Tagged: helen wallbank milliken

This week Rina Miller and Jack Lessenberry discuss how Michigan will comply with the Affordable Care Act, and how the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Michigan's constitutional ban on affirmative action does not hold up under the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause. Lessenberry also remembered the late former first lady, Helen Millikin.

She was once a shy young woman from a wealthy family who typed her young husband’s papers for him when he was finishing college. She raised two children, worked in her garden, and dreamed of a degree in landscape architecture.

Later, she found her voice, and inspired other women to do so as perhaps no other Michigan woman ever has. She was a crusader for the arts, and the moving force and the first chair of the Michigan Artrain. She was in her fifties when she joined the National Organization for Women, and began fighting vigorously, if unsuccessfully, for the Equal Rights Amendment.

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) - Helen Wallbank Milliken, who was Michigan's longest-serving first lady and a staunch supporter of women's rights and the environment, has died. She was 89.

Son William Milliken Jr. says she died Friday morning at the family's Traverse City home.

Early in her husband's political career, Milliken dutifully played the role of unassuming, supportive spouse. But she evolved into an outspoken advocate of issues close to her heart during a record 14 years as first lady.