Army Secretary Pete Geren, who held Fort Worth’s congressional seat at the time, recalled, “All of the sudden, Fort Worth took a nosedive … They canceled the A-12 [bomber] … every major bank in town went insolvent.

Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas) Photo by Benjamin J. Myers

Granger oversaw the creation of a “crime district,” designed to pay for crime-fighting tools — such as increased police presence and community centers — through a tax increase.

“Kay was really regarded as a mayor that got things done,” said Bill Meadows, a former city councilman who sat next to Granger during her two-year tenure there.

Meadows credited Granger for instituting the reforms that turned the city around.

“By the time she left to run for Congress, [the crime] was significantly less,” Meadows said.

When Geren retired, Granger was courted by both sides of the aisle to take over the seat once held by former Speaker Jim Wright (D-Texas).

“I’m sure it was a very tough decision for her,” Meadows said. The issue of fiscal responsibility ultimately caused her to choose the GOP.

“I was committed to balancing the budget. I had to balance the budget each year as mayor,” she said. “I saw the Republican Party as the fiscally responsible party.”