Boggs, Lindy, 1916-2013

<p>When 14-term Representative and House Majority Leader Thomas Hale Boggs Sr.’s airplane vanished without a trace over the vast Alaska landscape in 1972, Democratic leaders in Louisiana immediately turned to his wife, Corinne (Lindy) Boggs. After three decades of serving as her husband’s political confidante, strategist, and surrogate campaigner, Lindy Boggs possessed more political acumen than any conceivable challenger. After winning a special election to succeed her husband, Congresswoman Boggs went on to serve 18 years in the House, becoming an advocate for women’s equality, economic opportunity for minorities, and the preservation of House heritage.</p>

<p>Marie Corinne Morrison Claiborne was born in Pointe Coupee Roads, Louisiana, on March 13, 1916. Her father, Roland Claiborne, a prominent lawyer, died when she was only two years old. She so resembled her father that she was nicknamed “Lindy,” short for Rolinde, the French feminine version of Roland. Her mother, Corinne Morrison Claiborne, remarried several years later to George Keller, a cotton plantation owner. Lindy Claiborne’s stepfather saw to it that she was educated by a series of private tutors. At age 15, Lindy Claiborne attended Newcomb College of Tulane University in New Orleans. 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 her college sweetheart on January 22, 1938, a short time before he graduated from law school. After their wedding, Lindy Boggs focused her energy on supporting her husband’s political career and raising three children: Barbara, Tommy, and Corinne (Cokie).</p>

<p>Hale Boggs won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1940. Lindy moved with her husband to become a member of his Washington, DC, staff. Hale Boggs lost his 1942 re-election bid but later returned to the seat representing Jefferson Parish (including New Orleans), where he served continually from 1947 until his death. Lindy Boggs was 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. “She really knew the district better than he did,” Cokie Roberts observed of her mother’s critical role in Hale Boggs’s House career. “She knew the growth in the district and the neighborhoods in the district and all that because, by then, he had gone into the leadership and was focusing a lot of his energies on the leadership.”</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>Boggs was the widow of former Majority Leader of the United States House of Representatives Hale Boggs, and the mother of four children: Cokie Roberts (a television journalist); Thomas Hale Boggs, Jr. (a lobbyist); Barbara Boggs Sigmund, a mayor of Princeton, New Jersey, and an unsuccessful candidate in the 1982 New Jersey Democratic senatorial primary election (won by Frank Lautenberg); and William Robertson Boggs, who died as an infant on December 28, 1946. Boggs is one of three female U.S. Representatives from Louisiana, the others being Catherine Small Long and Julia Letlow.</p>

<p>Boggs was born as Marie Corinne Morrison Claiborne on March 13, 1916, on the Brunswick Plantation near New Roads in Pointe Coupee Parish in South Louisiana, the daughter of Corinne Morrison and Roland Philemon Claiborne, a prominent lawyer. Claiborne's father died when she was just two, but her resemblance to her father earned her the nickname "Lindy," short for the female version of Roland, "Rolinde."</p>