Betty Bumpers, campaigner for childhood vaccinations, dies at 93

August 23, 2024

A native of tiny Grand Prairie, Arkansas, Bumpers had been content with her life as an elementary school teacher and homemaker in nearby Charleston, where her husband was born, when he rocketed to the Arkansas governorship in 1970, running as a liberal Democrat and a relative unknown.

Once installed in the governor’s mansion, Bumpers was startled to discover that tens of thousands of Arkansas children had not been inoculated against then-common but potentially fatal diseases such as measles, mumps and diphtheria.

With the governor’s support, she rallied private and public sectors to back an immunization campaign called Every Child by ’74. The vaccination rate in Arkansas soared, and the incidence of preventable infections quickly plummeted.

After her husband’s election to the Senate in 1974, Bumpers expanded her mission after learning that fewer than 1 in 5 states mandated immunization as a condition for enrollment in public schools. (Children in schools are common transmitters of communicable illnesses.)

Beginning in 1977, Bumpers and first lady Rosalynn Carter led a state-by-state campaign promoting preschool immunizations. The effort prompted 33 states to enact such programs, in which proof of vaccinations was mandated before children could enroll in kindergarten or other first-year classes in public schools. They joined the 17 other states that had such programs.

By fall 1980, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that disease among public school children was “at or near record-low levels.”

In 1991, a measles outbreak that infected 55,000 people and led to the deaths of about 120, moved Bumpers and Carter to expand their efforts by starting a nonprofit campaign, Every Child by Two. The organization, based in Washington, encourages immunizations of children for mumps, measles, rubella and other illnesses by age 2.

Bumpers’ volunteerism earned her numerous honors from humanitarian organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics. The Vaccine Research Center of the National Institutes of Health is named for her and her husband.

In the 1980s, when relations between Washington and Moscow were strained, Bumpers’ concerns expanded to encompass the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the risks of nuclear war. She established Peace Links, a global network of like-minded women who argued for less confrontational rhetoric and more vigorous diplomatic initiatives to reduce the odds of a nuclear confrontation.

Dale Bumpers, undefeated after four Senate terms, retired in January 1999 but returned to the chamber that month to deliver the closing argument against the impeachment of his fellow Arkansan, President Bill Clinton, who was acquitted. Dale Bumpers died at 90 in 2016.

Betty Lou Flanagan was born Jan. 11, 1925. Her mother, Ola, was a teacher, and her father, Herman, was a farmer and a cattle merchant.

Betty attended Iowa State University and the University of Arkansas without earning a degree from either and earned a certificate from the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. She became a teacher, and she and Dale Bumpers were married in 1949. (Arkansas did not require teachers then to have a college degree.)

In addition to her son Brent, Bumpers is survived by another son, William, and a daughter, Margaret Brooke Bumpers, as well as seven grandchildren.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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