Her assistance with Straus's Democratic Party activities provided Hurn with first-hand political experience long before she ran for office as a Republican in 1922.
After two terms in office, she returned to her law practice in Spokane, remained active in public affairs, and was a world traveler of unusual perception and daring.
Her father, David William Hurn, was a prominent lawyer, judge, banker, newspaperman and mayor of Clear Lake.
[1] Hurn received her undergraduate degree, A.B., in 1905[1] at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she won a Phi Beta Kappa key.
While in Heidelberg, Reba Hurn met Nathan Straus, co-owner of Macy's department store in New York City.
By preventing the transmission of bovine tuberculosis and other milk-borne diseases, Straus was able to reduce the shocking infant and child mortality of the period.
In both Heidelberg and New York, Nathan Straus and his wife Lina were second parents to Reba Hurn, treating her like one of the family and including her in their social life.
Her first term overlapped with the last session of Governor Louis F. Hart's tenure, and she supported his efforts to simplify state government and reduce expenditures.
Yet she defied Governor Hartley to support a proposed constitutional amendment against child labor and to introduce legislation enabling local zoning restrictions.
Reba Hurn's unpublished memoirs of this trip contain observations on Middle Eastern events and attitudes that seem eerily relevant to present problems.
Listed sources there are: Laura Arksey, "Dutiful Daughter to Independent Woman: The Diaries of Reba Hurn, 1907–1908," Pacific Northwest Quarterly Vol.
3 (Fall 2005), 34–41; Reba Hurn, "From Aswan to the Caspian and Bosporus," typescript dated 1946–1948, ReSC 471, Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, Spokane; Julie Miller, "To Stop the Slaughter of the Babies: Nathan Straus and the Drive for Pasteurized Milk, 1893–1920," New York History, Vol.