Elizabeth Edwards Dies at 61

Wednesday, 08 December 2010 | by Pat's Picks

Just one day after she told the world she’d stopped treatment, Elizabeth Edwards fell victim to cancer yesterday, dying at the age of 61. Raleigh’s News and Observer has a nice obituary that focuses not on the Edwardses’ marital problems but on Elizabeth’s full life before she assumed her position in the national spotlight.

To prove my point, here are two things that I didn’t know about her that have nothing to do with her husband:

Her father was in the military and when she was a kid, her family lived in Japan twice. While there here mothered a retired geisha to teach Elizabeth and her sisters “how to comport themselves with grace.”

She once made her son and eight of his friends a nine-hole golf course costume for Halloween.

The New York Daily News has a good round-up of the nice things people like President Obama, Maria Shriver and Arianna Huffington had to say about Edwards.