Politicians from across the country are mourning the death this morning of Lindy Boggs.  Boggs, who served 18 years as a U. S. Representative from New Orleans and three years as U. S. Ambassador to the Vatican, passed away this morning at the age of 97.

Boggs, a native of Pointe Coupee Parish, came from a family with a political pedigree.  She was a descendant of, among others, Williams Charles Cole Claiborne, Louisiana's last territorial governor and first elected state governor.  She assumed office after her husband, Hale Boggs, was presumed dead after an airplane he was in went missing in Alaska in 1972.

Boggs retired from Congress in 1991 shortly after one of her daughters, Princeton, New Jersey, mayor Barbara Boggs Sigmund, died of cancer.  She returned to the national spotlight in 1997 when President Bill Clinton appointed her as the U. S. Ambassador to the Vatican.  She retired from that post in 2001.

While Boggs might be best known for her work in the spotlight, she rarely receives credit for the work she did as her husband's campaign manager in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s.  ABC political correspondent Cokie Roberts, Lindy and Hale Boggs's daughter, describes her parents' working relationship in this video.

 

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