Hubert Humphrey's Widow Dies
.c The Associated Press
By ROCHELLE OLSON
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) -- Muriel Humphrey Brown, who overcame shyness to become
an effective campaigner for her husband, Hubert Humphrey, then briefly took his
Senate seat after his death, died Sunday. She was 86.
Mrs. Brown died of natural causes at Abbott Northwestern Memorial Hospital in
Minneapolis. She had been admitted to the hospital Sunday morning.
Mrs. Brown rarely appeared in public in recent years but was by the side of her
son, Hubert Humphrey III, last week when he won the Democratic-Farmer-Labor
gubernatorial primary.
``Hubert would have been proud,'' Mrs. Brown said to a cheering crowd shortly
after her son's victory.
Former Vice President Walter Mondale, who was her late husband's protege and
knew her for 50 years, said Mrs. Brown and Humphrey were a fantastic public and
private team.
``Together they helped change this country to a better, fairer, more decent
society,'' Mondale said. ``Half of what we credit Hubert for we should credit
Muriel because they were a team from beginning to end.''
As widow of the state's most popular politician, she became the only woman to
serve as senator from Minnesota when then-Gov. Rudy Perpich appointed her to
the vacant seat in January 1978.
She did not seek election that fall, leaving the Senate after nine months.
Republican Sen. Dave Durenberger succeeded her.
She was the 12th woman to serve in the Senate and the fifth to take a seat
vacated by her husband. She was the only woman in the Senate at the time.
``It's the most challenging thing I've ever done in my whole life,'' she said.
Like her husband, she championed social programs and labor issues. She went
beyond him in her push for abortion rights, saying that the federal government
ought to pay for abortions for poor women. Humphrey had voted against Medicaid
funding of abortions.
Mrs. Brown was born Muriel Fay Buck on Feb. 20, 1912, in Huron, S.D. She met
Humphrey in 1934 when he was working at his father's drugstore and she was a
bookkeeper for a utility. They married two years later.
Mrs. Brown, who once said she was afraid to address her own women's club,
became a relaxed speaker. She campaigned seven days a week for her husband when
he unsuccessfully ran for president in 1972.
In Minnesota, the Humphreys lived on a lake just outside Waverly. It was there
he died at age 66 after a long battle with cancer.
A year later, she married Max Brown, a Nebraskan and lifelong Republican whom
she met when the two were sixth-graders in Huron.
In addition to her husband and her son, Mrs. Brown is survived by a daughter,
Nancy Solomonson, and two sons, Bob and Douglas Humphrey.
JBF
The world was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your
children.
--
-Barry Shein
Software Tool & Die | b...@world.std.com | http://www.world.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD
Yes she is, either age 85 or 86. Born in 1912.
jb