J. Weinberger, wife of former defense chief
- |
BAR HARBOR, Maine - Jane Weinberger, wife of the late Defense secretary Caspar Weinberger and a writer and publisher of children’s stories, has died. She was 91.
Mrs. Weinberger had been in declining health before suffering a massive stroke a week ago, said her son, Caspar Jr. She died late Sunday at a nursing care center in Bar Harbor, not far from the family’s home, known as Windswept House, in Somesville, he said.
The former Rebecca Jane Dalton, a Maine native, met her future husband on a troop ship headed to Australia in World War II. They remained together until his death in March 2006.
After the war, “Cap’’ Weinberger became a lawyer in San Francisco before his wife helped him win election as a California assemblyman in the 1950s. He later served under three presidents, overseeing the Pentagon’s biggest peacetime spending increase as President Reagan’s defense secretary.
“My mother was a wonderful woman who helped her family hold together and prosper often under the most trying conditions that can only be truly understood by those who achieve fame and the scrutiny which go with holding high office in America,’’ the couple’s son said in a statement.
After leaving Washington, they settled in their summer home in Maine, where Mrs. Weinberger launched a business that published nearly 100 books, mostly children’s books, her son said.
In addition to her son, Mrs. Weinberger leaves a daughter, three grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.
