Jeanne Simon; Politician, Ex-Senator’s Wife

Jeanne Hurley Simon, 77, an Illinois politician and literacy advocate married to former U.S. Sen. Paul Simon. She had taught library science at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Ill., and since 1993 had chaired the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. She championed literacy programs and promoted funding for libraries. Born into a Chicago family of lawyers, the former Jeanne Hurley graduated from Northwestern University Law School and became a Cook County prosecutor in 1952. Four years later she was elected to the Illinois General Assembly where she met Simon, whom she married in 1960. When he unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for president in 1988, she campaigned energetically for him and later wrote a popular book, “Codename: Scarlett--Life on the Campaign Trail by the Wife of a Presidential Candidate.” The couple established the Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University after he retired from the Senate in 1997. Simon wrote in his autobiography that “marrying Jeanne was the wisest thing I have ever done.” On Sunday in Carbondale, five months after surgery for a brain tumor.