Word: cornelias
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...political role would be a new one for Cornelia. Since their marriage 16 months ago, she has mainly preferred just to walk on with George, wave to the crowd and be there at day's end to provide what she has called "the emotional response" that he needs when he gets so "very lonely" while traveling. Cornelia, who is 33 (19 years younger than her husband), is smart, ambitious for both him and herself and experienced in the ways of politics. Although she sees herself more as "a Huck Finn" than "a Southern belle," her favorite fictional heroine...
...Cornelia first met Wallace at a party in the Alabama Governor's mansion when her uncle James ("Kissin' Jim") Folsom was a party-loving Governor and she was only eight years old. "My two little cousins and I were peeping down the stairs in our nightgowns and the Wallaces saw us. They walked up the stairs and talked to us and held us." At the time, Wallace, a state legislator, was married to his first wife, Lurleen, who died of cancer in 1968 after succeeding him as Governor in the same mansion...
...country girl actually raised in a log cabin in Elba, Ala. ("We used to go fishing for mud fish in the Pea River -that's what it was called"), Cornelia heard constant talk of politics from her twice-widowed mother, Ruby Folsom Ellis Austin,* who served as official hostess for her brother before he remarried. Cornelia's father, Charles G. Ellis, a civil engineer, died in 1960. At Montgomery's Methodist Huntingdon College and Florida's Rollins College, Cornelia studied voice and piano. Then she slipped into what she calls "my little hillbilly jag." She sang...
Although Wallace had beaten Folsom in a primary election for Governor in 1962, he still remained friends with Cornelia and her mother. About a year after Lurleen died, he began calling Cornelia and saying, "I think I'll just come over for a few minutes." To avoid publicity, the two at first dated only at her home or at little-known restaurants. She found him "very appealing and very physical," but also "very Victorian." He still "won't even say the word sexy," she notes, and he will not let her wear her skirts as short...
...Although Cornelia has never interfered with her husband's political operations, she seems tougher than his Governor-wife Lurleen. Learning that one of Wallace's aides was poor-mouthing his chances of becoming President, she braced the man, threatened to get him fired if he expressed such a sentiment again...