Avoided the Political Limelight : Peggy Goldwater, Wife of U.S. Senator

Peggy Goldwater, who assiduously avoided the political clamor and controversy that clung to her husband throughout their lives, died Wednesday of complications of the circulatory ailments that had forced the partial amputation of her left leg last month.

She died at Good Samaritan Medical Center in Phoenix, said Earl Eisenhower, press secretary to her husband, U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona. The 1964 Republican candidate for President was at her side when she was pronounced dead at 5:34 a.m. She was 76.

She had undergone surgery in early November to bypass a blood clot, and an artificial skin graft used in that procedure became infected, necessitating a second operation. The second, larger graft failed to provide circulation to her leg and it became infected, forcing the amputation. Hospital spokesman James McVeigh said Mrs. Goldwater died of heart, lung and kidney dysfunction.

Born Margaret Johnson in Muncie, Ind., she was the daughter of Ray Prescott Johnson, one of the founders of the Borg-Warner Corp. She attended private schools in Indiana and Washington, D.C., and the Grand Central Art School in New York City where she told the Associated Press during her husband’s presidential campaign that she was “a pretty bad artist.”

Met Goldwater

Among her early beaus was a young Princetonian named G. Mennen Williams, destined to become governor of Michigan and a special representative for President John F. Kennedy. But while seeing Williams she had met a young department store heir on a visit to Arizona. The man who was to become America’s most prominent conservative doggedly pursued her during what she described as a long-distance phone courtship, and they were married in her hometown in 1934.

What she hoped was to be a quiet life as the wife of a business executive and mother of four children vanished amid her husband’s political aspirations. Instead of living in luxury at their home in Phoenix, she found herself maintaining two residences and commuting between Arizona and Washington.

Despite the complexities of political life, the Goldwater marriage was considered one of Washington’s happiest.

At their 50th anniversary celebration on Sept. 22, 1984, Goldwater said his formula for a good marriage was: “You make the best of it. Realize they have their little peculiarity. . . . Say a little prayer every night. Do the things she wants to do and do the things you want to do. You’ll do OK.”

‘Never Talk Politics’

Asked over the years about politics and her husband’s then-unique position as an outspoken conservative in a liberal era, Mrs. Goldwater would demur, saying “we never talk politics” at home. She admitted she would rather exchange recipes than political concepts and once told a journalist that she had never enjoyed being a public figure. “The picture-taking is the worst part,” she added.

She pursued her own activities, Planned Parenthood of Central and Northern Arizona among them, and said that “I just try and be a good wife and companion, a good mother, and on campaign treks I’m seen and not heard.”

Press secretary Eisenhower said services will be held Sunday in suburban Paradise Valley, Ariz., where the Goldwaters had a hilltop home.