Betty Talmadge, Ex-Wife of Georgia Senator, Dies at 81 (original) (raw)

Betty Talmadge, Ex-Wife of Georgia Senator, Dies at 81

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/12/politics/betty-talmadge-exwife-of-georgia-senator-dies-at-81.html

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May 12, 2005

Betty Talmadge, a former first lady of Georgia and a prominent Washington hostess who had a second career as a businesswoman, restaurateur and cookbook author after her divorce from Senator Herman E. Talmadge, died on Saturday in Atlanta. She was 81.

Mrs. Talmadge died after a long illness, her son, Gene, said.

Mrs. Talmadge was married to Mr. Talmadge, a Democrat and the scion of a powerful Georgia political family, from 1941 until their divorce in 1977. A former Georgia governor who served four terms in the United States Senate, from 1957 to 1981, Mr. Talmadge died in 2002.

In 1979, Mrs. Talmadge testified before the Senate Select Committee on Ethics against her former husband, who was accused of improperly using campaign and office money.

As Georgia's first lady in the 1940's and 50's, Mrs. Talmadge was known for her lavish parties filled with antebellum charm. At the Talmadge family plantation in Lovejoy, Ga., 25 miles south of Atlanta, partygoers might be greeted by soldiers dressed in Confederate gray, Dixieland banjo players and the family pets, among them Rabbit E. Lee and a donkey named Assley Wilkes. In the 1960's and 70's, Mrs. Talmadge was a frequent bridge partner of Lady Bird Johnson.

She also ran a prosperous country ham business and in later years operated a restaurant out of her home. She wrote two cookbooks, "How to Cook a Pig & Other Back-to-the-Farm Recipes" (Simon & Schuster, 1977), with Jean Robitscher and Carolyn Carter; and "Betty Talmadge's Lovejoy Plantation Cookbook" (Peachtree Publishers, 1983).

Leila Elizabeth Shingler was born in Ashburn, Ga., on Sept. 17, 1923, and married Mr. Talmadge at 18. In 1947, at 24, she became Georgia's first lady for 67 days after Mr. Talmadge briefly succeeded his father, Gov. Eugene Talmadge, who had died after being re-elected but before being sworn in. Herman Talmadge was later officially appointed to fill out his father's term through 1948, when he won a special election; he went on to win a full four-year term as governor in 1950.

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