Wallace, Lurleen, 1926-1968

<p>Lurleen Burns Wallace (born Lurleen Brigham Burns; September 19, 1926 – May 7, 1968) was the 46th governor of Alabama for fifteen months from January 1967 until her death in May 1968. She was the first wife of Alabama governor George Wallace, whom she succeeded as governor because the Alabama constitution forbade consecutive terms. She was Alabama's first female governor and was the only female governor to hold the position until Kay Ivey became the second woman to succeed to the office in 2017. She is also (as of 2021) the only female governor in U.S. history to have died in office. In 1973, she was posthumously inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame.</p>

<p>Lurleen Brigham Burns was born to Henry Burns and the former Estelle Burroughs of Fosters in Tuscaloosa County. She graduated in 1942 from Tuscaloosa County High School at the age of fifteen. She 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. The couple married on May 22, 1943, when she was 16.</p>

<p>Over the next twenty years, Wallace focused on being a mother and a homemaker. The Wallaces had four children: Bobbi Jo (1944–2015) Parsons, Peggy Sue (1950) Kennedy, George Wallace, III (1951), and Janie Lee (1961) Dye, who was named after Robert E. Lee. George Wallace's neglect of his family and frequent extramarital affairs resulted in his wife filing for divorce in the late 1950s; she later dropped the suit after he promised to be a better husband. By all accounts, the two had a very happy marriage for the rest of her life.</p>

<p>Wallace assumed her duties as First Lady of Alabama in 1963 after her husband was elected governor to the first of his four nonconsecutive terms. She opened the first floor of the governor's mansion to the public seven days a week. She refused to serve alcoholic beverages at official functions.</p>

<p>Lurleen Burns Wallace (1926-1968) died from cancer a mere 16 months after taking office as governor of Alabama. Although she had clearly been elected as a stand-in for her husband, George Wallace, Alabamians genuinely mourned the loss of not only the first woman to be elected to the position but also someone with whom many of the state's average citizens could relate. Never a politician, Wallace ran for governor in 1966 to facilitate her husband's run for president in 1968, and like her husband, she defiantly denounced federal court-ordered desegregation. Her administration is not remembered for any particular legislation. Rather, she succeeded in drawing attention to the twin issues of mental and public health by focusing on the state's widely criticized treatment of the mentally ill and the need for more state parks and recreational facilities.</p>

<p>Born into a working-class family on September 19, 1926, Lurleen Burns descended from early Tuscaloosa County settlers. The family occasionally raised crops on their land, but Lurleen's father, Henry Morgan Burns, worked mostly as a bargeman in Northport on the Black Warrior River and later as a crane operator in wartime Mobile. Her mother, Janie Estelle Burroughs, managed the household. Lurleen often went fishing her father and older brother Cecil and developed a lifelong passion for the hobby. After graduating from Tuscaloosa County High School in 1942, the attractive, green-eyed, and slightly built teenager began working as a sales clerk in a local dime store, where she soon met George Wallace. Having just graduated from the University of Alabama's law school and awaiting induction into the armed services, the 24-year-old George began to court the 16-year-old Lurleen. He left for basic training but returned to Tuscaloosa to recuperate from meningitis. The pair married on May 21, 1943, while he was on furlough.</p>

<p>For two years, the Wallaces moved frequently around western air bases as his unit participated in the firebombing of Japan during World War II. After the war and their return to Alabama, Lurleen supported George's run for the state legislature from Barbour County. She became the sole breadwinner of the family and although too young to vote herself, wrote campaign letters that he signed. After two terms in the legislature, George won election as state circuit judge for the Third Judicial District. The position provided enough income to allow the Wallaces to purchase a home in Clayton for their growing family. The job of raising the children—Bobbi Jo, born in 1945, Peggy Sue, born in 1950, George Junior, born in 1951, and Janie Lee, born in 1961—fell to Lurleen as George became increasingly consumed by politics. She spent much of her time with close friends and confidants Mary Jo Ventress, a home economics teacher, and Catherine Steineker, a homemaker who later served as her personal secretary.</p>

LURLEEN BURNS WALLACE was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama on September 19, 1926. She graduated from Tuscaloosa Business College and worked in a Tuscaloosa dime store where she met George C. Wallace. Sixteen-year-old Lurleen married Wallace on May 22, 1943, and devoted herself to being a housewife and mother over the next 20 years. When her husband was elected governor in 1963, she assumed the duties of first lady. Mrs. Wallace opened the first floor of the governor’s mansion to tourists seven days a week and refused to serve alcoholic beverages at executive mansion functions. In 1966, after failing to get the legislature to amend the constitution to allow governors to serve consecutive terms, Governor George Wallace announced the candidacy of his wife Lurleen for governor. The couple admitted frankly that if Lurleen was elected, George would continue to make the administrative policies and decisions. Mrs. Wallace won the May Democratic primary with 54 percent of the vote which assured her election in November. She was inaugurated on January 16, 1967, and refused to have the customary inaugural ball out of respect to Alabamians serving in Vietnam. Although she continued to carry out George’s policies regarding segregation, Mrs. Wallace did not remain in her husband’s shadow completely. She initiated a few programs of her own. Most notable was her successful campaign to increase funding for the state’s mental hospitals. During her administration, a $160 million road bond bill was also passed, as was a program to develop Alabama’s parks and historic sites. In her short term as governor, Lurleen Wallace was hospitalized with cancer on several occasions before her death on May 7, 1968.