Elizabeth Edwards, 1949–2010

Elizabeth Edwards appeared to have it all. A successful bankruptcy lawyer, she was married to a handsome and wealthy trial lawyer, and the couple had two children, Wade and Cate. But their world was shattered on an April night in 1996 when 16-year-old Wade was killed in a freak car accident. After spending months nearly paralyzed with grief, the couple radically changed their lives. John Edwards launched a political career that would carry him to the U.S. Senate in 1998. Elizabeth, at 48, began taking fertility drugs in hopes of having another child. This new chapter took them nearly to the White House before ending in political and personal scandal and the unraveling of their marriage.

Elizabeth Edwards lived out some of her life’s most private moments in the public eye, said CNN.com. The daughter of a Navy pilot, she was born in Jacksonville, Fla., and grew up in Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Japan. She attended the University of North Carolina, originally intending to be an English teacher. But with job prospects scarce, she decided instead to enroll at the university’s law school. There she met John Edwards, another law student three years her junior. They married in 1977, “the Saturday after they took their state bar exams.”

From the start, theirs was a partnership of equals, said the Raleigh, N.C., News & Observer. She became John’s closest advisor and later was “an active participant in his political career,” appearing constantly with him at campaign events after John was tapped as Democrat John Kerry’s running mate in the 2004 presidential campaign. She was a popular figure, “seen as someone approachable, less glamorous, and more down-to-earth than her husband.” During the campaign, she noticed a lump in her breast; immediately after the Kerry-Edwards campaign conceded defeat in the general election, she had it checked out. The next day she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

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The cancer seemed to disappear following aggressive treatment, said The Washington Post. Elizabeth and her husband began to lay the groundwork for a second presidential run, while also raising two young children, Emma Claire, born in 1998, and Jack, born in 2000. Their campaign continued after Elizabeth learned, in 2006, that her husband had had an affair with campaign videographer Rielle Hunter. She “stayed silent about it in public and campaigned for him.” The couple even publicly renewed their wedding vows in 2007. Later that year she learned that her cancer had returned; it was treatable but not curable. To the shock of many, the Edwards campaign continued. But unable to gain traction against Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, John Edwards dropped out of the race in January 2008. Months later, the tabloid National Enquirer spilled the details of his affair with Hunter and claimed that he had fathered a child with her. John denied the claim until last January, when a campaign aide’s tell-all book confirmed it. Former supporters excoriated Elizabeth for making her romance with John a campaign theme and keeping a secret that might well have sunk the Democrats had her husband won the nomination. Elizabeth and John separated, and she made no secret of her pain. Still, he was with her, their children, and other family members when she died.

The day before her death, Elizabeth issued a statement that read, in part: “The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered. We know that. But I have found that in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful.”