Mrs Humphrey’s Role In Campaign Undecided

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30536, 3 September 1964, Page 2

Mrs Humphrey’s Role In Campaign Undecided

[from the "Christian Science Monitor." Reprinted by. arrangement.]

ATLANTIC CITY.

Millions across the United States had their first glimpse of blue-eyed Muriel Humphrey, diminutive wife of the VicePresidential candidate, when she stood beside him on the convention plaitform in that moment of drama following the President’s surprise introduction of his preferred candidate.

The rumour that “it was Humphrey” had been sweeping Convention Hall and had been given some substantiation when Mrs Humphrey quietly joined the First Lady in the Presidential box. She had been in Atlantic City for a number of days quietly sunning herself on the beach, as serene as if the vicepresidential question mark that hung in the political sky had nothing at all to do with her. Changes In Stride Muriel Humphrey, with her quiet smile and her low voice, has been the wife of a politician too long to be flustered by changes. Her role in the fall campaign “will be to do what the national leadership and my husband asks me to do,” she says. If she has to get up and make speeches before a big audience, she will do it although she has 'always avoided this kind of thing in the past. Her campaigning has been largely confined to women’s groups where she sticks to homey subjects and avoids the discussion of big issues. Mother of Four But she has said that she would be proud to follow in the footsteps of Mrs Johnson

and "campaign about the same way she does,” if that is what is wanted.

Muriel Humphrey is the mother of four children and grandmother of two. Mrs Humphrey is as frank as she is soft-spoken. Friends say that her husband is unlikely to have a swelled head as long as she is around. She herself thinks: "Maybe I tease him too much.” Domestic to her fingertips, Muriel Humphrey designs and makes nearly all of her own clothes, and sews for her grandchildren.

’ Her hobby is gardening. jThe garden at the Humphrey I home in Lake Waverley, Min., is her particular pride. South Dakota Native She likes to travel and has

accompanied her husband on trips to Europe, the Middle East, Central and South [America, and has been twice 'to the Soviet Union. She was born in Huron, South Dakota, where her father was a butter and egg I dealer. Muriel Fay Buck and Hubert Humphrey met in the drug store run by Senator Humphrey’s father. She was attending Huron College at the time, and the store was a popular hangout for the college crowd. They were married in 1936 in the First Presbyterian Church in her home town. They now belong to a Congregationalist Church in Minneapolis,. but attend the Chevy Chase Methodist Church in Maryland.