Cokie Roberts

 

Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs, aka Cokie Roberts, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on December 27, 1943.  As you might have guessed from the name, she was born to a Catholic family.  Her parents were career politicians, Lindy and Hale Boggs, both of whom represented Louisiana in the U.S. House of Representatives (see Trivia below).

Cokie began her high school education at the Academy of the Sacred Heart, an all-girls Roman Catholic school in New Orleans.  She'd follow her family to Washinton, DC, where she'd eventually complete her diploma.  She then attended Wellesley College in Massachusetts, where she earned a bachelor's degree in political science in 1964.

After graduation, Cokie went to work at WRC-TV in Washington, DC, where she hosted a weekly public affairs program called Meeting of the Minds.  The gig was short lived however, as she'd spend the next few years following her husband Steve, a fellow journalist, from place to place.  His career took them to New York, Los Angeles, and Athens, Greece.  It was there that Cokie first went to work as a stringer for CBS News.

In 1978, Cokie joined National Public Radio.  She'd spent the next ten years as a Congressional Correspondent, making frequent appearances on PBS's MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour.  Then in 1988, she joined ABC as a Political Correspondent for ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.  She would make frequent appearances on the network's Sunday morning public affairs program This Week with David Brinkley.  Upon Brinkley's retirement in 1997, she became a permanent co-host of the program, which was redubbed This Week with Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts.  They were both replaced in 2002 however, when the show was given to Clinton ally George Stephanopoulos.

In 2002, Cokie was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer.  Although she was successfully treated for it at the time, it would eventually take her life on September 17, 2019.  She was 75 years old.

Cokie Roberts was laid to rest in Washington, DC's Congressional Cemetery, next to both of her parents.  A memorial bench honoring both Roberts and her mother was placed nearby.

Rest in peace.

Trivia

• Cokie authored enough books to start her own library.  After her passing, husband Steve wrote the definitive biography, Cokie: A Live Well Lived.  Check out the selection at Amazon.
  
  
• The nickname "Cokie" was first started by her younger brother, Tommy, who, as a child, could not pronounce Corinne.  The nickname stuck, and she eventually adopted it as her professional moniker.
  
  
• The phrase that emblazes Cokie's headstone, "put on the jewels and take up the tools," comes from a commencement speech she delivered to the graduates of Wellesley College, her alma mater, in 1994.
  
  
• Cokie won a several awards throughout her career, including the Edward R. Murrow Award, the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism, and an Emmy Award for the documentary Who is Ross Perot.
  
  
• As mentioned above, Hale Boggs represented Louisiana in the U.S. House of Representatives.  He served for more than thirty years, eventually becoming House Majority Leader during the Nixon Administration.  In October 1972, Boggs and his team were flying from Anchorage to Juneau when their plane disappeared.  Today, more than fifty years later, no trace of the plane has ever been found.  The story of their disappearance has been chronicled in a number of documentaries, including the History Channel's Missing in Alaska: Vanished in a Vortex.