Betty Bumpers

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Betty Bumpers (2009)

Elizabeth Callans Flanigan "Betty" Bumpers , nee Flanigan, (born January 11, 1925 in Grand Prairie , Franklin County , Arkansas , † November 23, 2018 in Little Rock , Arkansas) was an American teacher. From 1971 to 1975 she was the first lady of Arkansas as the wife of Governor Dale Bumpers . She ran successful campaigns for vaccinating American school children with Rosalynn Carter .

Betty Bumpers grew up in Arkansas and Iowa and studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and Iowa State University and was then a teacher. In 1949 she married Dale Bumpers, a lawyer she knew from high school and with whom she has three children. The couple initially lived in Charleston . After her husband became governor, in 1973 she organized an extensive vaccination campaign for school children in Arkansas (which had one of the lowest vaccination rates in the US at the time), Every Child by 74 . The program was used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a model for further campaigns in the USA. After her husband became a US senator in 1974 , she moved with him to Washington, DC. Under the administration of Jimmy Carter , she convinced First Lady Rosalynn Carter of the need to introduce compulsory vaccinations for school children in the United States. They organized a successful campaign that resulted in all states making vaccinations mandatory for school children. After a measles epidemic that killed over 200 children in the United States from 1989 to 1991, she and Rosalynn Carter organized a new campaign to vaccinate children before the age of two (Every Child by Two).

In 1982 she founded the peace organization Peace Links , especially against nuclear weapons, which existed until 2001.

In 1995 she received the Maxwell Finland Award with Dale Bumpers . The Vaccine Research Center of the National Institutes of Health is named after her and her husband.

Web links

Commons : Betty Bumpers  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Former Arkansas first lady Betty Bumpers dies at 93. November 23, 2018 (English).;
personal data
SURNAME Bumpers, Betty
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Flanigan, Elizabeth Callans (full maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American public health activist
DATE OF BIRTH January 11, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Grand Prairie , Arkansas
DATE OF DEATH 23rd November 2018
Place of death Little Rock , Arkansas