Campaign a shared mission for the Edwardses

By Kate Zernike

updated 5:57 a.m. ET Dec. 31, 2007

In an instant, a world in which everything seemed right suddenly seemed all wrong. John and Elizabeth Edwards’s 16-year-old son, Wade, their first-born, was dead, with nothing to blame but the gust of wind that had flipped his car off a wide-open road.

As the couple walked down the aisle of the church for his funeral, they braced each other, friends recalled, as if they could not stand alone.

In the bleak months that followed, the Edwardses looked for ways to keep Wade’s name alive, taking comfort even in seeing it printed on credit-card offers that arrived in the mail. Determined to honor their son publicly and fill their life with meaning, they created a learning center named after him. They chose to have more children. And they decided Mr. Edwards would enter politics, a path that took him first to the United States Senate and now to his second run for the presidency.

The campaign is a shared mission. Elizabeth Edwards is her husband’s most trusted adviser, his chief provocateur and his most popular surrogate, mobbed at campaign stops by people who admire her struggle against breast cancer and share stories of children lost. She describes the presidency as not just his quest, but hers, too.

Her visibility and their decision to continue with the campaign despite learning in March that her cancer was incurable has put the Edwardses’ marriage on display like no other in this presidential race. From afar, Americans have wondered at their bond or questioned their values, cheered them on or condemned them. Some people assumed they were in denial, others accused them of an ambition that knew no bounds.

But to the Edwardses, their decision simply showed a sense of purpose and a lesson learned a decade ago from crushing pain: If you can’t control life, you can at least embrace it more urgently.

“We’ve been through the worst a couple can go through,” Mr. Edwards said in an interview. “So long as there’s something you can do that’s positive, there’s a chance. As long as there’s a chance, there’s something to hold on to.”

Message board   What do you think of Edwards’ candidacy?

The desire, even the need, to push forward has come to define them. “Every married couple has a history, but they have the force of this gigantic history,” said Glenn Bergenfield, a friend since law school. “They’re both fighter pilots. You keep going. The important thing is the mission, the important thing is to keep going.”

When opposites attract
Arriving at the University of North Carolina law school in 1974, Johnny Edwards had all the upbeat confidence of a small-town football star. But he had working-class roots and had barely spent time in any city, and he was intimidated by his more worldly classmates — none more so than Elizabeth Anania, who sat a few rows in front of him in their civil-procedure class. She had “the blackest hair and fine light blue eyes,” he later wrote in his memoir.

Four years his senior, Ms. Anania was the daughter of a Navy pilot and had lived all over the United States and in Japan. Friends described the dinner table at the Anania household as the kind of intellectual forum where you learned to speak up or keep your head down. Moving every year or so had taught her to adapt fast.

“She was like the mayor of our little town,” Mr. Bergenfield recalled, organizing sports teams, fixing up couples, making friends for those too shy to do it themselves. “She was dazzling, beautiful and unafraid in class.”

She thought she had nothing in common with Mr. Edwards — “we listened to different music, we read different books,” she said. Still, Mr. Bergenfield recalled, “there was something in her mind about him. He was a little puzzling to her.”

MORE FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

The New York Times Section Front

NYT: Medical debt spurs more bankruptcies Health bill revives abortion groups Drug firms raise prices ahead of reform For thrillers, Glenn Beck is new Oprah Analysis: Victories rekindle GOP’s hope The New York Times Section Front