Jane Muskie

Jane Frances Muskie ( Gray; February 12, 1927 – December 25, 2004) was an American civic leader and writer who, as the wife of Edmund Muskie, served as First Lady of Maine from 1955 to 1959. She was an active campaigner for her husband, supporting his political career on both state and national levels while he served in the Maine House of Representatives, as Governor of Maine, as a United States senator, and as Secretary of State.

During the 1972 United States presidential election, content republished by William Loeb III in the Manchester Union Leader "depicted her smoking, drinking, cussing, and generally behaving in a way conservative New Hampshire voters might not think becoming". Her husband called Loeb a "gutless coward" in an emotional public display that ultimately lost him the 1972 Democratic presidential primary.

Inspired by her time in Washington, D.C., Muskie co-wrote a novel, with Abigail McCarthy, in 1986 about corruption and back-door politics titled One Woman Lost. After her husband's political career ended, they moved to Bethesda, Maryland. Muskie died there in 2004 due to complications from Alzheimer's disease and was buried, next to her husband, in Arlington National Cemetery.

Biography Muskie was born Jane Frances Gray on February 12, 1927, in Waterville, Maine, to Millage Guy Gray, a Canadian, and Myrtie May Jackson Gray, an American. She was raised in the Baptist faith. Soon after, she and Muskie began dating despite their difference in age stirring controversy in the town; she was nineteen and he was thirty-two. After dating for eighteen months, the two were married in a private ceremony in 1948. She converted to Catholicism and switched over her political affiliation from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party shortly before getting married. At the time of their marriage, her husband was serving in the Maine House of Representatives. The Muskies lived in a yellow cottage at Kennebunk Beach while they lived in Maine.

Muskie assumed the role of First Lady of Maine upon her husband's inauguration as Governor of Maine in 1955. As first lady, she gave luncheons for three-hundred to four-hundred guests, as well as tea socials for wives of appointed officials, at The Blaine House.