• August 06, 2007
• Vol. 68
• No. 6

Tammy Faye Messner 1942-2007

By Nina Burleigh/Los Angeles, With Frank Swertlow/Los Angeles

Televangelism's First Lady Succumbs After a Long Fight with Cancer

She had long ago lost her first husband and her position as televangelism's queen of scandal, but as Tammy Faye Messner lay gravely ill, her faith remained as ironclad as her famous eyelashes. Though she had wasted away to 65 lbs. and had trouble swallowing food because of the lung cancer that was now ravaging her body, she summoned the strength to rise from her deathbed and put in an appearance on Larry King Live. "She wanted to talk to the people," says her manager Joe Spotts, "and let everybody see that even in the darkest hours of her life, you could still be positive." A few hours after her interview aired, she was dead at age 65.

For more than a decade, Tammy Faye Bakker was best known as a gnomish national icon dabbing at mascara-tinted tears while then-husband Jim Bakker prayed for sinners on one of the nation's first and most successful television ministries. Their PTL (Praise the Lord) empire—and marriage—collapsed after Bakker was convicted in 1989 of de-frauding supporters of more than $150 million, including a $265,000 payment to church secretary Jessica Hahn to keep quiet about their affair. "It was the worst time in my life," Tammy Faye said of the scandal, during which she developed a tranquilizer addiction. "It was as if someone had hit me with a 10-ton truck," she told NBC.

Never indicted in the mess, Tammy Faye divorced Jim Bakker while he was in prison and married construction magnate Roe Messner, the chief builder of the ministry's Christian theme park and resort Heritage USA in South Carolina. As Tammy Faye Messner, she launched herself as a new, more ironic celebrity persona. A 2000 film about her called The Eyes of Tammy Faye was submitted for an award at Sundance. She embraced gays, many of whom revered her support of AIDS patients, and appeared on the WB reality show The Surreal Life, which put her in a house with ex-porn star Ron Jeremy and rapper Vanilla Ice. "She stood up for all kinds of people," says Jeremy, who became a good friend. Her extravagant shopping sprees were as famous as her makeup. She once said she hoped heaven would include a giant shopping center "where there's no limit on your charge card."

She had certainly traveled a long way from her humble roots. Born Tamara Faye LaValley to a poor, strictly religious Pentecostal family in International Falls, Minn., she was forbidden from wearing makeup as a teen. While in Bible college, she met Jim Bakker, who proposed two weeks after their first date; the couple got their start in televangelism with a wildly successful Christian hand puppet show. They had two children—Tammy Sue, 37, a Christian singer who assisted her mother with home hospice care in her final months; and Jay, 31, who battled alcohol addiction but has lately emerged as a preacher in his own right who ministers to a flock of New York hipsters.

Jim Bakker, 67, served nearly five years in prison, remarried and, in 2003, launched The Jim Bakker Show. (Bakker posted a message that he was "deeply saddened" by Tammy Faye's death.) Right to the end, Tammy Faye seemed inclined to take everything in lighthearted stride. As she told the Charlotte Observer: "When I was a little girl I used to pray, 'Dear God, please don't let my life be boring.' I found you have to be careful what you pray for."