Maryon Pittman Allen
| Maryon Pittman Allen | |
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United States Senator from Alabama |
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In office June 8, 1978 – November 7, 1978 |
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| Preceded by | James Allen |
| Succeeded by | Donald Stewart |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
November 30, 1925 Meridian, Mississippi, U.S. |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse(s) | Joshua Mullins (1946–1959) James Allen (1964–1978) |
| Children | 3 2 stepchildren |
| Alma mater | University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa |
| Religion | Churches of Christ |
Maryon Pittman Allen (born November 30, 1925) is an American journalist who served as United States Senator from Alabama for five months in 1978, after her husband, Senator James B. Allen, died in office.
Maryon Pittman was born in Meridian, Mississippi, in 1925. The following year the family moved to Birmingham, Alabama, where her father established a tractor dealership and where she grew up and attended public school. From 1944 to 1947, she studied journalism at the University of Alabama but did not graduate. In 1946, while a student, she married Joshua Mullins. The couple had three children, who were still young in 1959 when the marriage ended in divorce.
Following her divorce, she went to work, first as an insurance agent and later as the editor of the women's sections for five weekly newspapers in the Birmingham area. That experience led to a position as a staff writer for the Birmingham News. It was in that capacity that she met James "Jim" Allen, then lieutenant governor of Alabama, in 1964 when she interviewed him in connection with a speech he had delivered to the Alabama Federation of Women’s Clubs. She and Allen, a widower with two children, were attracted to each other and married in August 1964, after a courtship of just four months.
Upon her second marriage, Maryon Pittman Allen became a political wife. As lieutenant governor, Jim Allen had to preside over the Alabama State Senate in a special session of the state legislature that Governor George C. Wallace had called three days before the wedding. In a newspaper article published shortly thereafter, she wrote that the legislative session had resulted in the couple's having "the most public, political honeymoon in history".
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