Byron, Beverly Butcher (1932—)

U.S. Representative, Democrat of Maryland, 96th–101st Congresses, January 3, 1979–January 3, 1993. Born Beverly Barton Butcher in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 27, 1932; attended Hood College, Frederick, Maryland, 1963–64; married Goodloe E. Byron (a congressional representative, 1971–78).

Beverly Byron grew up in Washington, D.C., the daughter of a military man who served as an aide to General Dwight D. Eisenhower during World War II. After a year at Maryland's Hood College, Byron married Goodloe E. Byron and worked on his campaigns for the Maryland Legislature and the House of Representatives. When he died in 1978, one month before the general election, Byron agreed to run for his seat and won. Coincidentally, her mother-in-law, Katharine E. Byron , had also succeeded her husband, William D. Byron, after his death in 1941.

Beverly Byron's tenure in Congress was distinguished by her seat on the Committee on Armed services and, in 1987, by appointment as the first woman to chair an Armed Services subcommittee: the Subcommittee on Military Personnel and Compensation. She also served on the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs and the Select Committee on Aging. From 1983 to 1986, she chaired the House Special Panel on Arms Control and Disarmament. Byron also had a strong interest in promoting physical fitness and the improvement of national recreational areas. From 1979 to 1989, she served as chair of the Maryland Commission on Physical Fitness and was on the board of the American Hiking Society. Byron served six succeeding terms but was an unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1992.