RESIGNED. Ella Grasso, 61, popular, twice-elected Democratic Governor of Connecticut whose victory in 1974 made her the first woman to govern a state without succeeding her husband; by reason of "physical disability" resulting from cancer of the liver; in Hartford, Conn. Daughter of immigrants from Italy's Piedmont region, she rose through the state legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives, marrying a school principal, Thomas Grasso, and rearing a daughter and son along the way. In a typically forthright announcement, she said she would yield to Lieutenant Governor William A. O'Neill as of Jan. 1 because she no longer had "the...
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