‘Loyal’ Jane Muskie dies at 77

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Jane Muskie stood by her husband through his long political career, and Edmund Muskie lost his bid for the U.S. presidency when he stood by her on a snowy February morning in Manchester, N.H., in 1972.

Even the Washington Post reporter who so famously described a weeping Muskie defending his wife in front of that Manchester Union Leader office can’t be sure today whether Muskie actually cried or if the “tears” were just melting snow running down his notably craggy face.

But as David Broder wrote in a March 2002 Post column, whether or not Muskie cried over the verbal insults against his wife, his emotional attack on Union Leader publisher William Loeb was the beginning of the end of his presidential campaign.

“Jane wasn’t as bothered about the Loeb thing as Ed was,” Don Nicoll, Muskie’s former campaign and congressional assistant, remembered Tuesday as news spread in Maine of the Christmas Day death of Jane Muskie at her home in Washington, D.C.

Although the cause of death has not been revealed, Jane Muskie reportedly was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease before she died at the age of 77.

Nicoll said Jane Muskie suffered from chronic severe back pain and, in the last few years, had struggled with memory problems. He was not sure whether she had Alzheimer’s.

“She was increasingly debilitated and required a lot of attention,” said Nicoll, who has interviewed nearly 500 people, including Jane Muskie, for an oral history project on her late husband’s stellar career.

Although Muskie was a giant as Maine’s first Democratic governor in 20 years in 1954, as leader of the nation’s first environmental revolution in the 1960s, and as secretary of state under President Jimmy Carter in the early 1980s, Jane Muskie was never in his shadow. She earned respect and affection wherever she went, Nicoll said.

“She was young and very pleasant and gracious, but with no experience in politics at all,” Nicoll said. “Over time, she had developed quite a bit of skill as an unscripted speaker and did very well. She was an asset to her husband’s campaign.”

Jane Muskie campaigned whenever she could in 1968, when her husband was tapped as running mate to Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota. She and Muskie had five children, so her chances to get out on the stump were limited.

In 1972, when Muskie was the favorite to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination, Jane Muskie had more time to devote to politics.

Chris Beam, archivist for the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library at Bates College in Lewiston, said Tuesday that Jane Muskie was perhaps the first wife of a national candidate to take an active public role in her husband’s political campaigns.

Beam said Jane Muskie once told him how things had changed for her in four short years.

“In 1968, reporters asked me about recipes. In 1972, they asked me about issues,” Beam quoted Jane Muskie as saying.

Edmund Muskie, a Rumford native, started a legal practice in downtown Waterville after serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II. His office was on the second floor over Delia’s Clothing Store, where Jane Gray worked as a clerk.

Nicoll, who worked for Muskie for more than 10 years, said the couple’s first date was at an AMVETS dance in Waterville. They married in 1948. Jane Muskie not only converted religions for her husband, from Baptist to Catholic, she also left the GOP to join the Democratic Party.

“They were devoted to each other,” Nicoll said. “Their personalities were different. They had a feisty relationship at times, but that never dampened their devotion and love for each other.

“It was a very impressive marriage,” Nicoll said.

It was Muskie’s devotion and love for his wife that compelled him to make an impromptu public attack on the New Hampshire newspaper editor on a snowy February morning in 1972. Reporters, including Broder, described in some detail how Muskie had cried that morning as he struggled several times to speak.

Today, historians believe the publisher’s attack on Jane Muskie was part of an orchestrated effort by the ultraconservative publisher – a Nixon supporter- to destroy the Democratic front-runner’s campaign.

Loeb also published a fabricated story about Muskie demeaning Franco-Americans during a speech in Florida.

In New Hampshire that year, the French were a significant voting bloc.

Muskie was 14 years older than his wife. He died on March 26, 1996, in a Washington, D.C., hospital two days before his 82nd birthday.

One of Jane Muskie’s last public appearances was in August 2000, when she traveled to Rumford with her children and grandchildren to dedicate a memorial to her husband on the banks of the Androscoggin River.

Mrs. Muskie will be buried next to her husband in Arlington National Cemetery, according to The Associated Press.

Not unlike President Thomas Jefferson, Muskie listed just one of his life’s accomplishments on his gravestone; not governor, not U.S. senator, not presidential candidate and not even secretary of state. Instead, his tombstone says only “Edmund Sixtus Muskie: Lieutenant, United States Navy.”

Maine’s current senators lauded Jane Muskie on Tuesday. Sen. Olympia Snowe remembered her “wit, spirit and unmistakable personality.” Sen. Susan Collins said Jane Muskie was “a loyal keeper of her husband’s legacy.”

Attempts to reach Jane Muskie’s sons, Stephen and Edmund Jr., were unsuccessful Tuesday.