In Michigan, Alabama’s first gentleman said his wife’s cancer was “improving.” She was actually shrunken down to eighty pounds and finally succumbed a couple days later. Twenty-five thousand mourners waited up to five hours to pay respects at a silver casket—open, at George Wallace’s insistence, despite Lurleen’s dying wish that it be closed—engraved with a line from her inaugural speech: “I am proud to be an Alabaman.”
