Betty Bumpers

Betty Lou Bumpers (née Flanagan; January 11, 1925 – November 23, 2018) was an American politician, advocate for childhood immunizations, and world peace activist, who served as the First Lady of Arkansas from 1971 to 1975. Together, she and Rosalynn Carter ran a successful campaign to ensure that all American school children were immunized. Bumpers was the wife of Dale Bumpers, who served as governor of Arkansas from 1971 to 1975 and as a U.S. Senator from 1975 to 1999.

Early life Bumpers was born in the Grand Prairie community in Franklin County, Arkansas, to salesman and auctioneer Herman Edward "Babe" Flanagan and his wife, the former Ola Callans, a teacher. She grew up in Franklin County, except for a period during World War II when her family lived in Fort Smith and in the state of Iowa. she taught elementary school. In 1949 she married Dale Bumpers, a high school classmate who was then in law school at Northwestern University.

Advocacy for childhood immunization In 1970, Dale Bumpers was elected governor and after his inauguration in 1971, she became the state's first lady. Concerned that preschool children were vulnerable to preventable illnesses because they were not getting immunized on schedule, they founded the organization Every Child By Two, with the aim of assuring immunizations for all American children by the age of two. Bumpers said that the group's efforts to establish outreach programs and immunization registers in each state had contributed to an immunization rate of 90 percent for children from birth to age two in 2012.

After discussing the matter with her fellow Senate wives and other like-minded women in Washington, Bumpers decided to work to bring mainstream American women into the campaign for a nuclear weapons freeze, building on her earlier experience with grassroots volunteer activism.

On November 23, 2018, Bumpers died from complications of dementia and a broken hip in Little Rock at the age of 93.

Awards and recognitions The National Institutes of Health Vaccine Research Center was named for Betty and Dale Bumpers in recognition of their efforts to promote childhood immunizations and vaccine research. The first Wilton Peace Prize from the Unitarian Universalist Church, 1986 Peacemakers Award from the National Peace Institute Foundation, 1989 Billie Ann Myers Paragon Award from the Arkansas Department of Human Services Division of Community Service and Non-profit Support, 2012