Kay Granger, the first Republican woman from Texas to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and who served for nearly three decades, has been laid to rest after a funeral service in Fort Worth Saturday evening. The service was held at First United Methodist Church of Fort Worth then fol lowed by a reception. Granger, who began her career as a high school teacher and a businesswoman, accomplished many firsts as a politician. She was the first woman elected mayor of Fort Worth, Texas, and the first Republican woman to chair one of the most powerful committees in Congress, the House Appropriations Committee. First elected to the House in 1996, she did not seek reelection in 2024 and experienced worsening “health challenges” in her final months in Congress, according to a statement her office released in December 2024. Granger, who didn’t cast a vote in Washington after July 2024, didn’t specify or elaborate on those health challenges but said in the statement that frequent travel to Washington had become “both difficult and unpredictable” since early September of that year. Granger, who experienced issues with dementia, lived in an independent senior living facility in Fort Worth in 2024. Granger had been the nation’s longest-serving GOP congresswoman, first elected in 1996. ...read more read less