Okla-homey
1/19/2009, 07:28 AM
Yesterday's Tuscaloosa paper heralds the passing of a woman who lived and loved in a turbulent and storied era. Mrs. Wallace, former First Lady of Alabama, and an old-school Alabama belle died of cancer on January 10th.
It's a cracking good piece of writing. I've dropped in some pics to color it up a bit.
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/6131/cornelia197405067500bl8.jpg
In 1997, Turner Network Television made George Wallace and cast Angelina Jolie to portray Mrs. Wallace. The role earned Jolie a Golden Globe for best supporting actress in a TV movie or miniseries, but Mrs. Wallace complained the script portrayed her as a shallow sex kitten.
SOUTHERN LIGHTS: Courageous Cornelia had, then lost, it all
Published: Sunday, January 18, 2009 at 3:30 a.m.
Southern newspaper obituaries sometimes show the deceased as he or she looked decades before they died. That's how the survivors prefer to remember them.
It's ingrained in our culture. Southern politesse - please don't call it denial - colors our history, our relations with other people and even our dreams.
When Cornelia Wallace died of cancer at age 69 earlier this month, the photo that many newspapers chose to publish showed her as a youthful, beautiful brunette, dressed in white. She is seated alongside her second husband, George C. Wallace, before he was crippled by an assassin's bullet in Maryland in 1972.
Some of the obituaries began by noting that she lay atop of Wallace after the shooting, bravely and devotedly shielding him from further harm, until help arrived.
The courage and dedication were absolutely real, by all accounts. And that's an appropriate image to remember.
But there was much more to Cornelia Wallace than the heart that she showed during the Maryland shooting.
Intelligent and ambitious, she seemed determined to guide her husband to political heights far beyond the boxy governor's office in Montgomery.
A Wallace aide, Tom Turnipseed, once commented indiscreetly that he planned to make Cornelia "the Jackie Kennedy of the rednecks." The comment got back to the governor, who was not amused, but Cornelia chuckled at the comparison.
She entered Wallace's world with her dark eyes opened wide. In some regards, she had been born into it.
Cornelia was the daughter of "Big Ruby" Folsom Ellis, former Gov. James E. "Big Jim" Folsom's sister. A widower when he moved into the Governor's Mansion in 1947, Folsom asked Big Ruby to be first lady. Big and profane, she was a bookend to her brother, the populist who served as George Wallace's mentor.
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/7660/corneliabjfrontcy1.jpg
Big Jim Folsom on the stump. He was a classic southern Populist politician in the 1940's and 1950's. You'll kindly note he wasn't called "Big Jim" for nuttin'
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/3459/cornelia15folsomfamilycgt1.jpg
Big Jim and his sister Big Ruby (Cornelia's mama) w/Jim's children and "Mammy" photographed at the governor's mansion in 1948
Like Big Jim, Big Ruby drank her bourbon from an oversized iced tea glass. The parties they threw at the mansion are the stuff of legend.
Cornelia, who was 8, moved in with her mother. She remembered watching Wallace and his first wife, Lurleen, through the balusters.
Cornelia grew up to be a great beauty, placing second in the Miss Alabama contest when she was still in high school. She attended Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., where she trained for the collegiate water ski team.
Big Ruby thought Cornelia, who had been conceived while a Nelson Eddy song played, might be equally successful in music, but that was not to be. Even a tour of Australia with Roy Acuff didn't jump-start her career.
A turn at acting didn't pan out either.
But Cornelia, who cut an attractive figure in a bathing suit, was really good at waterskiing. In 1960, she became a leading attraction on the ski team at Cypress Gardens before a career-ending accident. Skiing barefoot, she tumbled and almost broke her neck.
Out of commission for almost a year, she bounced back in 1962, marrying John Snively III. They met on a blind date and she fell in love.
The Snivelys were among the wealthiest citrus growers in the country. Cornelia became stepmother to one son and gave birth to two others before the marriage ended in divorce after seven years.
She moved back to Alabama with her sights set on Wallace.
"Poor George," she said later, laughing. "He never had a chance."
Lurleen had died of cancer in 1968. The same year, Cornelia joined Wallace's entourage as he campaigned for president, according to biographer Dan T. Carter.
Her presence on a Wallace campaign flight to California raised concern as she and Lisa Taylor vied for attention, Carter says. Taylor, who was half of the country and western group "Mona and Lisa - The Singing Sisters," would become Wallace's third wife in 1981.
It was Cornelia who won Wallace's heart in the late 1960s, however. Over Big Ruby's objections ("Why, honey, he ain't titty high," she complained), Cornelia married the feisty governor on Jan. 4, 1971, and lost little time in helping to retool him for national consumption.
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/6725/corneliageorge2tb0.jpg
Gov. Wallace and Cornelia Wallace at the 1971 Alabama gubernatorial inauguration
The new image seemed to be working. In the subsequent Democratic primaries, Wallace took a stunning victory over 11 Democrats in Florida, capturing 42 percent of the vote. He staked out a strong second-place finish in Indiana. Polls showed he was the front-runner in Michigan and Maryland. President Richard Nixon was shaken to the core.
And then came that terrible day in Laurel, Md., May 15, 1972. One bullet blasted through his forearm and shoulder. A second ripped into his right abdomen. A third slammed through his ribs, lodging in his spine.
As his assailant, Arthur Bremer, was wrestled to the ground, Wallace lay bleeding, flat on his back. Screaming, Cornelia rushed to him, throwing herself over her husband.
"I'm shot," he rasped to her. "I've been shot."
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/276/cor18361hp2.jpg
Cornelia shielding George
She knew the shooting could be devastating to Wallace's political career.
Just hours after the fact, she stood before television cameras to promise that Wallace would continue the campaign "in a wheelchair, if necessary." If he was unable to carry on right away, she would fill in for him, she said.
However, Wallace, who lived the rest of his life in constant pain, was no longer a potent political force on the national scene. He took out part of his anger and frustration on Cornelia, cursing and belittling her and accusing her of having extramarital affairs.
She wasn't about to take that kind of thing lying down. Early in 1976, Wallace discovered that she had bugged his telephone system, surreptitiously taping hundreds of calls over 18 months.
Cornelia said she'd made the tapes to verify that Wallace was spreading false rumors about her. To her surprise, she said, she discovered that the governor had been making indecent calls to young women.
They separated and later began divorce proceedings. Though aides said off the record they had dumped hundreds of tapes in the Alabama River, Cornelia implied that she had backup copies that could prove devastating to the governor.
Hours before the case was to come to trial in 1978, however, lawyers for the governor confronted Cornelia, saying they had proof that Cornelia had not retained copies of the tapes. She collapsed and was taken to a hospital. Later, she agreed to a modest out-of-court settlement: $75,000 in cash and some property.
She entered the 1978 Democratic primary for governor, but her heart wasn't in it. She came in last among 13 candidates.
Broke again, she moved back to Florida to be near the two sons she had with Snively. She thought maybe she could promote orange juice, like Anita Bryant.
That didn't pan out. Neither did her attempt at a novel, described as a roman a clef based on George's dealings with Jimmy Carter in the 1976 campaign.
A somewhat sugarcoated autobiography, "C'Nelia," was published in 1976. But anyone hoping for a peek under the carpets of her household had to look elsewhere.
The gossip magazines ran an occasional item. The Sept. 17, 1979, issue of People Magazine reported that Cornelia had put her mother in a Florida rehab program. Big Ruby, it said, blamed her drinking problem, in part, on Cornelia's troubled marriage with George.
The article also quoted one doctor as saying he doubted that the cure would work. He was right. Big Ruby spent the rest of her life alternating between cures and binges.
"The Folsoms drank," she told the authors of "They Love a Man in the Country." "I have a hollow leg and I'm a Folsom and I drink. I'm not proud of it and I don't fight it."
Much of the fight, too, ebbed from Cornelia. In late 2003, she was reported to be a resident of the Hawthorne Inn, an assisted living facility in Winter Haven, Fla. Battling breast cancer, she also suffered from severe arthritis. She was living on Social Security and Medicaid.
She had been to George's funeral in 1998. On his deathbed, Wallace wanted to make everything right by marrying her again, Cornelia claimed. But she said it never happened because of problems in communication and opposition by her sons.
Perhaps that was fantasy. The hardscrabble end was real enough. It was a hard fall from the glamorous young woman in the governor's mansion to the aging pensioner in the assisted living facility.
The 1972 shooting Maryland shattered George Wallace's dreams. For him, it was the worst nightmare imaginable; it removed him from the national political stage.
But it also was Cornelia's finest hour, a time of courage and devotion.
It was all downhill after that - the political ambitions, the marriage, the works.
In the end, dreams may have been all she had left to hang on to.
Ben Windham is former editorial editor of The Tuscaloosa News. His e-mail address is [email protected].
It's a cracking good piece of writing. I've dropped in some pics to color it up a bit.
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/6131/cornelia197405067500bl8.jpg
In 1997, Turner Network Television made George Wallace and cast Angelina Jolie to portray Mrs. Wallace. The role earned Jolie a Golden Globe for best supporting actress in a TV movie or miniseries, but Mrs. Wallace complained the script portrayed her as a shallow sex kitten.
SOUTHERN LIGHTS: Courageous Cornelia had, then lost, it all
Published: Sunday, January 18, 2009 at 3:30 a.m.
Southern newspaper obituaries sometimes show the deceased as he or she looked decades before they died. That's how the survivors prefer to remember them.
It's ingrained in our culture. Southern politesse - please don't call it denial - colors our history, our relations with other people and even our dreams.
When Cornelia Wallace died of cancer at age 69 earlier this month, the photo that many newspapers chose to publish showed her as a youthful, beautiful brunette, dressed in white. She is seated alongside her second husband, George C. Wallace, before he was crippled by an assassin's bullet in Maryland in 1972.
Some of the obituaries began by noting that she lay atop of Wallace after the shooting, bravely and devotedly shielding him from further harm, until help arrived.
The courage and dedication were absolutely real, by all accounts. And that's an appropriate image to remember.
But there was much more to Cornelia Wallace than the heart that she showed during the Maryland shooting.
Intelligent and ambitious, she seemed determined to guide her husband to political heights far beyond the boxy governor's office in Montgomery.
A Wallace aide, Tom Turnipseed, once commented indiscreetly that he planned to make Cornelia "the Jackie Kennedy of the rednecks." The comment got back to the governor, who was not amused, but Cornelia chuckled at the comparison.
She entered Wallace's world with her dark eyes opened wide. In some regards, she had been born into it.
Cornelia was the daughter of "Big Ruby" Folsom Ellis, former Gov. James E. "Big Jim" Folsom's sister. A widower when he moved into the Governor's Mansion in 1947, Folsom asked Big Ruby to be first lady. Big and profane, she was a bookend to her brother, the populist who served as George Wallace's mentor.
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/7660/corneliabjfrontcy1.jpg
Big Jim Folsom on the stump. He was a classic southern Populist politician in the 1940's and 1950's. You'll kindly note he wasn't called "Big Jim" for nuttin'
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/3459/cornelia15folsomfamilycgt1.jpg
Big Jim and his sister Big Ruby (Cornelia's mama) w/Jim's children and "Mammy" photographed at the governor's mansion in 1948
Like Big Jim, Big Ruby drank her bourbon from an oversized iced tea glass. The parties they threw at the mansion are the stuff of legend.
Cornelia, who was 8, moved in with her mother. She remembered watching Wallace and his first wife, Lurleen, through the balusters.
Cornelia grew up to be a great beauty, placing second in the Miss Alabama contest when she was still in high school. She attended Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., where she trained for the collegiate water ski team.
Big Ruby thought Cornelia, who had been conceived while a Nelson Eddy song played, might be equally successful in music, but that was not to be. Even a tour of Australia with Roy Acuff didn't jump-start her career.
A turn at acting didn't pan out either.
But Cornelia, who cut an attractive figure in a bathing suit, was really good at waterskiing. In 1960, she became a leading attraction on the ski team at Cypress Gardens before a career-ending accident. Skiing barefoot, she tumbled and almost broke her neck.
Out of commission for almost a year, she bounced back in 1962, marrying John Snively III. They met on a blind date and she fell in love.
The Snivelys were among the wealthiest citrus growers in the country. Cornelia became stepmother to one son and gave birth to two others before the marriage ended in divorce after seven years.
She moved back to Alabama with her sights set on Wallace.
"Poor George," she said later, laughing. "He never had a chance."
Lurleen had died of cancer in 1968. The same year, Cornelia joined Wallace's entourage as he campaigned for president, according to biographer Dan T. Carter.
Her presence on a Wallace campaign flight to California raised concern as she and Lisa Taylor vied for attention, Carter says. Taylor, who was half of the country and western group "Mona and Lisa - The Singing Sisters," would become Wallace's third wife in 1981.
It was Cornelia who won Wallace's heart in the late 1960s, however. Over Big Ruby's objections ("Why, honey, he ain't titty high," she complained), Cornelia married the feisty governor on Jan. 4, 1971, and lost little time in helping to retool him for national consumption.
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/6725/corneliageorge2tb0.jpg
Gov. Wallace and Cornelia Wallace at the 1971 Alabama gubernatorial inauguration
The new image seemed to be working. In the subsequent Democratic primaries, Wallace took a stunning victory over 11 Democrats in Florida, capturing 42 percent of the vote. He staked out a strong second-place finish in Indiana. Polls showed he was the front-runner in Michigan and Maryland. President Richard Nixon was shaken to the core.
And then came that terrible day in Laurel, Md., May 15, 1972. One bullet blasted through his forearm and shoulder. A second ripped into his right abdomen. A third slammed through his ribs, lodging in his spine.
As his assailant, Arthur Bremer, was wrestled to the ground, Wallace lay bleeding, flat on his back. Screaming, Cornelia rushed to him, throwing herself over her husband.
"I'm shot," he rasped to her. "I've been shot."
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/276/cor18361hp2.jpg
Cornelia shielding George
She knew the shooting could be devastating to Wallace's political career.
Just hours after the fact, she stood before television cameras to promise that Wallace would continue the campaign "in a wheelchair, if necessary." If he was unable to carry on right away, she would fill in for him, she said.
However, Wallace, who lived the rest of his life in constant pain, was no longer a potent political force on the national scene. He took out part of his anger and frustration on Cornelia, cursing and belittling her and accusing her of having extramarital affairs.
She wasn't about to take that kind of thing lying down. Early in 1976, Wallace discovered that she had bugged his telephone system, surreptitiously taping hundreds of calls over 18 months.
Cornelia said she'd made the tapes to verify that Wallace was spreading false rumors about her. To her surprise, she said, she discovered that the governor had been making indecent calls to young women.
They separated and later began divorce proceedings. Though aides said off the record they had dumped hundreds of tapes in the Alabama River, Cornelia implied that she had backup copies that could prove devastating to the governor.
Hours before the case was to come to trial in 1978, however, lawyers for the governor confronted Cornelia, saying they had proof that Cornelia had not retained copies of the tapes. She collapsed and was taken to a hospital. Later, she agreed to a modest out-of-court settlement: $75,000 in cash and some property.
She entered the 1978 Democratic primary for governor, but her heart wasn't in it. She came in last among 13 candidates.
Broke again, she moved back to Florida to be near the two sons she had with Snively. She thought maybe she could promote orange juice, like Anita Bryant.
That didn't pan out. Neither did her attempt at a novel, described as a roman a clef based on George's dealings with Jimmy Carter in the 1976 campaign.
A somewhat sugarcoated autobiography, "C'Nelia," was published in 1976. But anyone hoping for a peek under the carpets of her household had to look elsewhere.
The gossip magazines ran an occasional item. The Sept. 17, 1979, issue of People Magazine reported that Cornelia had put her mother in a Florida rehab program. Big Ruby, it said, blamed her drinking problem, in part, on Cornelia's troubled marriage with George.
The article also quoted one doctor as saying he doubted that the cure would work. He was right. Big Ruby spent the rest of her life alternating between cures and binges.
"The Folsoms drank," she told the authors of "They Love a Man in the Country." "I have a hollow leg and I'm a Folsom and I drink. I'm not proud of it and I don't fight it."
Much of the fight, too, ebbed from Cornelia. In late 2003, she was reported to be a resident of the Hawthorne Inn, an assisted living facility in Winter Haven, Fla. Battling breast cancer, she also suffered from severe arthritis. She was living on Social Security and Medicaid.
She had been to George's funeral in 1998. On his deathbed, Wallace wanted to make everything right by marrying her again, Cornelia claimed. But she said it never happened because of problems in communication and opposition by her sons.
Perhaps that was fantasy. The hardscrabble end was real enough. It was a hard fall from the glamorous young woman in the governor's mansion to the aging pensioner in the assisted living facility.
The 1972 shooting Maryland shattered George Wallace's dreams. For him, it was the worst nightmare imaginable; it removed him from the national political stage.
But it also was Cornelia's finest hour, a time of courage and devotion.
It was all downhill after that - the political ambitions, the marriage, the works.
In the end, dreams may have been all she had left to hang on to.
Ben Windham is former editorial editor of The Tuscaloosa News. His e-mail address is [email protected].