26 Facts About Lurleen Wallace

Lurleen Wallace was the first wife of Alabama governor George Wallace, whom she succeeded as governor because at the time the Alabama constitution forbade consecutive terms.

Lurleen Wallace is the only female governor in US history to have died in office as well as being the first and only female Democrat to have served as governor in Alabama history.

Lurleen Wallace Brigham Burns was born to Henry Burns and the former Estelle Burroughs of Fosters in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on September 19,1926.

Lurleen Wallace graduated in 1942 from Tuscaloosa County High School at the age of fifteen.

Lurleen Wallace then worked at Kresge's Five and Dime in Tuscaloosa, where she met George Wallace, at the time a member of the United States Army Air Corps.

When George was elected to his first of four nonconsecutive governor terms in 1963, Lurleen Wallace assumed the duties of First Lady of Alabama in 1963.

Lurleen Wallace opened the first floor of the Alabama Governor's Mansion to the public seven days a week.

Lurleen Wallace refused to serve alcoholic beverages at official functions.

Lurleen Wallace faced one-term Republican US representative James D Martin in the general election.

Lurleen Wallace had strong support for stemming from his firm opposition to desegregation.

Lurleen Wallace won every Alabama county besides Greene, and Winston, a predominately Republican county in the North.

Lurleen Wallace was diagnosed with cancer early as April 1961, when her surgeon biopsied suspicious tissue that he noticed during the cesarean delivery of her last child.

Lurleen Wallace was outraged to learn from one of her husband's aides that the staffers had known of her cancer since George's 1962 campaign three years earlier.

Lurleen Wallace cooperated with a campaign of dissimulation and misdirection as she underwent radiation therapy in December 1965 and a hysterectomy in January 1966.

Since Alabama then lacked adequate cancer treatment facilities, Wallace traveled to the M D Anderson Cancer Center in Houston for treatment.

Lurleen Wallace visited both institutions in Tuscaloosa on her own initiative in February 1967 after reading a news story about overcrowding and poor staffing, and was horrified by the filthy, barracks-like settings.

Lurleen Wallace obtained a large funding increase for Alabama state parks.

In January 1968, after extensive testing, Lurleen Wallace informed her staff that she had a cancerous pelvic tumor which was pressing on the nerves of her back down through her right hip.

George Lurleen Wallace continued to make campaign stops nationwide during her last weeks of life and persistently lied to the press about her condition, claiming in April 1968 that "she has won the fight" against cancer.

Lurleen Wallace died in Montgomery, Alabama, at 12:34 AM May 7,1968, at home with her husband beside her and the rest of her family, including her parents, just outside her room, and the couple's three youngest children in the next room near it.

At the time of her funeral, George Lurleen Wallace had left the governor's mansion and moved into a Montgomery home they had purchased in 1967.

Lurleen Wallace did not take his children with him, instead sending the siblings, ages 18,16, and 6, to live with family and friends.

George Lurleen Wallace had two subsequent marriages to the former Cornelia Ellis Snively and Lisa Taylor, both of which ended in divorce.

Governor Lurleen Wallace was succeeded by Lieutenant Governor Albert Brewer, a one-time ally of her husband who retained the office in the 1970 election, with support from President Richard Nixon.

George Lurleen Wallace returned as governor in January 1971, where he remained for two consecutive terms and then returned for a fourth and final term from 1983 to 1987.

Artist Nina Simone sang that "Lurleen Wallace has made me lose my rest" in several live performances of her 1964 civil rights song, "Mississippi Goddam".