Margaret M. Heckler, former US health services chief and ambassador to Ireland, dies at 87
Source: Boston Globe
Margaret M. Heckler, former US health services chief and ambassador to Ireland, dies at 87
By Brian MacQuarrie and Travis Andersen GLOBE STAFF AUGUST 06, 2018
Margaret M. Heckler, a former Republican diplomat, secretary of US Health and Human Services, and eight-term Massachusetts congresswoman who advocated for womens issues for decades, died Monday at a hospital in Arlington, Va. She was 87.
She was an inspiration to all who knew her, a family statement said of the daughter of Irish immigrants who eventually became ambassador to that country, capping a political career that began as a Republican Town Committee member in Wellesley.
Along the way, the only woman in the Boston College Law School Class of 1956 became the first Massachusetts woman elected to Congress who did not succeed her husband. Her eight terms, from 1967 to 1983, ended in stunning defeat at the hands of freshman US Representative Barney Frank, who had been pitted against the seasoned incumbent because of congressional redistricting.
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