Obituaries

Loraine B. McGeeSenate Wife

Loraine B. McGee, 90, a homemaker, correspondent and Senate wife for 18 years, died of a heart attack March 21 at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda. She lived in Bethesda.

Mrs. McGee was an unofficial but constant adviser to her husband, Sen. Gale W. McGee (D-Wyo.). She kept a comprehensive list of all the Wyoming people they had met, organized by town, in a little black book. As they drove into a town during their visits back to the state, she would read the list aloud to refresh her husband's memory, her son said.

For several years in the 1960s, she wrote a monthly column for Wyoming newspapers, "A Line From Loraine," which reported her observations from Washington.

She was born in Pierson, Iowa, and graduated from Nebraska State Teachers College in 1936. She moved with her new husband, a college professor, to the University of Colorado, the University of Chicago and Notre Dame before settling at the University of Wyoming. In 1957, she helped lead a group of college students visiting the Soviet Union, a highly unusual trip at the time.

After her husband's 1977 electoral defeat, he became ambassador to the Organization of American States and the couple enjoyed extensive world travel.

Her husband died in 1992. A son, David W. McGee, died in 2001.

Survivors include three children, Robert M. McGee of Chevy Chase, Mary Gale Clark of Monkton, Md., and Lori Ann Stagnaro of Annapolis; and 10 grandchildren.