Paula Hawkins  Paula Fickes Hawkins (January 24, 1927 – December 4, 2009) was an American politician from Florida. She is the only woman elected to the U.S. Senate from Florida. She was the second woman ever elected to the Senate from the South. She was the first woman in the country to be elected to a full Senate term without having a close family member who previously served in major public office. Hawkins was the eldest of three children born to Paul and Leone Fickes in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her father was a Naval Chief Warrant Officer. In 1934, the family moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where her father taught at Georgia Tech. Her parents split when Paula was in high school, and Leone and the children returned to Utah. She finished high school at Richmond, Utah in 1944, then enrolled at Utah State University. Paula was hired to be the Athletic director's secretary and met her future husband. On September 5, 1947, Paula Fickes and Walter Eugene Hawkins were married and moved to Atlanta. Gene earned a degree in electrical engineering and eventually opened his own business. The couple had three children before moving in 1955 to Winter Park, Florida, where Paula became a community activist and Republican volunteer. In 1971, Hawkins, then a Republican National Committeewoman, joined three Republican members of the state's U.S. House delegation, J. Herbert Burke, Louis Frey, Jr., and C.W. "Bill" Young, in preparing a letter to the Nixon White House asking that William C. Cramer, a former representative, be the Florida patronage advisor, rather than sitting U.S. Senator Edward Gurney. The letter forced Gurney to initiate "peace meetings" with his intraparty rivals, and the letter was never mailed. Hawkins launched her own electoral career by campaigning as a consumer advocate. In 1972, she became the first woman elected to statewide office in Florida by winning a seat on the Florida Public Service Commission. In 1974, she was an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate. The nomination went to businessman Jack Eckerd, who then lost the general election to the Democrat Richard B. Stone. The seat was vacated by the retiring one-term Republican Edward Gurney, with whom Hawkins and others in the Florida party had quarreled in the past. In 1976, Hawkins was reelected to the Public Services Commission despite the Jimmy Carter victory in Florida over U.S. President Gerald R. Ford, Jr.