Allen, Maryon Pittman, 1925-2018

<p>Maryon Pittman Allen, who briefly succeeded her husband, James Allen, upon his sudden death, is one of the few widows who remarked frankly about the shock and pain associated with serving under such circumstances. A journalist who married into politics, she was appointed to the U.S. Senate in 1978 by Alabama Governor George Wallace.</p>

<p>Maryon Pittman was born on November 30, 1925, in Meridian, Mississippi, one of four children raised by John D. and Tellie Chism Pittman. The family moved to Birmingham, Alabama, the following year, where John Pittman opened a tractor dealership. Maryon Pittman attended public schools and then went to the University of Alabama from 1944 to 1947. While still attending college, she married Joshua Mullins on October 17, 1946. The couple raised three children: Joshua, John, and Maryon, but were divorced in 1959. As a single mother, Maryon Pittman was employed as an insurance agent and then as a journalist, working as the women’s section editor for five local weeklies in Alabama. As a staff writer for the Birmingham News, she took an assignment in 1964 to interview James Browning Allen, a widower and then the lieutenant governor of Alabama, who had just delivered a speech before the Alabama Federation of Women’s Clubs. Four months later, on August 7, 1964, James Allen and Maryon Pittman married; Allen brought two children from his previous marriage, James Jr. and Mary.</p>

<p>When Alabama Senator Joseph Lister Hill chose not to seek re-election to the 91st Congress (1969–1971), James Allen sought and won election to his seat. A longtime Alabama state legislator, Senator Allen served on the Judiciary Committee. He became a master of parliamentary procedure, helping to revive the filibuster. A conservative Democrat, Senator Allen fought the creation of a federal consumer protection agency, taxpayer financing of federal campaigns, and the 1978 treaties which ceded U.S. control of the Panama Canal. Allen, the New York Times observed, “was a valued ally in any fight, a man who could out-talk or outmaneuver many of the wisest and most experienced politicians in Washington…. If he did not beat the opposition, he wilted them.” California Senator Alan Cranston once remarked, “He can catch other people napping, but he’s not sneaky. He just plays hardball within the rules.” The Washington Post wrote that Allen “did not merely learn Jefferson’s parliamentary manual; he absorbed it and employed it more doggedly, shrewdly and creatively than any other senator in years.” While her husband ensconced himself in the Senate, Maryon Allen continued her journalism career, writing a Washington-based news column, “The Reflections of a News Hen,” that was syndicated in Alabama newspapers.</p>

<p>Maryon Pittman Allen (November 30, 1925 – July 23, 2018) was an American journalist who served as United States Senator from Alabama for five months in 1978, after her husband, Senator James B. Allen, died in office. She held no public office prior to her appointed to her husband's old senate seat. She was appointed by segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace.</p>

<p>Maryon Pittman was born in Meridian, Mississippi, in 1925. The following year the family moved to Birmingham, Alabama, where her father established a tractor dealership and where she grew up and attended public school. From 1944 to 1947, she studied journalism at the University of Alabama but did not graduate. In 1946, while a student, she married Joshua Mullins. The couple had three children, who were still young in 1959 when the marriage ended in divorce.</p>

<p>Following her divorce, she went to work, first as an insurance agent and later as the editor of the women's sections for five weekly newspapers in the Birmingham area. That experience led to a position as a staff writer for the Birmingham News. It was in that capacity that she met James "Jim" Allen, then lieutenant governor of Alabama, in 1964 when she interviewed him in connection with a speech he had delivered to the Alabama Federation of Women's Clubs. She and Allen, a widower with two children, were attracted to each other and married in August 1964, after a courtship of just four months.</p>