Betty Bumpers

Elizabeth Callan Flanagan Bumpers, wife of former Arkansas governor and U.S. senator Dale Bumpers, is known for her far-reaching efforts to promote childhood immunizations and world peace. Betty Flanagan was born on January 11, 1925, to Herman Flanagan and Ola Callan Flanagan in Grand Prairie (Franklin County). Her mother was a homemaker, and her father was a salesman and auctioneer. The family moved to Fort Smith (Sebastian County) during World War II, and later to Iowa before returning to Franklin County. She attended the Chicago Academy of Fine Art and the University of Iowa. Flanagan married Dale Bumpers on September 4, 1949, while he was attending law school at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois. The two had dated during their last year of high school, but they had been separated while attending different colleges and while Dale was in the Marines. Flanagan was teaching the fifth grade before the couple wed, and after Dale graduated from Northwestern, they returned to Charleston (Franklin County), where Betty continued to teach elementary school while her husband established a private law practice. They had three children: Brent, Bill, and Brooke. Bumpers moved to Washington DC after her husband’s election to the U.S. Senate in 1974. After Jimmy Carter was elected president in 1976, she was able to join forces with First Lady Rosalynn Carter to expand the immunization campaign with help from the White House, the CDC, and the former Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (now the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services). When Ronald Reagan became president in 1981, Bumpers’s primary public concern shifted from childhood immunizations to Reagan’s policy toward the former Soviet Union (USSR), which included expanded nuclear arms production. . In 1982, Bumpers and other congressional wives founded Peace Links on the idea that ordinary American women could develop lasting relationships with women in the Soviet Union based upon a shared concern for the wellbeing of children and families. She and Rosalynn Carter officially launched the national Every Child by Two campaign, which centered upon children under the age of two, in 1991 with the assistance of the Carter Center in Atlanta. In November 2001, President Bill Clinton launched the Vaccine Research Center (VCR), a new venture for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), on June 9, 1999. The VCR was named for Dale and Betty Bumpers for their tireless efforts to promote childhood immunizations and research for other vaccines as a comprehensive national health care program. Bumpers currently lives in Little Rock and serves on the advisory board of the Arkansas chapter of Women’s Action for New Directions (WAND).