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Elizabeth Edwards, 1949-2010

A Political Life Filled With Cruel Reversals

Elizabeth Edwards on the campaign trail for her husband and John Kerry in Cleveland in July 2004.Credit...Ting-Li Wang/The New York Times

Elizabeth Edwards, who as the wife of former Senator John Edwards gave America an intimate look at a candidate’s marriage by sharing his quest for the 2008 presidential nomination as she struggled with incurable cancer and, secretly, with his infidelity, died Tuesday morning at her home in Chapel Hill, N.C. She was 61.

Her family confirmed the death, saying Mrs. Edwards was surrounded by relatives when she died. A family friend said Mr. Edwards was present. On Monday, two family friends said that Mrs. Edwards’s cancer had spread to her liver and that doctors had advised against further medical treatment.

Mrs. Edwards posted a Facebook message to friends on Monday, saying, “I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces — my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope.” She added: “The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered. We know that.”

In a life of idyllic successes and crushing reverses, Mrs. Edwards was an accomplished lawyer, the mother of four children and the wife of a wealthy, handsome senator with sights on the White House. But their 16-year-old son was killed in a car crash, cancer struck her at age 55, the political dreams died and, within months, her husband admitted to having had an extramarital affair with a campaign videographer.

The scandal over the affair faded after his disclosure in 2008. But in 2009, Mrs. Edwards resurrected it in a new book and interviews and television appearances, telling how her husband had misrepresented the infidelity to her, rocked their marriage and spurned her advice to abandon his run for the presidency, a decision in which she ultimately acquiesced.

Last January, on the eve of new disclosures in a book by a former political aide, Mr. Edwards admitted he had fathered a child with the videographer. Soon afterward, he and Mrs. Edwards separated legally.

Mrs. Edwards, a savvy political adviser who took on major roles in her husband’s two campaigns for the White House, learned she had a breast tumor the size of a half-dollar on the day after Election Day 2004, when the Democratic ticket — Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and Mr. Edwards, his running mate from North Carolina — lost to President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Radiation and chemotherapy appeared to put the cancer into remission. In a best-selling memoir, “Saving Graces: Finding Solace and Strength from Friends and Strangers” (Broadway Books, 2006), Mrs. Edwards chronicled her fight for survival. But in March 2007, with her husband again chasing a presidential nomination, this time against Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mr. and Mrs. Edwards disclosed that her cancer had returned.

They said it was malignant and in an advanced stage, having spread beyond the breast and lymph nodes into her ribs, hip bones and lungs. It was treatable but “no longer curable,” Mr. Edwards explained. But he said he would continue his bid for the presidency, and Mrs. Edwards said that she, too, would go on with the campaign. “I don’t expect my life to be significantly different,” she declared.

Mrs. Edwards had always been a dominant figure in her husband’s political life. Often called his closest adviser and surrogate, she reviewed his television advertisements and major speeches, helped pick his lieutenants, joined internal debates over tactics and strategy, and sometimes dressed down, or even forced out, campaign aides she thought had failed her husband.

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Elizabeth and John Edwards in 2007. They separated this year after he admitted to fathering a child in an extramarital affair.Credit...Todd Heisler/The New York Times

A scathing portrait of Mrs. Edwards’s political role, based mainly on unnamed sources, was presented in “Game Change,” a book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin published last January. “The nearly universal assessment” among campaign aides, they wrote, “was that there was no one on the national stage for whom the disparity between public image and private reality was vaster or more disturbing.”

Mrs. Edwards’s advanced cancer made her a riveting figure, at times overshadowing the candidate himself. In 2007, she was often mobbed by crowds that saw her as courageous. Inevitably, there were questions about putting their marriage on display. People wondered about their values, or whether they were in denial about the cancer. Some accused them of cynically using her illness for political gain.

But Mr. and Mrs. Edwards were undeterred. While she took a yellow chemotherapy pill once a day, her stamina seemed high, she often carried her own bags and put in 16-hour days, and she showed no signs of the disease: her hair was full, her skin color was robust, and she bustled with energy.

Political consultants said American voters yearned for authenticity and character in a candidate, and thought Mr. Edwards had a singular opportunity. But his aides worried, with some justification, that Mrs. Edwards on a podium was too compelling for his good. At a luncheon in Cleveland, some comments from the audience sounded like paeans to her.

“I came to feel the inspiration you exude,” said a woman bald from months of chemotherapy and radiation. Another cancer patient called Mrs. Edwards “my angel, my idol, my everything.”

Mr. Edwards pitched himself as a populist, up from hardscrabble mill towns to success as lawyer. He stuck to a script of living wages, cuts in greenhouse gases and a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, with health care as a signature issue.

But many voters were alienated by his 2002 vote for the Iraq war. Falling behind Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton in polls, he lost the primary in South Carolina, where he was born, and quit the race in late January 2008. He later endorsed Mr. Obama.

Any lingering hopes for his political future were shattered in August 2008, when he admitted to ABC News that he had had an affair in 2006 with Rielle Hunter, a 42-year-old woman hired to make campaign videos. He denied being the father of her infant daughter, even offering to take a paternity test, and insisted that the affair had occurred when his wife’s cancer was in remission and that it was over before he announced his presidential campaign on Dec. 28, 2006. He also said he had not given hush money to Ms. Hunter, although his campaign had paid her $114,000 for videos.

Mrs. Edwards at the time issued a statement supporting her husband. “Although John believes he should stand alone and take the consequences of his action now,” she said, “when the door closes behind him, he has his family waiting for him.”

But in May 2009, she raised the matter again in interviews and television appearances, including one on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” and in a second memoir, “Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life’s Adversities” (Broadway Books, 2009).

In the book, she related his admission of infidelity. By his account, she wrote, “on only one night had he violated his vows to me.” She grew ill and angry and later tried to make herself believe it had lasted only one night. “It turned out that a single time was not all it was,” she said.

She said that she had urged him to end his campaign, “to protect our family from this woman, from his act,” but that he had refused, and she ended up supporting him, keeping silent about the affair as the campaign continued for a year and a half.

“Being sick meant a number of things to me,” she told Ms. Winfrey. “One is that my life is going to be less long, and I didn’t want to spend it fighting.”

Asked by Ms. Winfrey whether she still loved him, Mrs. Edwards replied, “You know, that’s a complicated question.”

The couple’s separation, and Mr. Edwards’s admission that he had fathered a child with Ms. Hunter, came on the eve of the publication of “The Politician” (Thomas Dunne Books, 2010), a tell-all book by Andrew Young, a former campaign aide who had originally said that he was the father of the child, who was born in 2007.

Mrs. Edwards was born Mary Elizabeth Anania on July 3, 1949, in Jacksonville, Fla., the daughter of Vincent J. and Elizabeth Thweatt Anania. Her father was a Navy pilot, and the family moved often in America and abroad.

She attended Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Va., then transferred to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earned a bachelor’s degree in English. She enrolled in the university’s law school, where in 1974 she met Mr. Edwards, four years her junior and the son of a textile worker.

After graduating, they were married in July 1977 and began legal careers. In the next two decades, he became a multimillionaire, mostly by winning medical malpractice cases. Her career was low key, in bankruptcy and public service law. Elizabeth preferred her middle name and used her maiden name professionally.

They were not very interested in politics. After the birth of Wade, in 1979, and Catharine, known as Cate, in 1982, they embraced parenthood, he coaching soccer, she joining parent-teacher groups and arranging her work schedule to spend afternoons with the children.

But the storybook family was shattered on April 4, 1996, when Wade, a high school junior, was killed in a car accident driving to the Edwardses’ beach house. Devastated, the parents stopped working. For months, Mrs. Edwards read her son’s textbooks aloud at his grave and spent sleepless nights in online bereavement groups or staring at a weather channel.

Eventually, the couple decided to change their lives. In Wade’s name, they established a foundation, created a computer learning lab at his high school and organized scholarships and essay awards. Elizabeth changed her surname to Edwards, began fertility treatments and had two more children — Emma Claire, in 1998, and John, known as Jack, in 2000.

Mr. Edwards went into politics, ran for the Senate in 1998 and handily defeated Lauch Faircloth, the Republican incumbent. Mr. Edwards served one term, deciding to run for president in 2004 rather than for re-election to the Senate. He fell short, but Senator Kerry, who won the nomination, picked him to run for vice president.

Mrs. Edwards soon became her husband’s most valued adviser, a role undiminished by her illness. “I trust her more than I trust anybody in the world,” Mr. Edwards said a month before abandoning his presidential race. “She’s herself, and fearless. I don’t think she’s intimidated by or afraid of anything.”

A correction was made on 
Dec. 7, 2010

An earlier version of this obituary misstated the timing of Elizabeth Edwards’s diagnosis. She learned she had a breast tumor the size of a half-dollar on the day after Election Day 2004, not Election Day. An earlier version of this obituary also misstated John Edwards’s tenure in the Senate. He served a full six-year term; he did not resign when he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004.

How we handle corrections

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: ELIZABETH EDWARDS, 1949-2010: Successes and Cruel Reversals, Played Out on a Political Stage. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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