Elizabeth Edwards shared her private pain with the public

Associated Press

CHAPEL HILL, N.C.

Elizabeth Edwards lost her hair to cancer, her son to an accident, her husband to another woman.

No wonder she called one memoir “Resilience.” And another “Saving Graces.”

Edwards’ death Tuesday at age 61 ended a struggle of extraordinary and multiple dimensions, any one of which might have consumed the more faint-hearted. She had lived side by side with high political ambition, personal betrayal, advancing disease and single-minded determination, and in her last years built a network of supporters who took life lessons from her adversities.

A public figure to the end, Edwards said goodbye to them the night before, online, after doctors had concluded they could do no more to save her. They figured she might have weeks at best; she lived hours.

John Edwards, the man she had advised as a strategist and supported as a spouse through a Senate campaign and two runs for the presidency, joined the family by her side. The couple had separated nearly a year ago, their marriage and their shared dreams of power shattered by his affair with a campaign videographer and his eventual admission that he had fathered his lover’s child.

Edwards became an advocate in her own right for health-care reform and for the poor, two issues that had driven her husband, too. In that work, she lacked his clout but also his baggage.

“Our country has benefited from the voice she gave to the cause of building a society that lifts up all those left behind,” President Barack Obama said.

Edwards was calculating and ambitious in her own right, as well.

A shrewd attorney, Edwards contributed mightily to her husband’s rise in politics and acted conspicuously to prevent his fall, his partner in hiding a secret that would come out anyway.

John Edwards quit the race after poor showings in the primaries that made Obama the Democratic nominee, and he and his wife retreated almost entirely from public life.

While she pleaded for privacy after revelations of his adultery, she also wrote a memoir — her second — that discussed how the affair repulsed her. She went on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” to talk about it, but only on the condition that Winfrey not mention the woman by name.

Edwards connected easily with the public and her battle with breast cancer resonated. She shared the most intimate details.

It was not her first experience publicly dealing with very private matters. She wrote in her 2006 memoir about the death of their 16-year-old son, Wade, in 1996 and the grief that consumed her for two years afterward.

She was a Navy brat born in Jacksonville, Fla., and her experience attending school in Japan and living on military bases helped make her comfortable introducing herself to roomfuls of strangers.

She and John Edwards met in law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and married the weekend after they took the bar exam. He gave her an $11 wedding ring and borrowed money from his parents to pay for a brief honeymoon.

Even as John Edwards went on to make millions as one of the nation’s most successful trial lawyers, they continued to celebrate anniversaries at Wendy’s, where they had marked their first year of marriage.

With the help of fertility treatments, Edwards gave birth to two more children, Emma Claire, now 12; and Jack, now 10. They joined daughter Cate, nearly 20 years older than her new siblings.

She is also survived by a brother, Jay Anania, and sister, Nancy Anania.