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Richard Lewis Neuberger (1912-1960) and Maurine Brown Neuberger (1907-2000) were the first couple to serve together in the Oregon Legislature, Maurine in the House of Representatives and Richard in the House and Senate. Richard was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1954 and died shortly before completing his term. After Richard’s death, Maurine was elected the first woman U.S. Senator from Oregon, becoming the third woman ever to serve in the Senate.

Harvey Maurine Brown was born in Cloverdale, Oregon, to Ethel Kelty Brown (1875-1966), daughter of Oregon pioneers, and Dr. Walter T. Brown (d. 1929). Her brother, Robert, was born in 1907. It has been suggested that Maurine was named after her great-grandfather, the Rev. Amos Harvey. After two years at Monmouth Christian College, Maurine graduated from the University of Oregon and taught English at Lincoln High School in Portland for 14 years.

Richard Lewis Neuberger was born in Portland, Oregon, to Isaac Neuberger and Ruth Lewis Neuberger (d. 1980). His sister, Jane Neuberger (Goodsell), was born in 1921. Richard entered the University of Oregon in 1931 and was put in charge of the sports desk at the Oregon Daily Emerald. In 1932, he was elected editor-in-chief. At the urging of Dean Wayne Morse, he entered UO Law School in 1933. The next year, Richard was charged with copying answers. Although Morse supported him throughout the disciplinary hearing, the dean recommended Richard’s resignation from law school after he failed his Criminal Law class.

In 1935, Richard became a stringer for the New York Times . In 1940, he was elected a Democratic state representative from Portland. Richard and Maurine were married at Missoula, Montana, in 1945. After military service in Alaska as aide-de-camp for General O’Connor, supervising construction of the Alaskan Military Highway, Richard was elected to the first of four terms in the Oregon Senate in 1948.

Maurine was elected to the first of three terms in the Oregon House of Representatives in 1950. She became a household name in Oregon after her demonstration of the difficulty housewives experienced in coloring oleo margarine to look like butter. On the opening day of the 1951 Legislative Session, the Neubergers introduced a bill to end Oregon’s 38-year-old ban on colored margarine.

Richard was narrowly elected to the U.S. Senate in 1954, giving the Democrats a one-vote majority in the Senate and shifting the center of Oregon politics. Maurine resigned from the Oregon Legislature and served as her husband’s aide in Washington, D.C. Richard’s interests included journalism, conservation, and historic preservation. As the author of six6 books and more than 400 magazine and journal articles, he thought of himself as a journalist first and a politician second. Richard died March 9, 1960, of a massive cerebral hemorrhage.

Two days after her husband’s death, Maurine met the filing deadline for the primary ballot and was elected in November 1960 to the Senate, where she pursued education, health, and consumer issues. She sponsored one of the first bills to require warning labels on cigarettes and also worked for pollution controls on automobiles. She served on the Agriculture Committee, Banking and Currency Committee, Special Committee on Aging, President’s Commission on the Status of Women, and national board of the American Association for the United Nations.

In 1964, Maurine married Boston psychiatrist, Dr. Philip Solomon, and chose not to run for re-election in 1966. She taught at Boston College, Radcliffe, and Reed College, becoming the venerated elder stateswoman of Oregon. In 1972, the Neuberger Building at Portland State University was dedicated to Richard. In 1985, the U.S. Forest Service dedicated the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area in his memory.