Marie Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs (March 13, 1916 – July 27, 2013) was a politician who served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and later as United States Ambassador to the Holy See. She was the first woman elected to Congress from Louisiana. She was also a permanent chairwoman of the 1976 Democratic National Convention, which met in New York City to nominate the Carter-Mondale ticket. She was the first woman to preside over a major party convention. Boggs was the widow of former Majority Leader of the United States House of Representatives Hale Boggs. She is one of three female U.S. Representatives from Louisiana, the others being Catherine Small Long and Julia Letlow, each of whom took office in special elections after the death of their husbands. Personal life Boggs was born as Marie Corinne Morrison Claiborne on March 13, 1916, on the Brunswick Plantation near New Roads in Pointe Coupee Parish in South Louisiana, the daughter of Corinne Morrison and Roland Philemon Claiborne, a prominent lawyer. Claiborne's father died when she was just two, but her resemblance to her father earned her the nickname "Lindy," short for the female version of Roland, "Rolinde." She graduated from Newcomb College, the women's college at Tulane University in New Orleans in 1935. In 1934, Lindy Claiborne met Thomas Hale Boggs at Tulane where the pair worked as editors for the school newspaper, The Hullabaloo. Boggs attended Tulane Law School and earned his law degree in 1937 while Claiborne worked as a school teacher after the pair graduated from Tulane. Claiborne and Boggs were married on January 22, 1938 in New Roads, Louisiana. They had four children: Cokie Roberts (a television journalist); Thomas Hale Boggs, Jr. (a lobbyist); Barbara Boggs Sigmund, a mayor of Princeton, New Jersey, and an unsuccessful candidate in the 1982 New Jersey Democratic senatorial primary election (won by Frank Lautenberg); and William Robertson Boggs, who died as an infant on December 28, 1946. Career In 1940, Hale Boggs won a seat in the House of Representatives and the Boggs family relocated to Washington, D.C. Boggs lost his 1942 re-election bid, but subsequently returned to win a seat as the representative of Jefferson Parish in 1947 where he served until his death. On October 16, 1972, Representative Hale Boggs' twin-engine Cessna plane disappeared over Alaska. Boggs was helping a colleague, Nicholas Begich, father of future U.S.