Mary, until his death in 1925. Mary served as an important adviser to her husband; she passed the bar exam and learned German to help his career. She was buried next to Bryan after her death in 1930. William and Mary had three children: Ruth (1886–1954), William Jr. (1889–1978), and Grace Dexter (1891–1945). Ruth won election to Congress from Florida in 1928 and later served as ambassador to Denmark during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. William Jr. graduated from Georgetown Law, established a legal practice in Los Angeles, later held several federal positions, and became an important figure in the Los Angeles Democratic Party. Grace also moved to Southern California and wrote a biography of her father. William Sr.'s brother, Charles, was an important supporter of his brother until William's death, as well as an influential politician in his own right. Charles served two terms as the mayor of Lincoln and three terms as the governor of Nebraska and was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in the 1924 presidential election. Legacy Historical reputation and political legacy Bryan elicited mixed views during his lifetime and his legacy remains complicated. Author Scott Farris argues that "many fail to understand Bryan because he occupies a rare space in society ... too liberal for today's religious [and] too religious for today's liberals". Jeff Taylor rejects the view that Bryan was a "pioneer of the welfare state" and a "forerunner of the New Deal", but argues that Bryan was more accepting of an interventionist federal government than his Democratic predecessors had been. Biographer Michael Kazin, however, opines that Bryan was the first leader of a major party to argue for permanently expanding the power of the federal government to serve the welfare of ordinary Americans from the working and middle classes ... he did more than any other man—between the fall of Grover Cleveland and the election of Woodrow Wilson—to transform his party from a bulwark of laissez-faire to the citadel of liberalism we identify with Franklin D. Roosevelt and his ideological descendants. Kazin argues that, compared to Bryan, "only Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had a greater impact on politics and political culture during the era of reform that began in the mid-1890s and lasted until the early 1920s". Writing in 1931, former Secretary of the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo stated that "with the exception of the men who have occupied the White