At the age of 32, DC-native Bay Buchanan (short for Baby, she is the seventh of nine children) was the youngest person ever to serve as Treasurer of the United States (1981-83). President Reagan liked her so much that in 1983 he appointed her Chairwoman of his Commission on Women’s Business Owners. While she sat in that Chair, Reagan proclaimed September 22 American Business Women’s Day and March 21 National Single Parent Day. He even wrote an article for Ladies’ Home Journal entitled “In Praise of American Women.”
Ms. Buchanan (who converted from Roman Catholicism to Mormonism in 1976 when she met her first husband, a California attorney) is a senior adviser to Mitt Romney. (Buchanan managed her brother Pat Buchanan’s three presidential campaigns – 1992, 1996, 2000, later backing immigration opponent Tom Tancredo’s short run for the White House in 2007.) Her 2012 memoir, “Bay and Her Boys: Unexpected Lessons I Learned as a (Single) Mom” – is a “tough love” account of being left by her first husband in the late 1980s with two sons under five and a third on the way. She was remarried in 2010–to a Washington DC attorney.