The Nation: Cornelia: Determined to Make Do

HER dark eyes misty but her soft voice carefully controlled, Cornelia Wallace courageously faced television cameras shortly after the shooting of her husband. She proclaimed his determination to recover: “He didn’t earn the title of the ‘Fighting Little Judge’ for nothing.” She had passed the word that the Governor would continue to campaign “in a wheelchair if necessary,” and that in the meantime she was willing to carry on for him on the campaign trail. Those who know Cornelia Wallace well are confident that her special blend of charm and toughness would make her a highly effective substitute.

The political role would be a new one for Cornelia. Since their marriage 16 months ago, she has mainly preferred just to walk on with George, wave to the crowd and be there at day’s end to provide what she has called “the emotional response” that he needs when he gets so “very lonely” while traveling. Cornelia, who is 33 (19 years younger than her husband), is smart, ambitious for both him and herself and experienced in the ways of politics. Although she sees herself more as “a Huck Finn” than “a Southern belle,” her favorite fictional heroine is Scarlett O’Hara. “You saw what she did with that lumber company,” Cornelia recently recalled. “When she had to, she took over that business and made a success of it. She made do for herself.” In the face of her husband’s probably permanent paralysis, Mrs. Wallace is determined to “make do” for him.

Cornelia first met Wallace at a party in the Alabama Governor’s mansion when her uncle James (“Kissin’ Jim”) Folsom was a party-loving Governor and she was only eight years old. “My two little cousins and I were peeping down the stairs in our nightgowns and the Wallaces saw us. They walked up the stairs and talked to us and held us.” At the time, Wallace, a state legislator, was married to his first wife, Lurleen, who died of cancer in 1968 after succeeding him as Governor in the same mansion.

A country girl actually raised in a log cabin in Elba, Ala. (“We used to gofishing for mud fish in the Pea River —that’s what it was called”), Cornelia heard constant talk of politics from her twice-widowed mother, Ruby Folsom Ellis Austin,* who served as official hostess for her brother before he remarried. Cornelia’s father, Charles G. Ellis, a civil engineer, died in 1960. At Montgomery’s Methodist Huntingdon College and Florida’s Rollins College, Cornelia studied voice and piano. Then she slipped into what she calls “my little hillbilly jag.” She sang and played guitar, toured Australia and Hawaii with Country Singer Roy Acuff, and wrote and performed two recorded songs for MGM: It’s No Summer Love and Baby with the Barefoot Feet.

Her tawny good looks and shapely legs (she is 5 ft. 6 in., one inch shorter than George) carried her to the semifinals of a Miss Alabama contest before she became the star of the Cypress Gardens water ski show in Florida —and married John Snively III, a millionaire whose family at one time owned the Gardens. After seven years of marriage and two sons, Jim and Josh, the Snivelys were divorced in 1969.

Although Wallace had beaten Folsom in a primary election for Governor in 1962, he still remained friends with Cornelia and her mother. About a year after Lurleen died, he began calling Cornelia and saying, “I think I’ll just come over for a few minutes.” To avoid publicity, the two at first dated only at her home or at little-known restaurants. She found him “very appealing and very physical,” but also “very Victorian.” He still “won’t even say the word sexy,” she notes, and he will not let her wear her skirts as short as she would like. But otherwise he lets her pursue such high-spirited diversions as driving the pace car for the Indianapolis 500 at 100 m.p.h. She has regretted not being able to see their children (Wallace has four) much while campaigning, but has told them: “Your father’s work must come first. You’ve got to mold your life around his.”

Although Cornelia has never interfered with her husband’s political operations, she seems tougher than his Governor-wife Lurleen. Learning that one of Wallace’s aides was poor-mouthing his chances of becoming President, she braced the man, threatened to get him fired if he expressed such a sentiment again.

When George failed to introduce her as the two met some guests at one political meeting, she turned to a group of reporters and snapped: “Does he think I’m a little doll he can drag around all day and then just pull a string when he wants to?” Yet such moods pass swiftly, and Cornelia seems totally devoted to George and his career. “God made woman for man as a companion,” she contends. As two other Southern Governors noted privately last week, George Wallace has an excellent chance for political survival because his companion is Cornelia.

*As colorful a character as her brother Jim, Ruby Folsom was seen by some as a possible competitor of her daughter’s for Wallace’s affections. “Shoooot, honey,” scoffed Ruby, who is nearly six feet tall. “He ain’t even titty high.” After she campaigned for George this year in Florida, some on the Wallace staff seemed to consider her an embarrassment, and she was miffed. “Ah’m scared they’re gonna tell George ah was drinkin’ too much and showin’ my fanny,” she told a Washington Post reporter.