“She was a straight shooter,’’ said Smith. “If you asked, she’d tell you.’’
Smith said Fudge steered the sorority back to its mission of scholarship and service.
Under her leadership, the sorority paid off the mortgage on its headquarters and adopted signature programs, including ones that provided mentoring and etiquette training for girls, said Smith.
The role also gave Fudge a national platform and connections to a network of tens of thousands of Black women. Fudge can often be spotted wearing the Delta’s signature crimson red and cream, such as during her Senate confirmation hearing.
When Sherrod Brown was running for the U.S. Senate in Ohio, he went to meet with Fudge, whom he called an influential mayor. She told him about her connections to Deltas across the state. He left clutching a list of names of sorority sisters.
In the years since, Brown, who is serving his third term in the Senate and lives in Fudge's district, has attended the Delta breakfast held in the U.S. Capitol.
“There were always these women from Ohio in red coats running around the Capitol,’’ he said.
Fudge is known for hiring talented people and helping groom them, particularly young people. She’s mentored several on and off Capitol Hill who say she not only encouraged, but guided them.
Bradley Sellers was three months into retirement from the NBA and swinging golf clubs every day when he was summoned to meet with Fudge, then the mayor of Warrensville Heights. He went to her first-floor office assuming she wanted help with a sports project or something.
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