Lee Ludwig Hart

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Family

American political wife, businesswoman and real-estate agent who stood by her husband under intense media scrutiny. A school teacher in their lean years, she invested her time and effort into her husband's political career. She was willing to ignore his marital infidelities as he attained the country's top political seat of power. In 1987, her husband, Senator Gary Hart of Colorado was a strong Democratic contender for the 1989 presidential election until his political career was ruined on the revelation of his affair with 28-year-old Donna Rice. The Harts' political aspirations and dreams went up in a blaze of public scandal in May 1987. Lee, shortened from Oletha, grew up the daughter of a minister. Her father was the head of the local Church of the Nazarene in Kansas City, MO with an 870,000 member congregation. She met Gary Hart while they were students at Bethany Nazarene College in Oklahoma, where she majored in speech. Friends of the family knew of Hart's humble beginnings and felt that he was courting up the social ladder. They married in August 1959 and moved to New Haven, Connecticut where Gary attended Yale Divinity School. Lee taught high school English during her husband's enrollment in Yale Law School. The couple moved to Colorado after Gary obtained a position at a Denver law firm. They had two kids, Andrea in 1965 and John in 1966. Lee became a Realtor while her husband won the Colorado Senate seat in 1974. She raised their children like a working single mother, a lonely marriage due to the many years that her husband was away in the nation's capital. In 1979, the couple separated under the stress and strain of the high pressure political life. They reconciled and the senator was re-elected to a second term in 1980. In 1981, the pair separated again but friends said the couple planned to save their marriage. By the time the senator campaigned for the Democratic nomination for president in 1984, they were back together. Hart was a handsome and personable presidential candidate until he withdrew in public embarrassment on 5/07/1987 over his alleged womanizing, specifically his affair with model Donna Rice. Miami Herald reporters published photos of a blonde woman coming and going from the Hart's Washington, DC townhouse when the news story broke about his Bahamas pleasure cruise with Rice aboard his yacht, Monkey Business. Lee persuaded her husband to continue to seek the Democratic nomination for the 1989 presidency. She told the astonished press, "If it doesn't bother me, I don't see why it should bother anyone else." Hart's role was that of her husband's political advisor, not his wronged spouse. Many believed her ambitions to become the nation's First Lady was as strong as her husband's presidential yearnings. In 1990, Lee opened a travel service with daughter, Andrea. Their company, Global Village Connection Inc., is an executive travel service to aid foreign companies doing business in the U.S.