Huffington Post and multiple news sources reporting:
Geraldine Ferraro, a Democrat and the first major female vice presidential candidate, passed away on Saturday, according to multiple reports on a statement released by her family.
Jeff Zeleny at the New York Times reports that at the age of 75, Ferraro died of complications from blood cancer at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Ferraro was the first woman and first Italian-American to run on a major party national ticket. According to a statement released by her family, she died surrounded by her loved ones after battling multiple myeloma for twelve years. Her family said of the loss:
“Geraldine Anne Ferraro Zaccaro was widely known as a leader, a fighter for justice, and a tireless advocate for those without a voice. To us, she was a wife, mother, grandmother and aunt, a woman devoted to and deeply loved by her family. Her courage and generosity of spirit throughout her life waging battles big and small, public and personal, will never be forgotten and will be sorely missed.”
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p>http://www.bluehampshire.com/s…
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p>We Irish Bostonians under 60 missed this by a generation or so. I remember a friend saying how excited her older relatives were about Joe Lieberman being the vice presidential nominee, because they had grown up with the notion that a Jewish person could never become president.
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p>I grew up knowing a lot of people with head busts of JFK, though I wasn’t quite sure why for a long time. I figured it had more to do with him getting shot than breaking the race barrier.
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