Huffington Post – WASHINGTON — Former Rep. Lindy Boggs, a plantation-born Louisianan who used her soft-spoken grace to fight for civil rights during nearly 18 years in Congress after succeeding her late husband in the House, died Saturday. She was 97.

Boggs, who later served three years as ambassador to the Vatican during the Clinton administration, died of natural causes at her home in Chevy Chase, Md., according to her daughter, ABC News journalist Cokie Roberts.

Boggs’ years in Congress started with a special election in 1973 to finish the term of her husband, Thomas Hale Boggs Sr., whose plane disappeared over Alaska six months earlier. Between them, they served a half-century in the House.

“It didn’t occur to us that anybody else would do it,” Roberts said in explaining why her mother was the natural pick for the congressional seat. Her parents, who had met in college, were “political partners for decades,” she said, with Lindy Boggs running her husband’s political campaigns and becoming a player on the Washington political scene.

Roberts called her mother “a trailblazer for women and the disadvantaged.”

via Lindy Boggs Dead: Former Rep. Dies At 97.