Elizabeth Edwards

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Elizabeth Edwards

Mary Elizabeth Edwards (née Anania) (born July 3, 1949, in Jacksonville, Florida) is a former attorney and the wife of John Edwards, a former U.S. Senator from North Carolina and the 2004 United States Democratic vice-presidential candidate.

Education and family

Edwards spent some of her childhood attending school in Japan, where her father, an Italian-American United States Navy U-2 pilot, was stationed.

She attended Mary Washington College then transferred, earning undergraduate and graduate degrees in English, as well as a J.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She met John Edwards when they were both law students there. They married in 1977. The Edwards are the parents of four children: Catharine (or "Cate"), Wade, Emma Claire, and Jack. Wade died in a car accident in 1996. Following Wade's death, Edwards and his wife chose to have children again: Emma Claire, born when Elizabeth was 49 years old in 1998, and Jack, born when Elizabeth was 51 in 2000. The Associated Press has reported that the Edwardses' two youngest children were born with the help of surrogate mothers.

Professional Life

Edwards used her maiden name, Elizabeth Anania, professionally until 1996. After the death of her son and her retirement from legal practice, she changed her name to Elizabeth Edwards. She began her career as a law clerk for a federal judge, then moved to Nashville, Tennessee in 1978 to become an associate at the law firm of Harwell Barr Martin & Sloan. In 1981 she and her husband moved to their family Raleigh to work at the law firm Merriman, Nicholls, and Crampton. She has taught legal writing as an adjunct instructor at the law school of the University of North Carolina and worked as a substitute teacher in the Wake County Public Schools. Much of her time is devoted to the administration of the Wade Edwards Foundation, a foundation created in honor of her late son to reward, encourage, and inspire young people in the pursuit of excellence.

Political activities

During much of 2004, Edwards joined her husband and United States Democratic Presidential nominee Senator John Kerry on the nationwide campaign trail. On November 3, 2004, the day Kerry and Edwards conceded defeat in the 2004 US Presidential Election, Elizabeth Edwards was diagnosed with breast cancer (she later revealed that had she became aware of the breast cancer in the midst of the campaign after discovering a lump while on a campaign stop in Kenosha, Wisconsin). She was treated and has has continued to remain an activist for women, cancer patients, the Democratic Party, and her husband's PAC, One America Committee. In a November 2006 comment on the Daily Kos website, Edwards stated that on her last visit, her oncologist said that cancer was not one of the things going on in her life. [1]

In September 2006 Edwards released a book, Saving Graces: Finding Solace and Strength from Friends and Strangers, focusing on the death of her son and her battle with breast cancer.