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News from the Washington File
Jane Morse, USINFO Staff Writer
It takes courage and hard work to break into politics and seek elected office. USINFO looks at three very different women who made the effort and won. This is the first of a three-part series about women serving their first terms in the Maryland General Assembly.
Washington -- It was a rocky road to the Maryland State House, but Joseline Pena-Melnyk loves challenges.
She was just 8 years old when she left the Dominican Republic and came to the United States in 1974. Pena-Melnyk, her younger sister and her mother could not speak much English, and her father had abandoned them. Her mother struggled to support the little family. Pena-Melnyk's sister succumbed to the lure of the streets, becoming a teenage mother and losing the father of her first two of four children to drug-related violence.
Those tribulations inspired Pena-Melnyk to work harder. She became the first member of her family to achieve a college degree, and went on to finish law school. She later moved to the Washington metropolitan area where she married Markian Melnyk, her law-school sweetheart.
Pena-Melnyk had a full life as a wife, mother of three young children and community activist, but she wanted greater opportunities to make...