Lifelong Affair: My Passion for People and Politics by Bethine C. Church

From the Publisher

When Bethine Church moved to Washington, D.C., in 1957 with her son and her husband, Frank -- Idaho's newly elected Democratic senator and, at 32, the youngest member of the senate -- she was warned by the wife of a veteran politician that she would end up hating the capital. All the light will shine on her husband, and she will wither away in his shadow. But Bethine had been Frank's political partner since their earliest days together and she saw no reason why that would change. And in fact it didn't. In her own winsome words, A Lifelong Affair is the fascinating story of the woman people called "The Third Senator from Idaho." Critical chapters of our history, from civil rights battles and the Vietnam War to Senator Church's chairmanship of the Senate Intelligence Committee, come vividly to life here, as does the idealism and love of people that animate Bethine Church's entire career in politics.

Bethine grew up in an Idaho family steeped in politics. Her father and an uncle both served as governor of Idaho; her cousin was a U.S. senator. Bethine's first active role in politics was in a campaign in the early 1930s, when she asked a shoe clerk to "boat for my daddy." In high school she was the one girl in a gang of students who gathered every week at Bethine's house to sit around and talk politics with her father. Those were the days of innocence in the West, when politics was seen as a civic duty, when winning an election depended on which candidate worked the hardest, shook the most hands, and could energize a crowd at a county fair or a church bazaar. Politics had not yet been distorted by huge advertizing budgets, corporate donations, media blitzes, and public cynicism.

Besides being a tale of a political woman, A Lifelong Affair is a poignant love story. Close friends in high school, Bethine and Frank married after he returned from World War II service in China. Together they battled Frank's first encounter with cancer when he was a 24-year-old Stanford law student. That searing experience set the tone for their life together fighting as a team for causes they believed in strongly. When cancer reappeared in a more virulent form in the early 1980s, they couldn't beat it, and Frank died at the still young age of 59. Bethine, now in her eightieth year, remains active in Democratic politics at all levels and in Idaho wilderness preservation.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Master of the Senate - Robert A. Caro

Touching and poignant, filled with memorable insights not only into politics but into human nature, Bethine Church's autobiography is a simply wonderful book.

ABC NEWS, National Public Radio - Cokie Roberts

This book is the real deal. It describes politics as it is really played, showing the power of the political wife-as-partner. It illustrates how campaigns and elections have changed over the last fifty years. And it celebrates the American system, warts and all. It's also a wonderful love story.

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Table of Contents