Jane Gray Muskie, whose husband Edmund Muskie’s 1972 presidential campaign collapsed after he defended her honor on a snowy February morning in Manchester, N.H., with what appeared to be tears in his eyes, has died. She was 77.

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 now 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 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 outside Washington.

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

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.

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 Canadian-Americans 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.”


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