Реферат: George Wallace Essay Research Paper Former Gov

But on the afternoon of May 15, at an unnecessary campaign rally in

Laurel, Md., Wallace overruled the Secret Service and moved into a crowd

for a final round of handshaking. “Hey, George, let me shake hands with

you,” shouted Arthur Bremer. Frustrated in an earlier ambition to kill

Nixon, Bremer, had been stalking the governor for weeks. From a range of

three feet, the gunman shot Wallace three times, severing his spine and

paralyzing him for life. Bremer is now in prison in Maryland, serving the

63-year sentence given him in June 1972.

Although his presidential hopes ended, Wallace won two more terms as

governor by appealing to white loyalty and catering to the thousands of

new black voters whose franchise he had opposed. But Wallace now behaved

more like a pensioner than a chief executive. The constant pain from his

wound — “the thorn in my flesh” — limited his concentration and resulted

in a dependence on methadone and other painkillers. He became

pathologically jealous of his wife, Cornelia, who after a messy divorce in

1978 encountered her own problems with substance abuse.

Wallace’s hope to found a dynasty foundered when his son, George Jr.,

proved a querulous campaigner who could not progress beyond minor state

offices. Wallace married again to a failed country singer named Lisa

Taylor. That marriage, too, generated sour publicity before they divorced

in 1987.

He is survived by four children from his first marriage: his son, of

Montgomery; three daughters, Lee Dye and Bobbi Jo Parsons, both of

Birmingham, and Peggy Kennedy of Montgomery; two brothers, Gerald, of

Montgomery, and Jack, of Eufaula, Ala.; and several grandchildren.

Wallace won his last election as governor in 1982, but it was historical

revision, rather than running the state, that occupied his last years.

Starting in 1977, he began giving interviews in which he said that

political philosophy rather than racism was the motor of his career.