Elizabeth Edwards, a forceful political wife who became a best-selling author writing about her battle with cancer but whose marriage to Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards unraveled because of his infidelity, died Tuesday. She was 61.
Edwards died at her home in North Carolina after a long battle with cancer, her family said.
Her breast cancer, which was diagnosed the day after the 2004 election, returned in 2007. John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator who had been the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2004 and was running for the Democratic nomination in 2008, said then that the cancer was “no longer curable but completely treatable.”
The family issued a statement Monday saying further treatment would be unproductive. She told People magazine in June that the cancer had spread, with tumors in her skull, spine and legs.
“Many others would have turned inward; many others in the face of such adversity would have given up. But through all that she endured, Elizabeth revealed a kind of fortitude and grace that will long remain a source of inspiration,” President Barack Obama said in a statement Tuesday.
Elizabeth Edwards was a successful attorney who became a national figure as her husband’s political partner and the author of books that chronicled her cancer and grief over the 1996 death of the couple’s 16-year-old son, Wade, in a single-car accident.
But her life became tabloid fodder during Edwards’ bid for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. The National Enquirer reported that he had had an affair with Rielle Hunter, who had been hired as a videographer for the campaign, and had fathered a child with her.
John Edwards at first denied any relationship and continued his quest for the nomination. He admitted the affair in 2008 after dropping out of the presidential race but did not admit being the child’s father until January 2010. That month, Elizabeth Edwards announced that she was separating from her husband.
“Just as I don’t want cancer to take over my life, I don’t want this indiscretion, however long in duration, to take over my life either,” she wrote in her 2009 book “Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life’s Adversities.” “But I need to deal with both; I need to find peace with both.”
She was born Mary Elizabeth Anania on July 3, 1949, in Jacksonville, Fla. Her father, Vincent, was a Navy pilot. Her mother, Mary Elizabeth Thweatt, was the daughter of a Navy pilot and had been married to another Navy pilot who died when his plane was lost in the Pacific.
“My life is measured by which air station, which town, which country I lived in. And the cast of characters changed with each move,” Edwards wrote in her 2006 book “Saving Graces: Finding Solace and Strength From Friends and Strangers.”
Besides Florida, Edwards spent parts of her childhood in Washington, D.C.; Virginia; and Japan.
She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English in 1971 from the University of North Carolina. At the UNC law school, she met John Edwards.
“In many ways John and I were different,” she wrote in “Saving Graces.” “I had traveled the world; he had never left the South. . . . But we had each moved from place to place, following our fathers’ jobs. We had each lived in company housing — military bases for me, mill villages for John. Neither of us had a chance to be rooted in a place, so we were rooted in family and faith, the things we took with us.”
They were married in 1977. Their son Wade was born in 1979, their daughter Catharine in 1982.
The couple’s careers shifted dramatically after the death of their son in 1996. John Edwards ran for the Senate in 1998, defeating incumbent North Carolina Sen. Lauch Faircloth.
Elizabeth Edwards became her husband’s close adviser, a role that intensified when John Edwards became the vice presidential nominee and a presidential candidate. She also became the mother of young children, with daughter Emma Claire born in 1998 and son Jack in 2000.
She received praise for her direct, down-to-earth style, which contrasted with her husband’s more polished image.
“I come out of real life,” she told The New York Times in 2004. “Because I’m 55, I’ve spent 20 years at PTA meetings and soccer practices, all the kind of things that regular moms do, and I think that makes people feel fairly comfortable with me, which is great.”
In addition to her husband and children, Edwards’ survivors include a brother and a sister.
