Saturday, January 10, 2009

Cornelia Wallace Dies


George Wallace was shot by Arthur Bremer on May 15, 1972.


Cornelia Wallace is dead, a casualty of cancer at the age of 69.

If you're under 40, you may not know who Cornelia Wallace was.

But if you're over 40, the image of her flinging her body on the supine form of her husband, Gov. George Wallace of Alabama, to protect him after he had been the victim of an assassination attempt in May 1972 is comparable to the memory of Jackie Kennedy attempting to shield President Kennedy from additional gunshots in Dallas in 1963.

In fact, Cornelia Wallace was often compared to Jackie Kennedy in the South because of her raven-haired good looks and prominence as the wife of a famous politician. "C'nelia," as she was known, was nicknamed "the Jackie Kennedy of the Rednecks."

And now, like Jackie Kennedy, Cornelia Wallace is dead of cancer in her 60s, less than three weeks before her 70th birthday.

Cornelia Wallace always seemed to be mindful of appearances and was credited with improving her husband's public image.

"Under the influence of his attractive new wife, Cornelia, he had shed the old undertaker's uniform — dark suit, narrow black necktie — of Southern courthouse politicians," wrote Theodore H. White in The Making of the President 1972, "and was garbed now in bright shirts, fashionable double-knit suits, broad colorful ties."

I don't know what influence she may have had on his campaign slogan, but Wallace's 1972 slogan ("Send Them a Message") certainly had more subtlety than the one he used in his independent presidential campaign of 1968 ("Not a Dime's Worth of Difference") or the famous line from his 1963 gubernatorial inaugural ("Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever").

Like most assassinations — or assassination attempts — the attack on Wallace was totally unexpected.

Riding high in public opinion polls in mid-May 1972, Wallace was making a presidential campaign stop in a Laurel, Md., shopping center and was working the crowd after his speech. Arthur Bremer, a loner who desperately wanted to be famous, fired several shots at him from close range before being subdued.

Bremer didn't kill Wallace, but the damage had been done. One of the bullets fired by Bremer that day lodged in Wallace's spinal column, and he was paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair until the day he died in 1998.

The day after the shooting, Wallace won primaries in Maryland, Tennessee and North Carolina, in part, some said, because of sympathy.

But the shooting may well have cost him whatever chance he had of winning the nomination. Wallace remained hospitalized for an extensive period, and South Dakota Sen. George McGovern secured the nomination.

Cornelia Wallace, the niece of a former Alabama governor who, ironically, lost to Wallace in 1962, remained by his side while he recovered in a hospital in Silver Spring, Md. She was with him in his successful bid for re-election in 1974, and she was with him during his unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic nomination in 1976, which turned out to be Wallace's final bid for the White House.

The Wallaces, who married in 1971, divorced in 1978, and Cornelia Wallace later moved to Florida to be closer to her two sons from a previous marriage.

She died in Florida on Thursday. Her funeral will be held Monday in Winter Haven, Fla.

Last Sunday was the 38th anniversary of the Wallaces' marriage.

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