Lurleen Wallace – September 19, 1926

 “It never even crossed my mind that I’d ever enter politics….” Lurleen Wallace

Lurleen Brigham Burns was born in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama. Her parents were Estelle (Burroughs) and Henry Burns.

In the 1930 census, the Burns family, including Lurleen’s older brother Cecil, lived at 1207 18th Street in Tuscaloosa. Henry was a laborer at the government docks. Other people on the page worked in jobs such as paper hangers, railroad section hands, sand cutters, and carpenters. Everyone on the page was from Alabama or Mississippi.

Later life

Lurleen graduated high school at age 15, worked at Kresge’s Five and Dime where she met George Wallace and married him at age 16. The couple had four children. She filed for divorce in the late 1950s but dropped the suit when George promised to be a better husband.

After 20 years of marriage, she became the First Lady of Alabama. She opened the first floor of the Governor’s mansion to the public. She also refused to serve alcohol at functions.

George Wallace could not run for a second term as governor due to the Alabama constitution which, at the time, forbade consecutive terms. He had Lurleen run for governor as his stand-in. She would be governor in name, he in fact. This worked in Texas in 1924 when Miriam Wallace Ferguson was elected governor for her husband James E. Ferguson.

Her Republican opponent, Jim Martin, naturally campaigned against her as a “proxy candidate” who was enabling her husband’s insatiable appetite for power. There was a belief that the Republicans had some unexpected strength in the state at this time. Senator Strom Thurmond and 1964 presidential candidate Barry Goldwater both came to the state to campaign for Martin. Wallace used the slogan “Two Governors, One Cause” On election day, 1966, she won all but two counties, losing one by six votes, and received 63.4% of the votes.

Wallace ran for governor while suffering from cancer. She had been diagnosed in 1961, but her doctor didn’t tell her, he told her husband, who chose not to tell her. As a result, she did not get appropriate follow-up care. She never knew until 1965 when she saw a gynecologist for abnormal bleeding and was told she had uterine cancer. She was outraged that she was never told but continued to campaign on her husband’s behalf.

She had unannounced radiation therapy and a hysterectomy but kept up her campaign schedule and was inaugurated as governor in January 1967. Her health deteriorated badly during the first year of her term and in January 1968, she informed her staff that she had a cancerous pelvic tumor. By April, she was down to 80 pounds, while her husband was proclaiming she had beaten cancer. She died May 7, 1968, at age 41. She emphatically requested a closed casket. Wallace put her on view in an open casket with a glass bubble to 21,000 mourners. She is the only female governor in U.S. history to die in office.

Lurleen Wallace Illness on Wikipedia

Lieutenant Governor Albert Brewer succeeded her and governed independently without Wallace’s input. Wallace defeated him in the next election and went on to serve a total of four terms as governor.

Lurleen Wallace took some independent actions as governor, including fighting for increased funding for some schools for the developmentally disabled and also funding for state parks. After her death, because she had to go to Texas for cancer treatments, a push was made to set up facilities in Alabama. This resulted in The University of Alabama Hospital at the University of Alabama at Birmingham opening a cancer center, becoming one of the first eight NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers.

Lake Lurleen in Alabama is named for her.

Other happenings on September 19, 1926:

• Aimee Semple McPherson announced a legal defense fund for herself to “fight the devil” during a sermon at the Angelus Temple.
• Born: Victoria Barbă, Moldovan animated film director (d. 2020)
• James Lipton, American television host and writer, in Detroit, Michigan (d. 2020)
• Duke Snider, baseball player, in Los Angeles (d. 2011)

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Sources

• Wikipedia.org
• Ancestry.com
• Onthisday.com
• Picryl.com
• Youtube.com