Lurleen Burns Wallace
| Lurleen Wallace | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| 46th Governor of Alabama | |
|
In office January 16, 1967 – May 7, 1968 |
|
| Lieutenant | Albert Brewer |
| Preceded by | George Wallace |
| Succeeded by | Albert Brewer |
| First Lady of Alabama | |
|
In role January 14, 1963 – January 16, 1967 |
|
| Governor | George Wallace |
| Preceded by | Florentine Patterson |
| Succeeded by | George Wallace (First Gentleman) |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Lurleen Brigham Burns September 19, 1926 Tuscaloosa, Alabama, U.S. |
| Died | May 7, 1968 (aged 41) Montgomery, Alabama, U.S. |
| Resting place | Greenwood Cemetery Montgomery, Alabama |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse(s) | George Wallace (1943–1968) |
| Children |
George Bobbi Jo Peggy Sue Janie Lee |
| Alma mater | Tuscaloosa Business College |
| Religion | Methodism |
Lurleen Brigham Wallace (September 19, 1926 – May 7, 1968) was the 46th governor of Alabama for fifteen months from January 1967 until her death in May 1968. She was the first wife of Alabama Governor George Wallace, whom she succeeded as governor because the Alabama constitution forbade consecutive terms. She was Alabama's first and only female governor, until Kay Ivey succeeded to the office in 2017. She was also the only female governor in U.S. history to have died in office. In 1973, she was posthumously inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame.
Lurleen Brigham Burns was born to Henry Burns and the former Estelle Burroughs of Fosters in Tuscaloosa County. She graduated in 1942 from Tuscaloosa County High School at the age of fifteen. She then worked at Kresge’s Five and Dime in Tuscaloosa, where she met George Wallace, at the time a member of the United States Army Air Corps. The couple married on May 22, 1943, when she was 16.
Over the next twenty years, Lurleen Wallace focused on being a mother and a homemaker. The Wallaces had four children: Bobbi Jo (1944–2015) Parsons, Peggy Sue (1950) Kennedy, George Wallace, III (1951), and Janie Lee (1961) Dye, who was named after Robert E. Lee. George Wallace's political career and neglect of his family resulted in his wife filing for divorce in the late 1950s; she later dropped the suit.
Mrs. Wallace assumed her duties as First Lady of Alabama in 1963 after her husband was elected governor to the first of his four nonconsecutive terms. She opened the first floor of the governor's mansion to the public seven days a week. She refused to serve alcoholic beverages at official functions.
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