July 30th, 2008 5:17 PM
Associated Press
McALLEN, Texas -- Anne Armstrong, a longtime powerful Republican who served as U.S. ambassador to Great Britain in the Ford administration, died Wednesday, her office said. She was 80.
Armstrong had battled cancer and had been in a Houston-area hospice for about a week before her death, her assistant Kay Hicks said.
She and her husband, Tobin, were Republican stalwarts. She was a national leader of the Republican Party and Cabinet-level adviser to Presidents Nixon and Ford.
Armstrong’s name was again in the news in 2006 when Vice President Cheney accidentally shot and wounded a fellow hunter during an outing at the Armstrong family’s ranch in South Texas.
She was the first woman to serve as U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, taking the post in 1976.
At her swearing-in, President Ford quipped that his wife was “always needling me” to appoint women to such posts. Armstrong replied that “I have the feeling Abigail Adams would have been just as excited as Betty Ford and I” about her selection.
A couple of months into her tenure, The New York Times reported that the British had “taken an instant liking to her ... because she is visible and direct and informal without turning informality into a cloying down-home soupiness.”
More recently, Armstrong was an adviser on foreign intelligence to Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
“Her public service was exemplary and set a high standard for all who recognized that government service is vitally important to our way of life,” Bush said in a statement. “Anne was a great sportsman, fantastic shot, and a wonderful friend to the Bush family. We send condolences to her family and mourn her death.”
Armstrong was also the first woman to co-chair the Republican National Committee.
“Anne Armstrong has been a close, trusted friend and my greatest mentor for over 30 years,” said U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who was Armstrong’s press secretary at the RNC. Since their days at the GOP, Hutchison said, “I have not made a major decision in my career without first consulting Anne.”
“Women have benefited from the barriers she overcame in government, diplomacy and politics throughout her career,” Hutchison said.
Tobin Armstrong died in 2005. They had been married for 55 years.
The man wounded by Cheney on Armstrong’s ranch in February 2006 was Harry Whittington, a millionaire attorney and longtime Republican activist. He was hit in the face, neck and chest with birdshot and was hospitalized for several days.
The Kenedy County ranch had been in the Armstrong family since the 19 th century. Tobin Armstrong’s grandfather, John Armstrong III, who settled it, had earned his fame as the Texas Ranger who captured notorious outlaw John Wesley Hardin.
Even though Armstrong had advised presidents and served as an ambassador, her first and last elected offices were in Kenedy County where she first served as county Repubican chairwoman and most recently won a county commission seat, said Dick Messbarger, executive director of the Kingsville Economic Development Council and a longtime acquaintance.
Armstrong took her commission job seriously and followed even local justice of the peace races closely. “I’d ask her national questions and she’d ask me about local politics,” Messbarger said.
Armstrong attended the commissioners’ last regularly scheduled meeting July 14, Hicks said.
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