Longtime District Politician Mason Dies at 91

Mrs. Mason was unfazed by criticism from the business and real estate communities that she was unfair to their interests.

"She had an extraordinary commitment to social justice and equality. She worked hard at that," said Frank Smith, a former D.C. Council member who met Mason when both were civil rights activists in the 1960s. "She was involved with every progressive cause for the past 40 years."

Throughout those decades, Mason's constant companion, unofficial assistant and political alter ego was Charles N. Mason, her husband. He was a Boston-born, Harvard-educated white man who came to Washington to work as a government engineer and went on to earn a law degree at Howard University. She was an African American from rural Virginia who came here to be a teacher. They met at All Souls Unitarian Church, a center for activists at the time, got married in 1965 and became one of the city's most remarkable political couples.

They were usually among the first to arrive at the John A. Wilson Building and the last to leave. "Charlie," who died in 2006, was the seemingly bemused but meticulous note-taker and master of legislative detail whom the council officially designated a "gratuitous servant." She was the spry and intense issues person and no-nonsense committee chair.

In the matter of staying in office, Mason benefited from a provision of the D.C. Home Rule Charter that prohibits any one party from holding more than three of the five at-large council seats, including that of the chairman. She handily defeated the rare challenges she received for the Statehood Party nomination and then relied on a deep reservoir of goodwill among voters across the city to carry her in the general election.

She never stopped campaigning. Her day often started at 7 a.m. and went until midnight. She attended dozens of community meetings a year. She had a highly regarded staff and rarely missed a chance for constituent service. Her generosity to churches and charities was well known. At one time, she made several trips a week to bring food to a group home where nine previously abused children were living.

Her willingness just to show up sometimes embarrassed her colleagues on the council even as it pleased voters. In 1993, for example, her education committee scheduled a hearing at which UDC students were to testify on the institution's budget. She was the only council member present, a fact widely noted by her supporters. The students had to round up the other committee members.

Before the 1990 election, there were suggestions that Mason retire. Supporters rallied 'round her when former mayor Marion Barry tried to get back into politics after serving a prison sentence for a drug conviction by running for an at-large seat as an independent. Mason polled 70,000 votes to 50,000 for Barry. A campaign aide said the race had pitted "everyone's grandmother against everyone's boyfriend."

But the calls for her retirement continued, and they grew more insistent as Mason began showing intemperate and erratic behavior. In 1993, at a hearing on city furloughs, she questioned a teenager so sharply that the witness burst into tears.

In 1995, council members had to persuade her to start a previously scheduled meeting of her education committee with witnesses waiting. Once the hearing began, she berated speakers and kept the session going for 10 hours, until 2 a.m. On another occasion, she supported legislation on charter schools and then appeared at a news conference to criticize it.

In 1997, she reluctantly heeded pleas from council members and stepped down as chairman of the education committee. She lost her final bid for reelection the following year, at age 82.

Hilda Holland M. Mason was born June 14, 1916, near Altavista, Va. She attended Virginia Seminary in Lynchburg and St. Paul's College in Lawrenceville before moving to Washington in 1945. She graduated from Miner Teachers College. Miner later became part of D.C. Teachers College and UDC. She received a master's degree in education at D.C. Teachers and did further graduate work at the State University of New York in Plattsburgh and at Catholic University.

She was a teacher, counselor and administrator in the D.C. public school system for 19 years until she was elected to the Board of Education from Ward 4.

Mason was a member of the American Personnel and Guidance Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the D.C. Counselors Association, the NAACP, the National Organization for Women, the National Women's Political Caucus, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, the Links Inc., Women's Strike for Peace, the United Nations Association of the United States of America and All Souls Unitarian Church.

Survivors include two daughters, Joyce C. Hamer Betts of Philadelphia and Carolyn Dungee Nicholas of Culpeper, Va.; two grandsons; and three great-grandchildren.

J.Y. Smith, a former obituary editor of The Post, died in January 2006.