Judy Agnew | Vice president's wife, 91
Judy Agnew, 91, who went to Washington after Richard M. Nixon plucked her husband, Spiro, from relative political obscurity to make him vice president, and who later stood by him when he resigned in 1973 because of criminal charges, died June 20 in Rancho Mirage, Calif.
Judy Agnew, 91, who went to Washington after Richard M. Nixon plucked her husband, Spiro, from relative political obscurity to make him vice president, and who later stood by him when he resigned in 1973 because of criminal charges, died June 20 in Rancho Mirage, Calif.
As Vice President Spiro T. Agnew seized America's attention with hot, alliterative rhetoric - calling Nixon's critics "pusillanimous pussyfooters" and "nattering nabobs of negativism" - Mrs. Agnew radiated the practical, plain-spoken perspicacity of a superbly competent suburban housewife.
As the nation's second lady, Mrs. Agnew, a former PTA president and an assistant Girl Scout leader, continued to cook kettles of spaghetti, buy her clothes off the rack, pack her husband's bag, and do needlepoint, just as she had done in Annapolis when her husband was governor of Maryland.
"I don't take stands on anything," she said in an interview with Parade magazine in 1970. "I stay out of the political end of it. When people ask what I majored in, I proudly tell them - 'I majored in marriage.' " - N.Y. Times News Service