Boggs, Lindy, 1916-2013

Marie Corinne Morrison "Lindy" Claiborne Boggs (March 13, 1916 – July 27, 2013) was a United States politician who served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and later as United States Ambassador to the Holy See. She was the first woman elected to Congress from Louisiana. She was also a permanent chairwoman of the 1976 Democratic National Convention, which met in New York City to nominate the Carter-Mondale ticket. She was the first woman to preside over a major party convention.

Born Marie Corinne Morrison Claiborne in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, she was educated by a series of private tutors before graduating from Newcomb College, the women's college at Tulane University in New Orleans in 1935. A history and education major, she was an editor of the student newspaper, and in that capacity met her future husband, Hale Boggs, who was then the paper’s general editor. She married Boggs on January 22, 1938, a short time before he graduated from law school. After Hale Boggs embarked on his political career, Lindy Boggs served as his chief political adviser. She set up her husband’s district office in New Orleans, orchestrated his re-election campaigns, canvassed voters, arranged for her husband’s many social gatherings, and often acted as his political surrogate as demands on his time became greater the further he climbed in the House leadership.

On an October 1972 campaign trip in Alaska, Boggs’s plane disappeared; the wreckage was never found. Hale Boggs won re-election three weeks later, but the House was forced to declare the seat vacant on January 3, 1973. With her experience and keen knowledge of the district, Lindy Boggs declared her candidacy a little more than a week later for the March 20 special election with no hesitation. She easily defeated her Republican challenger; she would go on to be easily re-elected to eight more terms.

In July 1990, at age 74, Lindy Boggs announced that she would not be a candidate for re-election to the 102nd Congress. After leaving Congress in January 1991, Boggs did not retire from the political spotlight. She maintained homes in Washington, DC, and New Orleans, and wrote her autobiography. The House named a room off the National Statuary Hall for her, the Lindy Claiborne Boggs Congressional Women’s Reading Room, in July 1991. In 1997, President William J. (Bill) Clinton appointed the 81-year-old as U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican, where she served until 2001. On July 27, 2013, she passed away in Chevy Chase, Maryland.