As reported in Yahoo! News:
MITCHELL, S.D. – Eleanor McGovern, the wife of former Sen. George McGovern, died Thursday, according to a funeral home. She was 85
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(She) was born Nov. 25, 1921, in Woonsocket, S.D. She was introduced to her future husband when her debate team defeated McGovern’s while he was a student at Mitchell High School.
Her memoir, “Uphill: A Personal Story,” was published in 1973.
She was a classy woman, the real deal.
(more below)
Eleanor came to the forefront of national awareness during Senator McGovern’s 1972 Presidential campaign. George has described her as his most helpful critic and most trusted adviser. And as one of his key strategists, she shared in both the victories and the defeats associated with the fight for causes in which she believed deeply. As the wife of a presidential nominee, Eleanor broke new ground by campaigning on her own across the country. An accomplished speaker, she stirred crowds from coast to coast and appeared frequently as a guest on network television and radio discussions dealing with national and international issues. Her high profile permanently transformed public perception of the role and value of political spouses.
from the McGovern Library and Center web site
That certainly describes how I came to know Eleanor McGovern – as a very different kind of “political wife.” She seemed to be the antithesis of Pat Nixon, with a genuine smile and sense of caring. More importantly, she clearly possessed the kind of intellectual rigor, courage, and independence that the country later came to admire in Betty Ford; and that we now take for granted, after seeing such women as Rosalyn Carter, Hillary Clinton, and Elizabeth Edwards in action.
I knocked on a (very) few doors for McGovern’s 1972 NH primary campaign as a nervous 17-year old, completing the ubiquitous 3×5-inch index cards that filled stacks of shoeboxes and which included information to contact potential voters and note their preferences. Those cards were gold.
The McGovern partnership is also recognized in the naming and mission of The George and Eleanor McGovern Library and Center for Leadership and Public Service at Dakota Wesleyan University, which they both attended. The Center includes a library, classrooms, and exhibits honoring George and Eleanor McGovern.
Both before and following the 1972 presidential campaign, Eleanor developed her interests and expertise, most notably in the field of child development. Her many contributions and accomplishments included guiding roles at the Erickson Institute of Chicago and New York’s Odyssey House.
I’ve been poking around on the internet tubes, looking for information about Eleanor since learning about her death last night. Her 1973 memoir, “Uphill: A Personal Story,” is out of print – though I did snag a copy from an Amazon associate – and there doesn’t seem to be much more online that what I found at the McGovern Center web site.
For now, I’ll have to be satisfied with what I already know about her; what I’ve learned in researching this brief diary; and what I’ll find out when my copy of her memoir arrives in the mail. And though they’re unique and separate people, it seems to me that I can understand her a little more by returning some of my attention to her husband.
I came across an interview with, and story about, the Senator at The American Conservative web site – not one that I would have even considered visiting if I hadn’t been led there by Google:
…as George McGovern ages gracefully while his country does not, it is time to stop looking at McGovern through the lenses of Scoop Jackson and those neoconservative publicists who so often trace their disenchantment with the Democratic Party to the 1972 campaign. What if we refocus the image and see the George McGovern who doesn’t fit the cartoon?
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This George McGovern, dyed deeply in the American grain, is a hell of a lot more interesting than the burlesque that was framed by his neocon critics.
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Impatient with the chronically cautious, with the kind of eunuchs who tell you behind closed doors that they’re against a war but don’t want to risk their position by taking a public stand, McGovern told his colleagues, “Every Senator in this Chamber is partly responsible for sending 50,000 young Americans to an early grave. This Chamber reeks of blood.”
It still does, senator. It still does.
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“[M]ost Americans see the establishment center as an empty, decaying void that commands neither their confidence nor their love,” McGovern asserted in one of the great unknown campaign speeches in American history. (my emphasis) “It is the establishment center that has led us into the stupidest and cruelest war in all history. That war is a moral and political disaster–a terrible cancer eating away the soul of the nation. … It was not the American worker who designed the Vietnam war or our military machine. It was the establishment wise men, the academicians of the center. As Walter Lippmann once observed, `There is nothing worse than a belligerent professor.'”
Bobby Kennedy called George McGovern, “The most decent man in then U.S. Senate.” It makes sense to me that he would find a partner of at least equal compassion, or that Eleanor would find him.
You can e-mail condolences to Senator McGovern – mcgoverncenter AT dwu DOT edu
The McGovern Center Library will close at 1 PM Saturday, January 27th so that library staff may attend funeral services for Eleanor McGovern.