- Elise Winter:A New Kind of First Lady*
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When Elise Winter became the first lady of Mississippi in January 1980, the public knew her as a genteel and dignified Southern lady, just the kind of woman who should be the first lady of Mississippi. Governor William Winter had distinguished himself over a thirty-plus-year career as a judicious and progressive public servant, an astute student of state politics and history, and a voice of reason and moderation during the emotionally charged time of racial change in Mississippi. Mrs. Winter had actively campaigned for him throughout their marriage as he ran for several elective positions in state government, including two previous unsuccessful runs for governor in 1967 and 1974.
Indeed, Elise Varner Winter is the epitome of the Southern Lady. She is also intelligent and well educated. The daughter of a small-town pharmacist and a gracious and strong mother who kept books for the drugstore, Mrs. Winter has deep Mississippi roots. Her childhood in Senatobia, Mississippi, was a simple one, highlighted by large family gatherings, bicycling to school, and playing the piano and organ in the Methodist Church. At the University of Mississippi she was an excellent student, earning a bachelor’s degree and a teacher’s certificate (her mother’s request) and completing the course work for a master’s degree in history. There she also met her future husband, a young veteran of World War II and an outstanding law student from Grenada, who was already serving in the Mississippi House of Representatives. Elise Varner and William Winter married in 1950. [End Page 81]
As expected of an upper-middle-class Southern woman of the day, she was a traditional wife and stay-at-home mother as their family grew to include three daughters. Before she became first lady, her adult life had revolved around her children and a husband who was either serving as an elected official or campaigning for office. Consequently, when she stepped into the position of first lady, “I had a hard time finding what my place would be,” she said later. “I had been busy as the mother of my children and as a housekeeper and homemaker, and when I moved into the mansion most of the jobs I had spent my life doing were done” (Christensen 4E).
Elise Winter was first lady at the time of the greatest shift in the status of women in our nation’s history. In the 1970s, activist women, inspired by the civil rights movement, had fought for rights equal to those of men, creating a more equitable life for women. Most middle-class American women no longer found themselves living in a Father Knows Best world, where the men were supposedly smarter and women depended on them for nearly everything. In 1980, for the first time, women who worked were as numerous as ladies who lunched: fifty-two percent of all females sixteen years and older were working or looking for work (Waite 4). Women were now hired for professional and upper-level positions in a variety of fields, though most continued to handle the traditional matters of home and children as well.
During the years prior to her becoming first lady, Elise Winter had brought up three daughters and matured as a woman and a politician’s wife. Having spent many summers campaigning throughout the state for her husband, she knew well the struggles of balancing family and work, and she had learned how to make her own way in the rough and tumble of the mostly men’s world that was Mississippi politics. As one of a small group of advisors, she had been closely involved in the campaign and in planning what they wanted to accomplish in a Winter administration. Thus, when William Winter was elected governor in 1979, Mrs. Winter was poised to become a new kind of first lady—a first lady for 1980s—one with a professional approach to the position...