Betty Shingler Talmadge

News Obituary Article

Senate to farm, Betty Talmadge had fun

Former Georgia first lady to be eulogized today

By TOM BENNETT, KAY POWELL

Betty Shingler Talmadge was a successful businesswoman, hostess extraordinaire, cookbook writer, Georgia's former first lady and the ex-wife of former U.S. Sen. Herman E. Talmadge.

At her Lovejoy Plantation near Jonesboro in Clayton County, Ms. Talmadge hosted elaborate parties, called magnolia suppers, for political, business, convention and media events.

Guests were greeted with her brand of Southern hospitality: four soldiers dressed in Confederate gray, a Dixieland duo with banjos, and her pet bunny Rabbit E. Lee, donkey Assley Wilkes, goat Billy T. Sherman and peacock, Uncle Pittypat.

The graveside service for Ms. Talmadge, 81, of Atlanta, who died of complications from Alzheimer's disease at Piedmont Hospital on Saturday, is 2 p.m. today at Rose Hill Cemetery in Ashburn. Perry Funeral Chapel of Ashburn is in charge of arrangements.

"When I learned the sad news about Betty Talmadge's death, my thoughts traveled over the many years of friendship that began when we were members of the Senate Wives Club and deepened as the years progressed," former first lady Lady Bird Johnson said in a statement from her Austin, Texas, residence. Mrs. Johnson is the widow of former President Lyndon B. Johnson.

"Betty was charming, smart, witty, creative and used these traits to overcome much adversity in her life. To no one's surprise, she became a successful entrepreneur! Betty was a large part of the tapestry of Lyndon's life and mine, and my world will be less bright without her."

"Betty Talmadge was famous for her stories of Southern politics, stories welcome in every room and circle in Washington," said author Liz Carpenter of Austin, Mrs. Johnson's press secretary when she was first lady. "She just was a collector of good storytelling, and that gave her a distinction in Washington. She was a delight to all who knew her. She made politics more acceptable with her great stories and sense of humor."

Ms. Talmadge operated her home at Lovejoy as a reservations-only restaurant and was a frequent host to Japanese tourists. The visitors believed they were eating at and walking about a locale from "Gone With the Wind" --- a notion Ms. Talmadge encouraged. She claimed Lovejoy Plantation was the inspiration for "Twelve Oaks" in Margaret Mitchell's novel and the MGM film.

"Gone With the Wind" expert Herb Bridges of Sharpsburg said the movie plantation house is a composite of dozens researched, including Lovejoy Plantation.

The book, the film and the family were linked in 1940 when former Gov. Eugene Talmadge, Sen. Talmadge's father, bought the Lovejoy farm. In her December 1978 divorce from Sen. Talmadge, who died in 2002, Ms. Talmadge was given 100 acres of the farm for the rest of her life, along with $150,000 in cash.

The Talmadge family was Georgia's most powerful political machine from 1926 to 1980. Sen. Talmadge's father was the state's agriculture commissioner from 1927 to 1932 and governor from 1933 to '37 and 1941-43, and was elected governor again in 1946 but died in December of that year before taking office.

Elizabeth Shingler was an 18-year-old native of Ashburn in South Georgia when she married into the family in December 1941 in a ceremony at the Governor's Mansion where while her father-in-law was governor. Just a few years later, in 1947, she would become the state's youngest first lady at 23.

The Talmadges were the state's most newsworthy couple during his Senate years, 1957-1980, and earlier, when he was governor. When Eugene Talmadge died after being elected but before beginning his third term as governor, Herman Talmadge and two other politicians each claimed he should be governor. During the controversy, Herman Talmadge was governor for 67 days in 1947, then interim governor, and served a full term as governor in 1951-55.

During her husband's Senate years, Ms. Talmadge was a prominent hostess and socialite in Washington. She was a frequent bridge partner of Mrs. Johnson's, who visited her at Lovejoy Plantation. She hosted luncheons for Pat Nixon and Judy Agnew, the wives of President Richard Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew, while their husbands were under fire during the Watergate scandal.

In 1952, Ms. Talmadge bought 200 hams and cured and sold them, starting a business she thought would provide stable income. Talmadge country-cured hams reached $6 million in sales. The business was sold in 1969. In establishing and running that business, she went from someone "who didn't know a debit from a credit," she told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, to a shrewd businesswoman.

In 1975, Ms. Talmadge's son Robert S. Talmadge, 29, drowned. In 1992, her left leg was amputated below the knee because of a blood clot. In 1997 she had to give up Lovejoy Plantation and move into Lenbrook Square retirement community.

Through it all, she had a flair for fun.

Ms. Talmadge stumped the panel on TV's "What's My Line" in 1955. At the Newport News, Va., shipyard in 1973, she christened the nuclear attack submarine Richard B. Russell, named for another U.S. senator from Georgia.

She co-wrote "How to Cook a Pig and Other Back-to-the-Farm Recipes," published in 1977 by Simon & Schuster, and "Betty Talmadge's Lovejoy Plantation Cookbook," distributed by Peachtree Publishers in 1983.

"She was a great raconteur," said Carolyn Carter of Sea Island, a childhood friend and a co-author of the pig cookbook. "I helped her with parties at Lovejoy, and we had more fun preparing for them than the parties themselves."

She once developed a hunger for her own political career but lost a race for the Democratic nomination for the 6th Congressional District in 1978, finishing third. In 1983, Ms. Talmadge played a waitress in the made-for-TV movie "Murder in Coweta County."

When Ms. Talmadge divorced her husband in 1978, he was a fourth-term U.S. senator and the powerful chairman of the Agriculture and Forestry Committee. They made national front-page headlines in 1979 when she gave damaging testimony before the Senate Ethics Committee that Sen. Talmadge, on trial for violating Senate rules, kept large amounts of money in an overcoat in a closet at their Washington condominium. She drew upon the fund to supplement her $50 a week allowance.

Although the senator testified he received small cash donations of $5 to $20 from political supporters, Ms. Talmadge turned over to the Ethics Committee $7,700 in $100 bills she took from the overcoat. The Senate voted 81-15 in October 1979 to "denounce" Sen. Talmadge. He lost a 1980 bid for re-election.

"Betty Talmadge led an adventurous life. She had just done it all. Her sense of humor saw her through adversity and gave pleasure to everyone," said Mrs. Johnson's executive assistant, Shirley James of Austin.

Survivors include a son, Gene Talmadge of Lovejoy; eight grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

© 2005 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution